History for the fantasy buff: Giants’ bones in Ancient Greece

A while back, I recommended a book by Adrienne Mayor called Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs, about unconventional tactics of war in the ancient world. I’ve recently discovered another of her books, The First Fossil Hunters, about how ancient peoples’ discoveries of prehistoric fossils may have influenced their stories and mythological beliefs. I strongly recommend this book. This is a new scientific concept, and it’s profound. I always assumed that Greek (and other) myths were simply made-up stories. But what if these stories were invented at least in part to explain their discoveries of huge fossils?

From Solinus, writing in 200 A.D.:

“As for the hugeness of men in olden times, the relics of Orestes are proof. His bones were found at Tegea by the Spartans on the information from the Oracle and we are assured that they were 7 cubits long.” During the Roman war against the pirates in Crete, “rivers flooded outrageously and broke up the ground. After the water receded, among the many clefts in the ground was found a skeleton of 33 cubits.” … “At Phlegra, before there were any men there, the story goes that a battle was fought between the gods and the giants….Great proofs and tokens of that war have and continue to appear to this day. Whenever the streams rise with rainstorms, the waters overflow their banks and flood the fields, they say that through the action of the water are discovered bones like men’s carcasses but far bigger. Due to the immeasurable hugeness of the bones they are reported to have been the monstrous bodies of the army of giants.”

The Greeks believed that in the time before theirs, the world was populated with giants (also called heroes), who were like men, although sometimes monstrous in appearance, and much bigger and stronger. They were convinced of this because they found bones of monstrous size which they took to be human. In fact, these were the bones of long-extinct Ice Age animals such as mammoths and mastodons and woolly rhinoceroses (not dinosaurs because there are no dinosaur fossils in Greece). Because Greece is a tectonically active region, they tended to find single bones or just fragments, rarely a complete skeleton. Often they would have just a single enormous femur or shoulder blade.

In around 560 B.C., the Spartans found what they believed to be the bones of Orestes. They buried them in their city, believing that having the bones interred within their city would give them the military prowess to defeat their rivals.

Athens, not wanting to left out, went searching for heroes’ bones of their own. They recovered some giant bones from the island of Sykros, which they believed were the hero Theseus, and interred them within their own city.

This set off the ancient bone rush, in which every Greek city sought to acquire its own set of heroes’ bones and bury them with honor in their city.

What were they actually burying? Probably the fossilized skeletons of enormous Ice Age mammals.

 

Author interview: Laura Lee Nutt

I met Laura Lee Nutt through our mutual critique partner, Jessi Gage. Laura writes painstakingly researched historical fantasy romance. Her debut novel RED AND THE WOLF, recently published by Lyrical, features a fractured fairy tale version of Little Red Riding Hood involving werewolves. I invited Laura to visit my blog for an interview about her writing. Please welcome her.

Amy, thanks so much for having me. I’ve been a big fan of your blog for some time now, and it’s an honor to be on it.

Q: Tell us a little about RED AND THE WOLF.

RED AND THE WOLF is a fantasy romance about what might have happened had Little Red Riding Hood not really lived happily every after. What if she responded more realistically to the events of her childhood? What if, rather than bouncing immediately back from the wolf attack, she instead struggled with severe phobias? How might she find a true happy ending then?

This tale begins when Blanchette, Little Red Riding Hood, is grown and her grandmother, the one stable point of her life, falls dangerously ill. Pair this with a string of murders by what looks like a werewolf, and a man come to town to destroy all dangerous elements of fairy tales, and she can no longer hide from the world. Fortunately for Blanchette, Heinrich, her huntsman rescuer, will stop at nothing to help her if only, just once, she can truly trust him. To save his life and her own, she must face and conquer her fears and, perhaps along the way, find true happiness after all.

Q: What inspired you to write this story?

I consumed fairy tales like candy as a child. Even as an adult, I still have several collections from Irish folklore to Grimm’s and Andersen. They hold a special place amidst my book treasure. However, once grown, I always wondered what happened after the “The End” or “They lived happily ever after.” I constructed possible story lines in my mind to fill gaps in the tales.

