This is reprinted from Justine Larbalestier’s blog because I’m too lazy to write up my own version:

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Kate Elliott and I have started a Bestselling Women’s Fiction Book Club together. Our criteria is that each book be a bestseller, classified as women’s fiction, be published between the end of World War One and twenty years ago. So no books from before 1918 or after 1994. We also decided not to look at any books by living authors. That way if we hate a book we can truly let rip. So far we’ve discussed Jacqueline Susann’s The Valley of the Dolls here on Justine’s blog and Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything here.

So that more of you can join in here’s what we’ve got planned for the rest of the year. All of these books are in print and available as ebooks except for A Many-Splendored Thing and Imitation of Life. Turns out Imitation is still in print in the US. We’ve scheduled it for September so you’ll have plenty of time to inter-library loan or find them second-hand:

May: Grace Metalious Peyton Place (1956). This book was a huge blockbuster in its day and was made into an equally popular movie. I read and loved it as a kid but have memories of finding everyone’s behaviour very odd. This one was suggested by many different people.

June: Ann Petry The Street (1946). I confess I’d never heard of this one until Kate suggested it. Ann Petry was the first African-American woman to have a book sell more than one million copies. Set in Harlem in the 1940s. I cannot wait to read this one.

July: Patricia Highsmith Price of Salt aka Carol (1952). This was the first mainstream lesbian novel to not end miserably. Highsmith wrote it under a pseudonym. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Highsmith is one of my favourites but this book is nothing like her other books as it doesn’t make you despair of the human condition. It’s almost cheerful.

August: Winifred Holtby South Riding (1936). Kate and many others suggested this one. I’d not heard of it.

September: Han Suyin A Many-Splendored Thing (1952). This is set in Hong Kong and China. Han’s The Mountain is Young is one of my favourite books but I’d never read her most popular book Splendored. Partly because it was made into a crappy movie, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, with an unspeakably awful song of the same title in 1955. I hate that song so much that it put me off reading the book. What can I say? Every time I read the title the song pops into my head. Like, right now. Aaaarrrgh!

Then in October we’ll be doing something slightly different. We’ll be reading two books together. They’re both about a black girl who passes as white. One was written by a black woman, Nella Larsen, and was not a bestseller. The other by a white woman, Fannie Hurst, was a huge success and made into two big Hollywood movies. (I wrote a comparison of the movies here.) Interestingly it’s much easier now to get hold of Larsen’s work than it is Hurst’s. Even though in her day Hurst had multiple bestsellers and was crazy popular. When you read the books you’ll discover why. If you wind up skimming the Hurst we won’t judge. At all.

October: Nella Larsen Passing (1929) and Fannie Hurst Imitation of Life (1933). I’ve read both of these. The Larsen is far superior on pretty much every count. But they’re both fascinating documents of their time. (Passing is available as part of the collected fiction of Nella Larsen: An Intimation of Things Distant.)

November: V. C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic (1979). This one is mostly for Kate who for some strange reason has never read it. Me, I have read it multiple times. When I was twelve I thought it was the best book ever written. *cough* Why I have even blogged about Flowers. V. C. Andrews was my Robert Heinlein. Only much better, obviously.

December: Barbara Taylor Bradford A Woman of Substance (1979). If I have read this I have no memory of it. I don’t remember the mini-series either. Again many people suggested this one.

Thanks so much for all your suggestions. They were most helpful. Keep ‘em coming. Maybe we’ll keep doing this next year. I hope so. We’d especially love if you can recommend books by women of colour that fit our bill. Even if they’re not bestsellers, like Passing, we can read them against what was selling at the time.

And, of course, do please join in. We’d love to hear what you think of these books in the coming months.

Gerald Rasmussen 1926-2013:

This is the obituary as it appeared today in the Eugene Register-Guard.

Gerald Rasmussen passed away at home on Love Lake Farm, east of Junction City, on September 30. He was 87.

