In which ancient Sumerians blow my mind, I affirm that some people do naturally look like Cora, and I fantasize about painting you with dappled shadows.

This is the first in a series of posts I’m calling “Baubles”, shiny things I’ve found in my research or internet-dwelling that I write here for my benefit as much as yours. The Historical Thesaurus of English I just learned about this today from a boundary-pushing History Today article about the evolution of swearing in the 1600s. The Historical Thesaurus of English looks a lot more complicated than a typical thesaurus.

I have a theory. Sometimes we fall in love with certain inaccurate ideas of how life used to be in a certain time and place. And then if we see a more accurate depiction, it feels wrong. I’ll give three examples. Example 1: Modiste Like lots of people, I’ve been enjoying Bridgerton. And from Bridgerton I learned the word “modiste”. And I was close to using it in my story, but decided to do a little googling first to make sure I used it correctly.

First, the Background One of the pleasures of blithely diving in as a first time novelist is learning the lingo and hangups of writers themselves. That happened to me a few weeks back while reading a Reddit thread where people were saying this or that character is “such a Mary Sue” and I had no idea what the hell they meant. So I googled. And here’s what Wikipedia had to say:

I’ve been enlisting more people to give feedback on my writing lately, as well as giving feedback to more writers myself, and realized that the feedback I was giving was kind of scattershot. This post is a reminder to myself on how I want to give feedback, as well as the topics I want to give (or get) feedback on. How to Give Feedback Use Cause-and-Effect Statements Feedback is easier both to give and to receive when you phrase it as a cause-and-effect statement, like this:

Two new chapters are up! Chapter 7 and chapter 9 feature Lethetani and Samuel, and are interleaved between Cora chapters already released. If you go into the book PDF reader page, there’s also now a chapter selector at the bottom that will make it easier to jump to what’s new.

There’s more story up! And some updates to old things. Details: There’s a whole new second half that’s been added to chapter 7. Cora attends a garden party in the new chapter 8. (But be aware, I’m thinking of slipping some non-Cora chapters in between 6-7 and 7-8, so this numbering is likely to change. A bunch of the quotes at the start of the chapters have been rearranged or swapped out.

Two new chapters are up! The title of this post is taken from their shorthand working titles. When I outline I use those before I know the exact ordering or numbering for them. The result is that my Notion spreadsheet reads like a series of “I Can Read!” books: Of the two newest chapters, one’s a little long, the other’s pretty short, but they have both been the funnest ones to write so far.

One question I asked myself pretty early on in thinking about this novel is whether AI had any part to play. Here’s where I landed: When it comes to the actual text of the novel, no. I want it to be entirely my own creation. It sure can be fun to play with image generators. I might throw an AI-generated image in there if it seems right. Chapter 5 will involve a little snarky gossip and cartoon about Samuel being placed in Punch magazine, blaming him for the whole traffic jam at the Queen’s Drawing Rooms.

Hello ❤️ Welcome to the Other Side, the home for my in-progress novel A Season of Shades, and possibly other future content. I’m not 100% sure where this is going, but I’ve learned that when the creative demon takes hold of you, it’s best to ride it out. Here’s hoping that this possession lasts long enough to finish the project. You can read the first four chapters here. Now for a few disclaimers to manage expectations.