As to what exactly truly inspired me to choose Little Red Riding Hood when I did, I cannot honestly recall, but it was certainly something that naturally came from years of reading and fantasizing about those old tales. Pairing Red with a werewolf was a natural fit for paranormal romance. In fact, in some of the old stories, the wolf is described as a werewolf.

Q: What sort of research did you do for RED AND THE WOLF?

I love research and learning new things when I write stories. For RED AND THE WOLF, I began by researching different versions of the fairy tale so I could combine elements into a version that suited the story I had in mind.

I also did a lot of research into wolves, especially courtship and mating behavior. In RED AND THE WOLF, there are scenes from human and wolf perspective, and I wanted to give those wolf scenes as realistic a slant as I could.

Additionally, I needed another villain, so I combed through monsters found in German folklore and came upon the nix, a sort of freshwater merman. He and Heinrich the huntsman-werewolf have a rivalry that spills over into a string of murders in RED AND THE WOLF. He was a fun villain to write.

Q: Which character did you enjoy writing the most, and why?

My favorite character to write was Herr Karl Kaismann. He so endeared himself to me because he was entirely my own invention. He is an imperial agent of the Holy Roman Empire who comes to the village in search of dangerous elements that inspired fairy tales. His commission demands that he destroy them, even if they are good, honorable protectors of the people. He is a tragic character torn between doing what is right and following orders, between good and evil, and because he falls hard and fast for Blanchette, aching to shelter her from all that frightens and threatens her, which is just about everything. I love writing complex, tormented characters.

Q: What kind of writer are you? Plotter or pantser? What does your typical writing day look like?

I’m on the pantser end, but I have some plotter in me. My writing day usually involves sitting down with the laptop once the kids are off to school and diving into whatever I have to work on for the week. Each week, I have goals that often cover two or, occasionally, three projects. However, I far prefer the creative energy of first drafts to editing, so I usually always have to resist the temptation to wander when I need to focus on edits. Once the kids are in bed, if my husband has things he is working on, I head back to the laptop for more work. I am one who writes pretty much every day and believes that hard work is one of the biggest requirements for success.

Q: What genres do you prefer to read? Any types of books you think authors should write more of?

I love anything with fantasy elements: plain and simple fantasy, some science fiction, paranormal romance, urban fantasy. I do also enjoy plain romance too, particularly historical.

One sub-genre I explore as a writer and would like to see other writers explore more is fantasy, especially with romantic elements, set in historical periods. RED AND THE WOLF, for example, is set in the real world. In a way, it is historical urban fantasy romance. My publisher, Lyrical Press, Inc., calls it simply fantasy romance. I have many other stories in mind for this cross-section of fantasy, romance, and history. I hope there are other authors who pioneer the way with me.

Q: What’s next for you after RED AND THE WOLF?

First of all, I’m finishing work on the sequel to RED AND THE WOLF. It’s called GRETEL AND HER GHOST, and you guessed it, it’s about what happens after the Hansel and Gretel story. Now grown, Gretel is determined to marry and have a normal life, but nearly getting eaten as a child still haunts her and her brother. Hansel is determined not to lose is little sister and does everything he can to keep her, including driving away all her suitors. When a mysterious man comes to the village begging Gretel’s aid in rescuing more children, she has to make the most difficult decisions of her life, but ones that might ultimately set her free and satisfy her desire for a loving husband. I should finish edits on this one this month and have it off to Piper Denna, my editor, immediately after that.

Additionally, I so loved writing Karl Kaismann from RED AND THE WOLF, that I’ve given him his own story. It has all those elements I mentioned I would like to see more of, the combination of history, fantasy, and romance. In this novel, I drew upon the haunting legends of the Lorelei Rock on the Rhine River in Germany about a beautiful maiden deprived of her true love and a nixie, a sort of nymph-like creature, who causes ships to crash beneath the rock’s deadly foot. Karl naturally gets caught up in the legend and must save a town that despises him, choose between his heart’s desire and the lives of thousands, and come to terms with his destiny. Once I finish edits on this one, probably in June, it too will get shipped off in queries.