Gerry was born on July 18, 1926 to Hans and Helga (nee Bodtker) Rasmussen in a hospital in Eugene. He was raised in Junction City among the Danish immigrant    community there. As a child, he attended Junction City schools, Dane School in the summers, and worked at Hans Rasmussen’s feed and seed store. He graduated from Junction City High School in 1944.

In July of 1944 Gerry joined the U.S. Navy. He was in training as a signalman for the Pacific Theater when the Second World War ended and was among the first occupation forces in Japan immediately after the war where he served as a signalman at the mouth of Tokyo Bay directing ship traffic. His time in Japan was the topic of his short monograph Remembering Japan, which his granddaughter Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein helped design, proof and produce.

After the war, Gerry returned to Lane County and attended the University of Oregon. In 1947 Gerry attended Grand View College – a Danish Lutheran junior College in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1948 Gerry travelled to Denmark where he attended Askov Folk School for a year. There he met Sigrid Pedersen, a native of Skive, Denmark, whom he married in Skive on July 24, 1949. After honeymooning in England and Wales, Gerry and Sigrid moved to Junction City.

Gerry finished his BA at the University of Oregon in 1951 and thereafter taught at public schools in Redmond and Albany. In 1957 Gerry accepted a position teaching history at Grand View College. While teaching at Grand View College he completed his MA at the University of Oregon in history. In 1963, Gerry was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and he and Sigrid and their four children moved to Denmark where Gerry taught at several Danish Teachers Colleges. After a year in Denmark, the Rasmussens moved to Kelso, Washington, where Gerry taught at Lower Columbia College.

In 1965, Gerry was hired at Lane Community College, and thus was among the earliest staff at LCC. In his long career at LCC, Gerry was a teacher, department chair, Associate Dean, Dean, Vice President and Interim President. He was instrumental in moving the college to the large campus, in creating the women’s study program and the black studies program in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and in helping guide the growth of LCC from a small, new community college to a nationally recognized community college. Gerry retired from LCC as Vice President of Instruction in 1986. He took great pride and pleasure in his role in helping to create a vibrant new institution that still serves the community in so many ways.

For many years Gerry served on many local and statewide boards and commissions including as a Commissioner of Oregon Public Broadcasting, Founder, Vice-President and later President of the Danish American Heritage Society, and Board member of the Junction City Historical Society, to name a few. Gerry served on numerous Community College accreditation teams and was especially proud of his role in accrediting several Tribal Community Colleges in Montana and Idaho. He was a long time member of the Danish Brotherhood.

Both before and after retirement, Gerry enjoyed annual summer camping trips with family all over Oregon especially in many remote places. He also loved politics, singing folk songs, reading and studying history, and swimming in outdoor bodies of water regardless of the time of year. Gerry was a lifelong and unapologetic new deal democrat, and always enjoyed political discussion. He was an early supporter and worker in the civil rights movement in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. His incisive political conversation and commentary was always informed by a deep understanding of U. S. history.

In retirement, Gerry continued his many loves and adventures, writing his book Oregon Danish Colony about the Danish immigrant community in Junction City, lobbying for community colleges with the Oregon Community College Association in Salem. He also enjoyed taking many trips with family and especially his wife Sigrid to Denmark, Norway, the Baltic states, remote places in Oregon and other unique locales, and spending time with family, especially his wife and grandchildren. He also continued his ardent bread baking hobby, and was the proud winner of several ribbons for bread baking at the Lane County Fair.

Gerry loved the outdoors, birds, dogs, history in general and US history in particular, and American folk music. He passed these loves along to his children and his wife. Gerry was a lover of adventure, was curious and cheerful, and occasionally mischievous. Perhaps above all, Gerry enjoyed genuine conversation. Gerry and his conversation and reminiscences will be missed by his family and his many friends.

Gerry is survived by his wife of 64 years, Sigrid; daughter, Ann Marie Rasmussen, Professor at Duke University; daughter, Sonja Rasmussen, Coordinator of the Mills International Center at the University of Oregon (the late Steve Larson, Professor of music at the U of O); son, Karsten Rasmussen, Lane County Circuit Court Judge (Christine Lewandowski, retired OLCC commissioner); and daughter, Alis Rasmussen, author of 21 published novels [writing as Kate Elliot] (Jay Silverstein, Dept of Defense, GIS & Data Integrity Section Chief, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command); and by grandchildren: Carolee Scott, Robert Dickson, Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein, Arnbjørn Stokholm, Alexander Rasmussen-Silverstein, David Rasmussen- Silverstein, Ethan Rasmussen, and Hannah Larson.

