Thank Heavens for the Internet

I know it’s been a while since I last wrote, so let me wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! There, now we’re up to date.

I’d like to talk today about modern technology and how it affects research. I do a lot of research for my historical novels and if it weren’t for today’s technology, I’d be writing books more like the Dick and Jane series. See Spot run.

If I had to go to the library, as great as libraries are, I’d be spending a majority of my time driving to the library, trying to find a book that answers my questions, and driving home again where I would then get back on the computer to pick up where I left off.

Thanks to Bill Gates and others, I can stay sitting at my computer, open a tab to look up something, and get right back to my manuscript.

Just since writing my current novel, Testing Michael, I’ve learned about powder monkeys, gunwales, clothes, toys, food and medicine during the time of the Civil War, the Civil War itself and it’s various battles, and the weapons used at that time. Without the internet, I might as well set up my bed in the library because every day I’m researching two or three topics. And while I’m reading about one topic, I generally find interesting tidbits I didn’t know I didn’t know.

For instance, did you know, that urine was collected to make black powder for the muskets? I didn’t either. That was something the women at home could do to help with the war effort. Did you know General Grant was on crutches during the battle of Shiloh? Or that some cannon balls exploded while others just plowed into their target and did damage?  Or that one-fifth of all the soldiers in the war were under eighteen and many only thirteen and fourteen years old? And that there were women disguised as men fighting alongside the men? Do you know what a pike weapon is? Or that very few bugles were used to announce assembly, reveille, or taps and such; instead, they used drums, something young boys could be enlisted to do?

Research is so easy now with the internet and far more encompassing than looking up one thing at a time in a book. I keep three or four tabs open at once from various sources and can refer back to a particular battle anytime I want. Viva la internet!

I am past the half-way mark in Michael and I’ll let you know when it’s published and available. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I’m having a ball writing this book and I hope it shows in the finished product.

 

Quote of the Day: Dear God, Thank you for another day, my health, and the internet.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana

 

Do You Like Worms?

Are you looking for a Christmas gift that's fun, inexpensive and doesn't come from China or anywhere else that might get held up on a barge off the coast?

My memoir of growing up in the small town of Springfield, Vermont in the 1940s is a light-hearted read. The title, If You Don't Like Worms, Keep Your Mouth Shut refers to a trick my sister played on me while walking down a hill one day. She is on the left in this picture and I'm on the right. 

If you want a gift for someone over the age of sixty, they will enjoy this book as it will spark memories of years past. I was born in 1940, a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Even after the war, my dad was an air raid warden so while he was out on the street making sure the neighbors' lights were off when the alarm sounded, my mother, sister, and I were huddled under a darkened window with the shades closed waiting for the all clear to sound. It was also a time of ration stamps where staples, like sugar, were in short supply.

It was a time when in the evening we listened to radio as a family as we had no television yet. It was a time before computers, cell phones (we had a rotary phone with a party line), fast food, and any kind of hand-held device. Life was simple and easy.

The newspaper then and now, the Springfield Reporter, recently ran an article about my book, mentioning that Worms now sits proudly in the Springfield Arts and Historical Society as part of Springfield's history. The article included the following two excerpts from the book:

On cold icy mornings after a snowfall, Dad was afraid he wouldn't be able to make it up the hill to get to his job at the Gas Company where he was a meter reader and fix-it man. So Mom, Donnie (my sister Donna) and I would bundle up in our coats, hats, mittens, boots and scarves and sit in the back of his pick-up in order to make enough weight for him to make it up the hill. At the top of the hill, we piled out and walked in his tracks back to the warm house where hot cocoa and oatmeal would soon be waiting for us.

Summer was a different matter. Donnie and I were outside a good part of the day, usually playing baseball in the street. Normally it takes at least 18 people to play a game of baseball, but not so with Donnie and me. She was one team and I was the other. Home plate was at the end of the street a few yards from the woods. First base was the Hughes' driveway, second base was some unseen spot half-way up the hill, and third base was the telephone pole. Donnie would throw the ball and I'd swing at it with all my might and miss it. She'd yell "strike." She'd throw the ball again and this time I wouldn't swing at it. She'd yell "strike."  I never understood her umpiring. I also never hit the ball, but I did get plenty of exercise running down into the woods to retrieve all the balls I missed.

If You Don't Like Worms, Keep Your Mouth Shut is available through Amazon for only $12 plus shipping. It's a fun read for anyone who remembers that time as well as an informative read for those born more recently.  

Quote of the Day: We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams. Jeremy Irons