Tag Archives: murder mysteries

Shelby and Munch

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I can just hear a lot of people saying, “Wha. . . .?” Especially if you don’t know me personally or haven’t read “Death of a Dyer”.

Shelby is my dog.

shelby

 

We’ve had her over five years. Previously, before my marriage, I owned another dog. When she died (at 17+ which amazed the vet) I was so heartbroken I didn’t get another pet for many years. After I recovered, I asked my husband for a dog for my birthday. When we went to the shelter to look at dogs, Shelby chose my husband and has really been his dog ever since. So I got my husband a dog for my birthday.

Anyway, I included Shelby in “Death of a Dyer”. I changed her sex and made her black ( Like she is going to sue me right?). I called her Munch because, after chasing groundhogs, eating is her most favorite thing to do. In the five years since we’ve had her, she has gained 22 pounds. (Granted, she was emaciated when we got her but still.) The vet told us to start watching her weight. Not easy to do with three little boys who want to share their food with her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooking – Colonial Style

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One of the comments I received on my baking thread concerned other kinds of cooking. I think you can see from my books that bacon (and pork in general) was an important staple. Every one except the poorest owned at least one pig. Descriptions of the times talk about the feral pigs that ran through the city streets (of big cities like Philadelphia and Boston) living on the garbage in the streets. Besides the yuck factor (it must have been a lot of garbage and does anyone else think of the awful smell?) the thought of all those pigs is pretty unsettling. In the countryside too, especially on the frontier, pigs were allowed to roam. I guess there were feral pigs back then just as there are now in the Carolinas.

But I digress.

Besides pork, people ate a wide variety of protein. Chickens were eaten when they no longer lay eggs and a chicken Sunday dinner was a tradition. Game was very important. OK, so one thinks of deer, turkeys and other wild birds, the feral pigs, but turtles? It’s true. One of the recipes from that period begins: Catch a turtle.

It continues: Hang him by the hind fins until all the blood drains. I will spare the sensibilities of my readers and not continue with the rest of the instruction. I pride myself on eating pretty much anything but I confess I draw the line at turtles.

Writing Process Blog tour

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My dear sweet very good friend Dora Machado, a writer who has been generous with both time and expertise, (honestly, I would have had a much harder time understanding the writing world without her)  has passed the baton to me for the blog tours. I must answer four questions:

These are my answers.

What are you working on?

I am finishing up a Will Rees mystery that takes place in Salem in 1796. At the same time I am researching my next Will Rees, tentatively titled “A Cold  Dish of Murder”. I am simultaneously writing the first draft and doing research. I am also already thinking about the next in the series as well as a stand alone.

Why do you write what you do?

I write historical mysteries because I wanted to write about a period in our country’s history that has been overlooked. I have really learned a lot. I don’t think human nature changes very much and although every culture prohibits murder we seem to do it all the time.

How Does your work differ from others in your genre?

There are a lot of historical mysteries. So far I have found very few that take place after the Revolutionary War and before the 1830’s. And yet this is such a fascinating period. Shadows of the coming Civil War and echoes of the previous war are omnipresent in this period, ships were traveling east to open up trade with China and India and people were moving into the western frontier – there was so much going on.

What is your writing process?

I get up every morning at 5 am and spend the next few hours working on my writing. Sometimes it is blog posts. Some times working on a manuscript. Sometimes sweating over edits. But I try to write every day. I think one of the biggest issue for any writer is making the necessary time.

And now I pass the baton to:

Mary Miley is a historian who, after thirty years of writing nonfiction books and articles, made the leap to fiction. Historical fiction, of course, and mysteries, because that is what she most enjoys reading. Her first Roaring Twenties mystery, THE IMPERSONATOR, won the 2012 Mystery Writers of America BEST FIRST CRIME NOVEL award and was published by St. Martin’s Minotaur in 2013. The second in the series, SILENT MURDERS, will be released in September 2014.
And Will Delman, Will has been writing since childhood and is now beginning to cause a stir in the Science Fiction world.He lives in Salem, Mass with his wife.
http://eleanorkuhns.wordpress.com

 

 

baking in the old days

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Since I haven’t seen a workman for my kitchen for ten days (and counting) and I still am missing doors, knobs, and my new refrigerator, I am moving on in my blog.

I began to think about how cooks baked in the past. They had yeast but what leavener did they use for what we term quick breads.

There was no baking powder. They had yeast but that requires rising. Beer dregs can also be used – I;ve made beer bread but you would not want cookies made from beer.

So what did the cooks use? Pearlash. Wood ashes when soaked in water yield lye. Lye is used to make soap. Lye was also used to soak hominey and for other cooking purposes. Some where in 1780 some enterprising cook used it to make cookies and bread.