Then I get to go back to the fun first drafts. Next up is an epic fantasy currently titled AT THE END OF INNOCENCE and a novella for an anthology of time travel romance that I’m involved in currently titled IN TIME FOR LOVE. For that one, I get to research the tribes of ancient Germany. My hero, Carloman, will be of the Harii, a tribe that people think inspired the myths of The Wild Hunt and the einherjar, the greatest warriors the Valkyries take to Valhalla.

You can find RED AND THE WOLF at Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and iTunes.

You can find Laura on Twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, her blog, or her website. Thanks for stopping by.

Promo round-up 5/6/13

This past week, Assassin’s Gambit was reviewed by Dear Author! I am thrilled with this since Dear Author is a high-profile site with a lot of readers, and the review was long, positive, and thoughtful. Here it is.

Also, I found the list of Fantasy Romance novels on Goodreads, so that I could add my own books to it, and discovered that the list is pretty much all paranormals (e.g., vampire & werewolf novels). There wasn’t a fantasy novel to be found. So I created a new list called Epic Fantasy Romance and made it clear in the description that it’s only for novels set in a fantasy world (not novels set on Earth). I’d like to get the list populated with all epic fantasy romances, not just my own. Here is the list if you’d like to contribute to it. And if you want to vote for Assassin’s Gambit, I won’t complain.

I did a guest blog for Tote Bags ‘n’ Blogs, about Writing the Flawed Hero.

And here is a nice review from Little Bookish.

Also, I have another giveaway active on Goodreads! It’s open to the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the UK. Enter here.

History for the fantasy buff: werewolves and vampires

There are some interesting ideas about monsters in history in Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of Monsters, by Matt Kaplan.

Monsters from the ancient and medieval eras were primarily large pedators. Think the Nemean Lion or the Calydonian Boar, both extra-large, extra-powerful versions of frightening wild beasts. Or the Minotaur, half man, half beast. Or the fire-breathing dragon of the Middle Ages.

But as we enter the Renaissance, stories about large predators begin to take a back seat to stories about human-like monsters infected with a deadly contagion. Think the vampire, the werewolf, the zombie. As the wild areas of Europe began to be conquered and predators driven extinct, human populations grew more dense and there was a lot more danger from contagious disease than from lions or boars.

The author makes an interesting case that stories of vampirism or lycanthropy may have originated from the disease rabies. Today, rabies is controlled, but in the 1700′s, there was a rabies epidemic among wolves and dogs. The rabies virus, in humans, causes patients to wander restlessly. They drool bloody saliva, retract their lips, and cough and gasp. They can be highly aggressive, and the disease is spread by being bitten. The animals most likely to spread rabies to people are, notably, the dog, the wolf, and the bat.

Tuberculosis was also epidemic during the same time period and may have influenced myths as well. It had a long incubation period and caused people to waste away.

Nowadays, vampires and werewolves are more likely to appear as the protagonists in romance novels than the villains in horror stories. This may suggest that contagion-based monsters have largely run their course. Rabies and tuberculosis are well controlled in the western world, and the concept of contagion is well understood. So now we have sparkly vampires.

History for the fantasy buff: fossils and storytelling

Say you lived in ancient times and you walked to the top of a mountain. There, you were astonished to find fossils of seashells and various marine creatures. What explanation would you come up so that your find made sense?

The actual reason those fossils are there is plate tectonics. In many cases, the land now at the top of a mountain was once at the bottom of the sea. But given how frequently sea fossils are found far from the ocean, it’s no surprise that just about every ancient culture has a story describing a great flood.

Let’s turn to Ancient Greece. Elephants once lived on the islands in the Mediterranean; they’ve been extinct for a long time. But say you’re an ancient Greek who stumbles across an elephant skull like the one pictured on the left. You have never seen a live elephant. What would you think this creature looked like when alive? The hole for the trunk looks rather like a hole for a gigantic single eye. Might you tell a story about a one-eyed giant (the Cyclops) who lives on an island?

