I am SO over this summer...by Jamie Hill

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 Where I live, the heartland of the USA, we see all four seasons. Autumn, or as we generally call it, Fall, is my favorite. One hundred-degree Fahrenheit temps of the summer begin to cool off and welcome fifty-degree evenings bring sweaters and football season. The flowers that I watered all summer, trying to keep them alive, finally flourish with cooler air until they eventually freeze and die off. Pastels and 'welcome' gnomes are replaced by pumpkins that will see us through to December.

Winter is a wonderful time of year with the holidays and crisp, cold air. Snow is beautiful as long as I don't have to drive in it, and even better now that we've hired some nice young men to come and clear it away for us. We also get our share of ice, and a few years ago purchased a whole house generator so we won't be left without power. The kicker--a generator will run everything except computers, which don't like 'dirty power'. Oh, the horror. Hope I never have to put that trial to the test.

Just when I think I can't stand one more day of freezing cold temps, spring arrives. The thermometer soars to the mid-fifties and people everywhere change into shorts and tank tops. (The same weather that brought out the sweatshirts in the fall.) But spring is welcome and winter coats stored away for another season.

Before the calendar even sees June, the heat begins. There's usually a solid week between turning off the furnace and turning on the air conditioner. Especially this year, when I turned on my attic fan for the first (and only) time and a bat flew into my bedroom. I was shocked and he was even more so. Fortunately, he was either stunned or just slow, because I was able to catch him in a big butter tub and release him outside, probably just to return to my attic that night. By the way, we're still looking for a handyman to fix the mesh in our attic which apparently let the bat get in. (I'm sure there was just the one.)

That was the beginning of my summer fun. Then there was the fall my husband took outside, resulting in a torn rotator cuff and an arm he hasn't been able to use all summer. (Surgery forthcoming, when he is cleared for it.)

So we're battening down the hatches, closing down the deck and other summer details in anticipation of his being in a sling for twelve weeks. I'm actually cool with it, It's easier to hunker down in front of my computer when I'm not feeling guilty that there are things I should be doing outside. 

I am SO over this summer, ready for cooler weather and football season. And Netflix with the window open.

Find all my titles at Books We Love: http://bookswelove.net/authors/hill-jamie/

and find the links and blurbs and other good stuff here: http://authorjamiehill.blogspot.com/  

Stuff Like Toilet Tissue by Katherine Pym

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As a writer of historical fiction, I come across moments of, ‘When was this invented?’ And ‘Can I use this?’ There are certain things we take for granted, and while writing, it’s hard not to incorporate a few things we use every day.

Like...

Safety Pin

How hard would it be for an enterprising individual to come up with a safety pin? After all, since the days of early mankind, people secured their fabric or skin clothing with a tool of some sort.  In Egypt, pins were made of bronze with decorative heads, but they could still prick you. Fibulas and brooches date back to the Mycenaean era, which were closer to the safety pin, but close doesn’t mean you win the Kewpie Doll. Needles were also used from the dawn of time, and in London the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers had the power to seize your needles if they did not have their stamp of approval.

Apparently, the safety pin was a brain twister, for the first one came late in man’s existence, in the year 1825. The inventor was Walter Hunt (USA).

Toilet Tissue

The 19^th century seemed to have been an awakening of sorts, for along with the safety pin, several items were invented during that time frame we take for granted. In 1857 toilet tissue was invented by Joseph Gayetty. He used hemp paper as a prevention of the ‘piles’, and charged 50¢ for a packet of 500 sheets.

But when reading a novel, one doesn’t often come across the hero or heroine going to the bathroom and using, what? on the backside. I have read of a protagonist in a time slip novel, though, going into the past where there isn’t much to keep the teeth clean. Authors of these tomes don’t often mention a gentleman and his lady kissing / clanking their fuzzy teeth. 

Toothbrush

The toothbrush was invented a bit earlier than the 19^th century by a fellow in Newgate prison with not much to do during the day. He must have been fairly cash fluid though when he asked a prison guard to procure some items for him. This was in 1770. William Addis (UK) found cleaning his teeth with an old rag unpleasant and not very thorough. He bored little holes in a discarded meat bone, “tied them [hard bristles] into tufts, put glue on the ends, and wedged them into the holes...” Upon his release from prison, Mr Addis manufactured his invention and became an overnight success.

If I wrote in this era, I’d have to find out when Mr Addis started his venture, and when did the toothbrushes go on sale. One simply mustn’t write of something like this prior to the time it actually happened. Tsk tsk.

Back to the 19^th century of ingenious people.

