Portable calender find at Vindolanda

One of the great things about living near the central section of Hadrian's Wall is that there is the annual Vindolanda excavation. This year, they are excavating around the granaries and the vicus.
Last week, the Hexham Courant reported that they had found a perpetual portable calender, or at least part of one in the granaries. Such a thing has not been found in Britain before... Most towns and cities had massive calenders on the walls of buildings, but this is a handheld one, complete with holes where pegs could be placed. Once it is cleaned up, it will go on display at Vindolanda in the autumn.
They have also found a little finger ring inscribed matri/patri as well as an altar to the goddess of Syria. The Syrian connection is interesting and intriguing. Of course, one of the big graves in Corbridge was a merchant from Syria. His wife, Regina's grave stone is in the Newcastle Museum of Antiquities. Syria played a major role in Septimus Severus's reign. His wife, Julia Domina came from Syria...but really it is the first time that they discovered a link to the country at Vindolanda. I am secretly thrill as the thriller that I wrote but never sold had to do with the Syrian influence on the Wall.
You can read more about the ring and the statue here. The excavations are ongoing until the beginning of September. Also in September they are doing several lectures including the horse through the ages.

Harlequin Historical at Romance Vagabonds

This week, the lovely ladies at Romance Vagabonds are hosting Harlequin Historical authors. Each day is devoted to a different time period. Today is the Medieval cum renaissance. Tomorrow is Georgian/Regency/Victorian. Wednesday is Western and Thursday is Hybrid where I am blogging. Hybrid is the term they are using for authors who write in more than one time period. It was going to be exotic but they settled on hybrid. I feel a bit like a plant species. LOL. But I can see the problems. All other time periods is a bit vague and the authors in question do write in a number of time periods.
Joanne Carr is rounding out the week on Friday and she will be blogging about recent happenings and trends at HH.
There will also be giveaways through out the week, including on Thursday a copy of Taken by the Viking.
The winner of my Kate Walker launch party prize has been drawn and it was Jane Cheung. She emailed back to say that she has never read a historical set in ancient Rome...I noticed on Amazon.co.uk that Sold & Seduced is no longer available as a new book. There are 13 copies left as used though. This is one of the Romans that has yet to appear in the North American market. I think it is going to appear at some point...
Kate hardy asked about how the ducks were settling. They are fine, but have developed a habit of going over into the neighbour's garden. One duck is especially fond of tapping on the lower windows and asking for bread and scraps...Unfortunately, between the stream and the water gate, it is probably impossible to keep them confined, particularly as they have found a food source...
I do need to get my Viking finished. Normal service was disrupted by my pulling a tendon in my right arm. Serves me right for trying a new exercise.

Life in half term

The children are on half term holiday this week. And this means all sorts of things are happening.
Yesterday was my daughter's 14th birthday and it is hard to believe that it has been fourteenth years since that momentous event.
The July RT came out .The Roman's Virgin Mistress has been awarded 3 stars. Nothing I can do about that, but I shall be interested to read the review. Last time Gladiator's Honor was reviewed, the reviewer mistakenly thought the Roman Republic had a royal family and she hated the modern language that was used.
Ummm, I will pass on that particular reviewer's grasp of history but it did rankle as I never use the word *royal*.
As for the other bit -- I don't write in Latin, therefore I think I am free to translate my words into English and to have my sentences make sense in English. The ordering of words is different in Latin. It used to drive me insane! Equally and obviously, we are not entirely sure how the Romans actually spoke in vernacular. I follow Lindsey Davies and others writers of Roman mysteries on using a more modern phrasing in any case. In Davies' latest novel, Saturnalia, she gives an explanation of where she gets her slang from and how she makes some of it up! Her characters are so wonderfully colourful that I hope she keeps writing just as she wants.

As long as the novel feels authentic, then I have no problem with modern sounding language. After all, the reader has to be able to read it and much of slang in bygone eras is long forgotten now. So does the writer use the exact word (if known) or a close approximation? The past needs to be accessible. 100% accuracy is not an achievable goal.

I suspect when people read my Vikings, some might say that I again use too modern of language. But I would ask them to find me the actual incidents of Vikings from the late 7th century speaking. Again the writer has to make them understood. The Vikings and Romans considered themselves to be modern. They could not really conceive of a time beyond of their own immediate horizon.

Anyway, I am going to get back to my current Victorian. This is easier in some ways as we do know the words people used, and one can give a better impression. But given my background, I know that the words will still have a flavour of me in them.

Hands in marriage

One of the things about writing is knowing the creative limitations. Everything must be believable in the world you are writing about. Certain laws have to be obeyed. In the context of writing historicals, I do believe you have to obey historical laws as well.

After I got my idea for Sold and Seduced, I started to think about it. And suddenly realised that I had a problem --- basically Roman marriage law. Th Romans recognised four types of marriage. In the time period that I write about, in the vast majority of marriages, a woman's hand was not given in marriage. It was sans mano. She remained under her father's or guardian's control. This is why Roman women do not bear the same family name as their husband's. In the very early Republic and then later in the Christian era, Roman women did come under the control of their husbands and were married cum mano, but during this time, it was felt that women would be batter served if the legal guardianship stayed with her birth family. The intention was to make marriage stronger, but actually, it only increased divorce and made families less stable.

Personally I think it interesting that the early Christians went for the cum mano. I suspect Jewish tradition may have played a part, BUT as Roman custom and law prevailed at that point, and there are certain similarities in the wedding ceremony, I find it interesting.

Anyway, I had then had to come up with a reason why after Aro and Lydia were married, they would stay married -- particularly as Lydia's father was not keen on the marriage. In other words, I had to find a reason WHY Aro would insist on a marriage cum mano or with hand.

Once I had accepted the limitation, I was able to work with it, and the rest of the story flowed.

Some writers like to think about total freedom, but actually it is the structure and the demands of the world you create along with the main arc of the story that force you to exercise your creativity.