I’ve read, however, that it left a bitter alkaline taste in the mouth. The use of pearlash was short-lived. After 1840 a precursor of baking powder was produced.

The Question of Titles

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I am not good at creating titles; I’ll admit that first thing. Some authors seem to choose the perfect title. snappy and appropriate. I struggle.

I think of this now since I am struggling to title the fourth book. Right now it is titled “Death in Salem”. Bland, right? I started with “Salem Slay Ride” which I think is snappier but one of my readers said it sounded like winter. Since the story takes place in June, not a good thing.

Maybe I should have a vote.

The original title for my first book was “Hands to Murder”. I took it from the Shaker saying “Hearts to God, Hands to work”. The publisher felt that too many people wouldn’t get the allusion so it became “A Simple Murder.”

I was lucky with the second book. Since the mystery concerns a dyer – as in one who dyes – the title seemed perfect. But the third book, now titled “Cradle to Grave”, I called  The Book until my daughter suggested the title.

So now I’m struggling with the title for the fourth Will Rees.  “Death at Sea”? “”Blow the Man down”? I’m still partial to “Salem Slay Ride” because I like puns. Like I said, still struggling.

The Jack Loom

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The jack loom is a horizontal loom; i.e. the warp runs horizontally and most of the size is front to back, not up and down. The weaver can sit on a bench. With the vertical looms, like those still used in Scandinavia and previously in Greece, the warp threads hang down and the weaver must stand on a stool or the floor itself must be lowered to provide enough room.

folded loom

A loom this size could easily be put into the back of a wagon and transported from place to place, as I have my main character/detective doing in my historical mysteries. This is a back view, by the way. The white canvas is for the back apron. I prefer to have my finished cloth roll up on the back beam so i tie on the warp threads to the back and then thread them through the heddles and the reed.

Heddles; what are they? I’ve mentioned them several times and then someone emailed me and said I don’t know what heddles are. Well, mine are long metal wires with an eye exactly like a needle. Mine are made of metal, but the looms I saw in Greece had thread heddles. I think I would find weaving with those confusing.

heddles one heddles two

In the first photo, it is possible to see three of the four sheds. Each one has its own set of heddles. Threaded and tied up to the treadles, these sheds make it possible to weave many patterns.

And finally, the reed. The dents, or spaces, determine the fineness of the fiber and is another mechanism for keeping each thread smooth and untangled. I hope you can see the spaces here. Weaving with silk, for example, requires a reed with many many slots,

reed

 

Some semi-modern looms

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There are any types of looms other than those previously discussed.

The drawloom and the jacquard loom both allow a weaver to weave a complex pattern without manually lifting individual threads.

First, a description of harnesses. A loom that makes four sheds (remember: that’s the space that allows the shuttle to pass through )allows a weaver to construct more complicated patterns than one with two. An eight harness loom allows more variation than four.  The compound harness loom, also described as a staggered harness loom, allows a loom to function as though it has many many harnesses. The invention has been ascribed to many different countries but it certainly appeared in China, allowing weavers to create silk brocade. Drawlooms required an assistant to sit on top of the harness and pull the heddles that controlled the pattern in the proper order. The assistant was call the drawboy (or sometimes the drawgirl  Can you imagine this job? Can you imagine that job?).Pre-constructed  patterns were required to produce the desired result.

The very thought of putting a child on top of a loom makes me shudder!

Communes – and the Shakers

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The communal style of living which is now so much a part of our picture of the Shakers was actually not a part of their beliefs. When they moved to the Colonies, however, relocating around Albany, financial stresses compelled them to living in a communal setting

f you have begun thinking of tie-dye, put it out of your mind.

Their belief in the dual nature of God; a masculine half and a feminine half, led directly to the equality between the sexes. However, the celibacy that marked them from most of the other new faiths sprang directly from Ann Lee and her experiences in childbirth. She believed that all sin came from the sexual act between Adam and Eve and that only by overcoming fleshly desires could true salvation be attained. The sexes therefore were separated, living on separate sides of the Dwelling House. Personal property was abolished as well, all the property being held communally. New converts brought with them and gave to the order all of their worldly possessions. Even though they accepted anybody, including those who were penniless, the Church became quite wealthy.  Of course when the economy in the United States shifted from farming and handcrafts to factories, the Shakers couldn’t compete and their numbers began to dwindle. Celibacy was part of the problem. Once there were governmental agencies that cared for the poor and for the abandoned children and the number of converts declined, the number of Shakers diminished rapidly.

The Millenium Church, as they named themselves, was not a democracy. All decisions came from the top down. Obedience was a strict requirement.

However, they remain once of the most successful ‘communes’ ever established.