Learning never stops- In my books, my characters learn things.

 You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Really?

How many times over the years have you heard that? If you're like me - plenty. Imagine my surprise and delight when I learned IT IS NOT TRUE.

We have no reason to avoid learning new habits, methods, languages, or life-skills. You can teach an old dog new tricks.  

And you can have your story characters learn new and helpful skills.

 The research and proof

Norman Doidge, M.D.'s first book is The Brain That Changes Itself.

The book featured on PBS'S The Brain Fitness Program (Youtube Link here), offers amazing stories about, and strategies for, brain flexibility. A five-star book if there ever was one. If you, or someone you know, has had a stroke, brain injury, or motor difficulties, read this book. It offers hope for recovery.

An an astonishing new science called "neuroplasticity" is overthrowing the the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed. From stroke patients learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.

We can learn at any age. The stories in this book will make believers out of doubters. The hope offered to stroke patients, brain-injured, and others is remarkable.

For the rest of us, we can learn about our brains and put them to even better use. Knowing HOW our brains work lets us figure out the ways we can maximize the ways to use our brains.

For writers - Writers can use the concepts to create characters with amazing skills. Extrapolate from Doidge's research and who knows how your next character will turn out. My 'what-if' brain is running rampant through the possibilities.

One of the many positive reviews for Doidge's books.

“The power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility. Mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff...with implications for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history.”

-The New York Times

Read it or watch on Youtube

To learn more about Rosemary's work please click on the cover above.

Grace, Lady of Cassio

My novel, Grace, Lady of Cassio, The Lovages of Cassio, Book Two, the sequel to Yvonne, Lady of Cassio, will be published in October 2021.
At heart I am a historian, so my novels are rich in historical detail which requires intensive research. I am writing almost drowned by a sea of non-fiction books for research among which is The Perfect King, Edward 111, Father of the English Nation. Grace, Lady of Cassio, begins in 1330 England in the third year of Edward’s reign.
In this BWL insider blog and in future ones I shall share some of my research.

Contraception and Childbirth
Coitus interruptus was the only means of preventing contraception. The church regarded it as sinful. If the sinners confessed their penance might result in up to ten-year-fast. The church condemned contraception. It considered marriage was only for procreation and that the marital state was inferior to chastity. Moreover, the church only allowed intercourse to take place on Monday to Friday if there was not an obligatory fast or festival on one of those days.
Nevertheless, despite the Church’s strictures, it seems that various devices were used to prevent sperm entering the womb, amongst which the ancient use of melted beeswax, onion, or roots, continued. Also, the belief that a woman would not become pregnant while nursing a baby was an incentive to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Understandable when a wife might have a dozen or more babies.
Childbirth was dangerous for mother and baby. Pregnant women made their confession, received Holy Communion. No pain relief was available for women in travail. The church had no sympathy for the mother-to-be because Eve suffered without pain relief so they depended on superstition, Complicated rituals of childbirth such a knife under the birthing stool to cut the pain, prayers to St Margaret the patron saint of mothers, and a precious stone – a favourite was an eagle stone – bound around the mother’s thigh.
Queens, princesses, and noblewomen withdrew to their bedchambers six weeks prior to the confinement. Then, to avoid claims that the baby was a changeling gave birth in public. Midwives attended those who could afford to employ them, female relatives attended peasants. After the delivery, if the mother could spare the time, she stayed in her bedchamber for forty days. On the forty-first day, whatever her circumstances, to cleanse her of impurity, she went to church, where, in a special service she was cleansed of impurity believed to reside in her.
It is interesting to note the cost of a woman’s life in France. A person who murdered a woman was fined. For killing a woman who had passed the menopause. 100 livres (100 pounds). For a woman of child-bearing age. 200 livres. For a pregnant woman. 700 livres.

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

http://bookswelove.net/authors/morris-rosemary

Murder in the Bedroom by Katherine Pym

 

Buy Here

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Ready to do murder

Apparently, bedrooms are perfect for murder. The victim is usually already in a prone position (won’t fall and break anything). The victim is usually already asleep so there’s no resistance to their demise. The mattress will soak up the blood, if that’s the way a murderer wants to perform the act. All he or she has to do is cover up the dead body with blankets already on the bed. Easy-peasy. 

The kitchen below 'the room'.

Authors have often killed off a person in the bedroom. Take Anya Seton in her Dragonwyck. She used the oleander flower to brighten up a sick room. I’ve read this plant is extremely poisonous. Even if a bee takes its pollen, and you later gather honey from said bee’s nest, eat the honey, you can fall very ill. I haven’t heard if you can die from the honey, though. Anya Seton merely had her naughty protagonist set an oleander plant near his sick wife’s bed. The next morning she was dead. Very cleanly done. No blood. Her body was already covered with blankets. 

Is she dead?

 Back in the day (maybe even now), some innkeepers (sort of like the dastardly couple in the musical Les Mis) would kill a wealthy customer for the gold he/she carried. One couple who owned the Crane near Reading UK murdered wealthy patrons for years without getting caught. 

 

Their process was elaborate. They outfitted a bedroom located above the kitchen (nice and warm in the winters I expect, what with heat rising, so a coveted room). The innkeepers nailed the bed to a trapdoor located over a huge boiling caldron used to brew beer. When the trapdoor opened the poor victim fell off the bed into this boiling caldron, clothes and all, he never had a moment to cry out but would be immediately parboiled, then drowned (sort of like the play Sweeny Todd but with water). The innkeepers would mount a ladder into the bedroom, steal all his goods, and reset the trapdoor. The body would then be cast into a local river. 

That seems like a lot of hard work. 

Then Thomas Harding (another author) wrote of a woman whose husband continually imbibed. One night she couldn’t take it anymore and sewed her dead-drunk husband very tightly in the bedclothes. She unstitched him the following morning to find him quite expired. The coroners said it was a stroke. On her wedding night with her next husband, she very casually told him what she had done. I’d wager he didn’t sleep well that night. 

Ready for the plunge

There are many bedrooms that are ghost ridden due to suicides, murders, and just plain natural deaths. There was a time when if you tried to sell your home, the estate agent would ask if anyone died there. If you answered yes, the house would be difficult to sell. So, what do you say? 

 

Nothing, and do sleep well, tonight. 

 

Post Script: The Ostrich Inn near Heathrow Airport has the same stories. You can decide where to stay and see how haunted these inns are. 

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Many thanks to: Warm & Snug, The History of the Bed, by Lawrence Wright, First published 1962 by Routledge & Keagan Paul, Ltd. England

Pictures come from Wikicommon, public domain