In the Danish American community of Gerry’s youth, at the end of many gatherings people traditionally sang – in Danish – a song of farewell, the first verse of which, translated, is:
ONWARD On your way! Be brave and true! Should the road seem endless,
Walk where God is near and you Never can be friendless

Gerry believed that what matters in life is integrity in our relationships with our fellow human beings and he placed his faith in our shared humanity.

My beloved father, Gerald Rasmussen, died on Monday 30 September 2013, of cancer, after two months in hospice care. I will post the “official” obituary on Friday, and I plan to post all the chapters and photos from his memoir Remembering Japan between now and the end of the year.

I have often said he is the best dad and let me briefly describe why. Yes, he was an educator, and a good one, as well as a man who worked within the community college system to make education accessible to people who had otherwise been shut out of college. He knew US history well; it was difficult to “surprise” him because he had studied and thought about most of the many vectors and layers that have created the tapestry of this country’s history. In his own small way he took part in the civil rights movement. He was better than the paid pundits in analyzing current events. He was genuinely interested in people, and listened when they spoke. After he retired he took up bread baking and won ribbons at the county fair.

As a daughter, I received a precious gift from my dad: He accepted me for who I was. From early on I was infamous for being stubborn and difficult, but I don’t think he particularly found me so. I did not fit into the gender roles of my time, but he didn’t press me to change. He supported me, and let me be myself.

Oddly enough, these sparse comments aren’t really why I’m writing this post. When I tweeted that my father had died, both on Twitter and on Facebook I received so many kind comments. I first ventured onto the internets in 1990. I have never found it a soulless shallow place but rather a place of community, where I have connected and listened and learned.

As far as I know there is no “right” way to do grief and mourning, rather various ways, each particular to the circumstance and hour and person. We are all, always, in the process of transition from the state we are in into what we are becoming.

For reasons that I’m not going to go into here and now, I can only imperfectly sit shiva for my father. Because of that, and because of the nature of community, I thought I would ask people to “visit” me here, on my blog, if they feel so inclined.

I would love to hear stories about educators who were important to you.

Or mentions of people, now gone, who have been a blessing in your life.

Or a discussion of what community means to you. And if you think there is community online and, if so–or if not–what that means.

I was recently asked if I had any advice on how to do research (for writing fiction), and it seemed like the best way to answer the question was to ask a writer who has a lot of experience doing research (he has a PhD in US History) to talk about how he does research.

Fortunately my query to D.B. Jackson coincided with the release of his latest novel, Thieves’ Quarry (Tor Books), the second of his intriguing historical fantasy series the Thieftaker Chronicles, so he readily agreed, and I am excited to be able to offer this guest post on doing research.

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Doing Research for Fantasy Novels

By D.B. Jackson

After writing epic fantasy for more years than I care to count, I have taken a new path in my career, combining my love of fiction and magic with a long-standing passion for history. The novels of my Thieftaker Chronicles, THIEFTAKER (Tor Books 2012) and the recently released THIEVES’ QUARRY, have allowed me to blend fictional elements of storytelling — a cast of imagined characters, murder mysteries, a magic system — with real-world historical events that occurred in colonial Boston during the years leading up to the American Revolution. The result is something I have called Historical Urban Fantasy, or alternatively, “Tricorn Punk.”

The historical details that I’ve sprinkled throughout the books are the fruits of a great deal of research, some done specifically for the books, and some done years ago, when I was getting my Ph.D. in U.S. history. Research is one of those things that writer’s talk about a lot, but never really explain. Many of us assume that if we know how to click a mouse or read a book, we know how to do research. That’s not always case. And in today’s world, where there is a nearly unlimited number of potential sources, it is more important than ever to have a game plan in place before we begin our research. So with that in mind, I thought I might share a few suggestions that I have found helpful while working on the Thieftaker books.