The ancient Scythians, while mining for gold in central Asia, discovered well-preserved fossils of protoceratops, what we now know is a type of dinosaur. The ancient Greeks first made contact with the Scythians at around 675 BC, and at around that time they first began to describe the griffin: a lion-sized quadruped with a raptor’s beak. On the right is a picture of a protoceratops skeleton. Might the Greeks have seen those fossils, discovered by the Scythians, and invented the griffin to explain what they saw?

Further reading: Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of Monsters, by Matt Kaplan; The First Fossil Hunters, by Adrienne Mayor

Promo round-up 4/23/13

Here’s the big news for this week: my fantasy romance trilogy just sold to French publisher Bragelonne! That’s Assassin’s Gambit, Spy’s Honor, and the book I’m still writing, Prince’s Fire. I am so excited that my book is going to be available in France! I can’t wait to get my author copies. Won’t it be ironic that it will be my own book, yet I’ll be unable to read it? Maybe I should spring for Rosetta Stone. The only foreign language I know is Latin, and unless someone invents a time machine, I won’t be selling my books to ancient Rome.

I consider my books to be true hybrids; that is, they fulfill both the requirements of the epic fantasy genre and the requirements of the romance genre. They are not in any way “fantasy lite.” My agent offered them both to romance imprints and fantasy imprints. In the U.S., they sold to a romance imprint, and in France they sold to a fantasy imprint. I think that’s cool. It validates what I set out to do with the books.

In other news, the Romantic Times gave Assassin’s Gambit 4 stars! Here’s the review.

SF and dark fantasy author Kenneth Mark Hoover wrote a wonderful review of Assassin’s Gambit. It’s detailed and insightful. Here it is.

And Coffee Time Romance gave Assassin’s Gambit 4 “cups.” Review here.

Jill Archer writes a fun fantasy series in which demons and humans intermingle in a post-Armageddon world. I wrote a guest post on her blog about writing brainy heroes.

I was interviewed on Manga Maniac Cafe, in which I was asked some really tough questions!

I was interviewed by Darke Conteur about the fantasy romance genre and also my thoughts on erotica.

And lastly, Laura Lee Nutt interviewed me on her blog and got me talking about the emotional life of my hero Lucien and about the most interesting thing I learned when researching post-traumatic stress disorder.

History for the fantasy buff: Eating utensils

If you’re writing a historical or fantasy novel and come to a scene where the characters are eating a meal, you may need to think about what they eat with. One utensil you can, with confidence, provide to your characters is the spoon. Spoons exist in every human culture. They appear to be the only universal utensil.

As for the fork, it’s been around since ancient times as a tool for prodding and lifting meat during cooking, but the use of the fork at the table is relatively recent. In the 1600′s, using a fork at the table was considered unmanly and exposed one to ridicule. By the 1700′s, this had completely reversed and forks were used commonly throughout Europe and America. This may have coincided with the increasing tendency of people to eat off of flat plates rather than out of bowls and trenchers. A fork isn’t terribly effective when eating out of a bowl.

Of course, there are many cultures that have no use for a fork, for example the Chinese, who have used chopsticks since ancient times (they became established during the Han dynasty, 206 BC – 220 AD). Chopsticks go along with an entirely different means of preparing food. In Europe and America, a fork and knife are used to cut meat on one’s own plate at the table. But in China, all the knife work takes place in the kitchen. There is no need for a knife at the table (or a fork). Incidentally, the reason most restaurants use disposable chopsticks is because there has been an historical taboo against sharing chopsticks.

And there are some cultures where people eat with fingers. These cultures tend to have elaborate before-meal washing procedures to ensure cleanliness, and usually only certain fingers are used: the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger of the right hand.

So there are a lot of options, and if you’re writing a fantasy based in medieval Europe, your characters don’t use forks.