On the near subject of toothbrushes, in 1892 another person from the USA invented the toothpaste tube, thinking to stick your toothbrush into a jar of tooth cream that everyone under your roof used was unhygienic. Dr Sheffield was a dentist. My source does not say if the collapsible tube was made of lead or not.

Whitcomb Judson

One item I’ve always wanted to know about was the zipper. Now, the trouser fly (buttons) was incorporated quite a bit earlier by someone in Asia Minor so that he could gain entry quicker. To replace buttons with the zipper would make the entry gain quite speedy. Another intrepid American, Mr Whitcomb Judson, invented this in 1893 when shoes and boots were fastened with buttons.

Here you are in a hurry and you can’t find the button hooker-fastener thing. Then, when you do find it, minutes tick by as you fasten one tiny button after the other all the way up to the top of your shoe or boot.

Mr Judson invented “2 thin metal chains that could be fastened together by pulling a slider up between them. He patented this clasp locker or unlocker for shoes”. Judson was also the founder of the “Automatic Hook and Eye Company”. Along with his partner, they wanted to do away with all things fastened by buttons. Of course, these new zippers were primitive. It took a few more years to make them what we see today in men’s trousers and women’s skirts, along with shoes and purses, you name it, if it can be fastened by a zipper it is.

Quill & Inkpot

Other items an author of historical novels must be careful about are the writing implements your hero or heroine use. Prior to 1662 Pencils comprised of a graphite stick, wrapped with string to keep your fingers clean. After this date, pencils were mass produced in Nuremberg Germany. Quills were used almost exclusively for quite literally years and years.

The 19^th century had a lot of ups and downs with writing utensils. After several failed attempts by other gentlemen, the metal nib did not grasp the populace until somewhere in the first half of the 19^th century (John Mitchell in the UK). The fountain pen was invented about the same time as the metal nib, but this didn’t take hold until 1884 by an American named Lewis Waterman.  By 1885, Waterman had produced 200 man-made pens. 

Fountain Pen

Then, and finally, the pencil with an eraser. In 1858 this was invented by Hyman Lipman (USA). Until Mr Lipman’s invention, you had to carry an eraser along with your pencil (cumbersome!). He merely glued a bit of eraser to the top of the pencil, and voila, a new invention was born.

Many thanks to:

http://pencils.com/

The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York 1975

All pictures come from Wikicommons, Public Domain

         Jasper's Lament

KANGAROOS HOPPING BY - MARGARET TANNER

I WAS A PIONEER FOR A SHORT TIME – MARGARET TANNER

I write historical romance, so this experience was very relevant for me.

My husband and I have just returned from a short stay at a place called Halls Gap in the Grampians, which is a climber’s paradise. Steep rocky cliffs overhanging thickly treed valleys. Mile upon mile of brooding bushland, silent except for the occasional bird call. One could easily get lost here, and perhaps, as happened in the pioneering days, you would never be seen again. It still looks like an untamed wilderness even now, except for a couple of small hamlets. I could almost visualise the pioneers hacking their way through the heavily treed countryside. The terrain was steep and unforgiving. In some places a fall meant death.

I have to confess, we stayed in a cabin, which you could barely discern from the road, it blended into the background so well. It had all the modern conveniences EXCEPT the heating was an enormous open fire. Hubby and I looked at each other, who was going to light the fire? Thank goodness there was a basket of kindling and a pile of neatly stacked logs. Wielding an axe was beyond us, our pioneering blood was just too diluted.

I am very proud of the fact that I lit the fire at my first attempt. I wondered if I might not have been a boy scout in a previous life, or perhaps my pioneering blood wasn’t quite as diluted as I had thought.

It was truly an amazing feeling toasting our toes in front of this roaring fire, watching the logs burn, and smelling the wood smoke. It brought back a lot of childhood memories of staying with my grandmother and various aunts in the country. They not only had open fires for warmth but they also had wood stoves for cooking. And boy, could these women ever cook.

I actually felt quite close to my heroines while I stared into the orange flames, most of them had to conquer the wilderness with the hero.

In my novel, Fiery Possession, published by Books We Love, my heroine, Josephine (Jo) Saunders was an American who braved the wilderness to help her brother, and immediately clashes with the hero. It is selling for 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and in most places that sell e-books.

FIERY POSSESSION

American Wild West versus Australian Frontier.
Hate, lust and murder. How can Jo and Luke overcome these obstacles and allow love to flourish?

http://amzn.com/B00C2JOK6M

Margaret Tanner writes action packed romances set in frontier Australia.

http://bookswelove.net/authors/tanner-margaret/

 

http://www.margarettanner.com/