1. Start with questions: This is perhaps the most important thing I do to facilitate my research, and it’s something I start on before I open a single book or visit a single web site. I generally don’t begin my research until I have some sense of what my book or series is about and where I want my narrative to go. So I suppose technically THAT would be the starting point. The point though is that I want my research to be directed. I hear all the time from aspiring writers who tell me that they started researching a book and got so involved in the research that a year later (or two, or three) they still had not written the book. Yes, for those of us who proudly fly our Geek Flag, research is fun. But we’re writers, and ultimately our research has to have a purpose.

When I started researching the Thieftaker books, I knew that I needed to know certain things. My lead character, Ethan Kaille, spends a lot of time in the streets at night, investigating murders. So, did Boston have street lamps in the 1760s, when my books take place, or were the streets dark? (They were dark; street lights were put in place in 1774, with Paul Revere leading the effort.) How many people lived in Boston at this time? (15,000) What industries thrived in the city and its environs? (Shipbuilding, distilling, ropemaking, among others) Obviously, I had more questions than this. And that list of “Things I Needed to Know” was the starting point for my work. Now, to be clear, as I began my research nearly every answer I found led to two more questions. But that was okay. Often the key to learning is figuring out first what you DON’T know.

2. Use books first: One hears jokes all the time about the unreliability of information available on the web. In a moment I’ll address this, but for now let’s just say that while there is a good deal of valuable information to be found online, there is also some sketchier stuff. Traditionally published nonfiction books tend, on the whole, to be better sources, for the simple reason that the information they contain has been vetted. It has been looked over by editors; authors have had to assure their publishers that their facts are . . . well, factual.

Clearly we can’t find everything we need in books. There are so many published monographs out there, and our chances of finding the exact ones that will answer every question we have are slim, to say the least. I turned to a friend in the field — in this case, a historian at the local university — who suggested a number of titles. Our friends know stuff that we don’t. It makes them interesting; it can also make them quite handy to have around.

Yes, the web is fast, it’s convenient. But books are the most reliable starting points. With the Thieftaker novels, I read, or at least spot-checked (using the indexes to find specific details) more than two dozen books and articles. Some I used far more than others. A few became something akin to bibles; others were good for one or maybe two little details. But I was starting with sources I trusted and that was important to me.

3. Be discriminating when using the web: There actually is a great deal of accurate and valuable information available online. The secrets are knowing where to find this information and being smart about what you trust and what you double-check. Sites connected with universities (sites ending in .edu) tend to be reliable, although not all of them. Sometimes these sites will contain the work of established scholars. Sometimes they will contain the work of undergraduates writing a term paper the night before it’s due. Use your judgement. Sites established by historical societies or even private historical enterprises proved invaluable during my research. I went to the web sites of the Bostonian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Colonial Williamsburg (which isn’t near Boston, but which has lots of information about everyday life in colonial America).

But not all sites will be so obvious in their qualifications. That doesn’t mean you have to ignore them. It just means that you should be careful. I found a document online that was written by an architecture firm that does historical renovations. I never would have thought to look for it, but upon finding it I knew immediately that I could trust it. On the other hand, in researching Boston’s political history, I found several sites that had obvious ideological agendas relating to today’s politics. I didn’t trust the information on these sites unless I could find confirmation on non-polemical sites. Use common sense. Use your judgment. Don’t be in so much of a rush that you blindly accept the first thing you find.

4. Know when to stop: This might well be the hardest thing to do when it comes to research. As I’ve said, research is fun, and those of us who are geeks tend to lose ourselves in the research process. That’s why having specific questions to answer is so important. On one level, the easy way to know when to stop is simply to answer all the questions and then quit. The problem is, there are always more questions. But when I’ve reached a point where I am repeatedly spending entire days of research on only one or two questions, that’s when I know I need to stop reading books and searching the web, and start writing my novel.

I will have more questions as I work my way through the book. I know this because it happens with every book. At certain points I will have to stop writing and do a bit of spot-research to find those answers. That’s fine. As far as I’m concerned, that’s part of the creative process. But I am a writer. I get paid when I finish a book. So, the sooner I start writing, the better off I am.

I could say far more about researching the Thieftaker books, but that can only help you so much. Each one of us has unique research needs. What I’ve offered here are starting points, things you might want to consider as you begin to research your next project. But perhaps you have your own ideas of what works best for you. How do you begin your research? What steps do you take to stay focused and not get lost in the process? Let’s discuss it.

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D.B. Jackson is also David B. Coe, the award-winning author of more than a dozen fantasy novels. His first book as D.B. Jackson, the Revolutionary War era urban fantasy, Thieftaker, volume I of the Thieftaker Chronicles, came out in 2012 and is now available in paperback. The second volume, Thieves’ Quarry, has just been released by Tor Books. D.B. lives on the Cumberland Plateau with his wife and two teenaged daughters. They’re all smarter and prettier than he is, but they keep him around because he makes a mean vegetarian fajita. When he’s not writing he likes to hike, play guitar, and stalk the perfect image with his camera.

To support the release of the third and final volume of the Spiritwalker Trilogy I will be at the following bookstores/events:

Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA: Thursday June 27 at 7 pm
866 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-4008

with Katharine Kerr who will also have a new book out. Exciting!

Mysterious Galaxy San Diego, Saturday June 29 at 2 pm

7051 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, Suite 302
San Diego, CA 92111
858-268-4747

with Nebula-Award-winning author Andy Duncan and Clarion students (should be fun AND educational).

New York CIty: NYRSF reading Tuesday July 2 at 7 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)
The Soho Gallery for Digital Art
138 Sullivan Street
New York, NY 10012

with E. C. Ambrose who has a debut novel!

University Bookstore, Seattle, WA: Monday July 8 at 7 pm

4326 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98105
206-634-3400

JUST ME OH GOD PLEASE COME SO I”M NOT ALL ALONE

Powells Beaverton, Portland OR: Tuesday July 9 at 7 pm

3415 SW Cedar Hills Boulevard
Beaverton, OR 97005
503-228-4651

With Lilith Saintcrow! Trust me, you won’t want to miss this.

All events will include reading from Cold Steel, from my forthcoming YA fantasy, and maybe even from the epic fantasy trilogy I’m currently working on, or possibly I will read a short story.

PLUS Q&A (you have to bring the Qs).

If I do not yet have print copies of The Secret Journal of Beatrice Hassi Barahal available (art by the awesome Julie Dillon!!!!) I will have fliers with order information and a place to sign up with your email/address to get notification when the print and e-book versions are ready for purchase.

Please know that I would love to see you. Yes, you! Especially YOU!

(And your friends, family, or indeed any passers-by you can snag off the street.)

A note on bookstore events: I’m signing at four well-regarded and valued independent bookstores. You may bring personal books from home for me to sign. It is not required to buy (for example) Cold Steel or any book from the bookstore but it is always a strong show of support for independent bookstores if you can and do buy a copy of my newest book or, indeed, any book while you’re there (whether or not it is one of mine).

If you’re not able to make the event, I do always sign stock at each bookstore so you can order a signed copy afterward. If you contact any of the bookstores IN ADVANCE you can reserve a book and get it signed to you at the event (by me! not some random book signing gnome).

Random number generator has picked four winners. Congrats.

I need them to contact me:

Rima Z

Elodie

Eve N

Zoe (tumblr)

Thank you so much to everyone who entered. There are so many excellent questions.

I have over 150 questions to answer. Be patient. I am going to answer all of them. It will take me a few months of doing at least one answer post a week (hopefully more), and I’ll answer them in batches, probably of related questions. Also, any whose answers will contain spoilers I will probably hold until toward the end of the process. So if you’re looking for the answer to the question you asked, keep your eye on my blog (I’ll mirror on livejournal and cross post to tumblr).

I need to know where I stand.

That’s true in many different ways, along numerous axes, of which landscape is one.

Many years ago when I was writing the earliest attempts at Cold Magic, with its blended Afro-Celtic setting, I asked myself why not set the story in West Africa, perhaps at a seaport on the coast in this alternate universe? There were a number of reasons I decided against doing it this way, but the deciding factor was that I had (at that time) never set foot in West Africa and I have this thing–I wish I had a better word than thing–that I have to have a physical sense of the land in order to write it.

Given that much of the Jaran books are set in a steppe/plains setting with many nods to and borrowings from the history of the Mongols and other steppe peoples, you may wonder how I could then write Jaran?

That’s easy: The landscape is Wyoming, where I spent a summer during high school (at an astronomy camp, of all things).

Obviously it is not that the landscape IS Wyoming but rather than the plains/plateau landscape of the American west is the one I could draw from for the Jaran novels’ setting. In the same way, there is a little bit of London in Adurnam (Spiritwalker), and a bit of Puerto Rico in Expedition. The landscape of the Crossroads trilogy is a melange of the California Mediterranean climate, the Tierra Caliente of Guerrero (Mexico), Japan, and even Hawaii (although it is not an island setting), plus bits and pieces of the Oregon where I grew up, which is a far more varied landscape than many people realize who only think of its famous coast and the central Portland to Eugene river valley.

On Twitter, writer Susan Elizabeth Curnow (in response to me begging for a good topic for this week’s Spiritwalker Monday) asked me how the weathers and flowers of Hawaii influence my writing, which made me think about landscape and how much I feel the need to be grounded in place. Living in Hawaii (where I wrote all three volumes of the Crossroads trilogy) definitely influenced the novel in that there is very little cold weather, and the people who live in the Hundred call “cold” what others would call “warm.”

There is another way Place influences me. Before we moved to Hawaii, we lived in State College, Pennsylvania, aka Happy Valley, a place I never felt comfortable and certainly never loved (as, for instance, I loved the rural Willamette Valley of Oregon where I grew up) or felt any form of deep connection.

Hawaii has that sense of deep connection for me. If I walk out the door I am always happy to see the Waianai Mountains, and the clouds pouring over the Ko’olau Mountains, and the gulch, and the green, and the ever present vastness of the ocean that surrounds this old eroding extinct volcano.

So for me I thrive on a sense of place both in terms of needing to feel a physical sense of understanding the landscapes I’m writing about and to feel a physical sense of feeling well being about the landscape I live in.

I say this not to suggest that everyone else must feel this way, only that I do.

How much does a sense of place — in either of these ways or in some other way — figure into your writing? Or your reading?

I’m not usually one for memes, but I’ll make an exception for this one. I saw it on Jo Walton’s Live Journal.

Tell me about a story I haven’t written, and I’ll give you one sentence from that story.

ETA: The meme is any kind of crazy idea, not a specific story (this is meant as for fun). Although a few people know some history of things that actually have not yet been written. 🙂

Three really interesting links today;

Mysterious seasonal black flecks on Mars. If you haven’t read this, do. It’s fascinating, and the photos are stunning.

Sex work in pre colonial Nigeria (Igboland):

Sex work as we know it today, in modern Africa, is a vestige of colonialism. As Luise White, who wrote about sex work in colonial Nairobi put it “sex work as a full-time form of labour was invented during the colonial period”. This is not to say that there was no sex work in the pre-colonial period, only that it was entirely different from how we know it today.

Sex work existed in Africa in the pre-colonial era. Back in the day, the female sex worker worked out of the house she was born in. She was a single woman, a woman who was never going to marry, and her clients were usually men who wanted to have affairs (as in most communities, and all but a few situations, it was taboo for a man to have sex with a married woman).

Finally, this illustrated time line of Vietnamese Clothing (women’s).

She’s also done Hats and Hair Fashion History of Vietnam.

Which reminds me I need to collate my photo-essay Hairstyles of Angkor Wat from my trip of oh so long ago.

If anyone has links/references to historical clothing timelines and/or just good links for historical clothing, please feel free to share. I can really never get enough illustrations of clothing in an historical perspective and just in a general sense.