Nan Hawthorne's Booking History

My NaNoWriMo Progress

2011-11-10T13:46:00.000-08:00

Historical Novel Roundup is below.

Actually, I wrote over 2500 words on Nov. 9 but could not get on the NaNo site to update them.

You need to refresh your browser to see any further updates.

National Novel Writing Month 2011

Holiday 2011! Historical Fiction Roundup!

2011-10-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again, a time of giving and receiving.. and what better than books!

Just click on the link for Comments below this post and enter information on your own books, books you know would make great gifts, books you wish someone would buy you!

Include title, author, era the book takes place, and a link to help folks find the book. Then add a brief blurb about the book./ Practice marketing by including the reason someone would want to buy it.

You have all month.. we are doing National Novel Writing Month and don't plan to update any of our several blogs during the month of November.

Have someone you really want to thrill? Get them a Kindle eReader! The basic one is only $79! If you want or need one that reads aloud though, go with the Touch or the keyboard. The Fire looks like fun, it don't say nothin' aloud.

Other models: All-new kindle eReader!

Happy Holidays from Nan Hawthorne's Booking History!

Nan Hawthorne

Author, Beloved Pilgrim

www.nanhawthorne.com

Those Modern Kids' Names

2011-10-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

I was out the other day and overheard a father calling his two boys, "Hunter! Porter!" I've heard both boys and girls with these occupational names and wonder if the parents realize they mean what might not be regarded as so upper class. They might have thought twice and chosen more promising names, like Lawyer or Psychotherapist..

Baxter - this originally was a female baker

Booker - a bookbinder or possibly a scribe

Carter - someone who drives or ships merchangise by cart

Chandler - a candlemaker

Cooper - a barrel maker

Hunter - someone who hunts for game

Porter - a person who carries something, such as baggage or cargo, or a doorkeeper

Sawyer - someone whose job it was to saw wood

Taylor - a constructor of clothing

Tucker - another word for a cloth fuller, who takes woven cloth and soaks it in water and urine to make it tighten up and become a denser weave. This is the origin of the name Walker also.

Tyler - someone who tiles roofs.

And don't forget, all these names can be in other languages too.

Of course people have long used names, mostly for boys, that they thought of as derived from surnames.. Mason, Abbot, etc.

The good news is that names do not predict the future of the child. Good thing too since I'm not sure how many fullers there are around any more.

"Hunter! Go shoot a deer for our supper! Porter, answer the door! Cooper! Make us a barrel to store our grain in!

Boomer-speak in Historical Fiction

2011-08-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

OK, this one's a bit of rant, a bit of humor, and a call for your own comments in the same vein.

I just read a book set in Ancient Ireland with the following line in it:

She worked with the Dagda to save her people from cultural annihilation.
"Cultural annihilation"??? Could the author not have used a simple lesss anaachronistic lline like:

She worked with the Dagda to save her people's very existence.

Or just leave off the "'s very existence." Think of the ink it would have saved, along with the people.

So as soon as I told my husband about this one he piped up with something like, "I suppose you could put Earl Sagar (a rather dour fellow from my Anglo Saxon novel, An Involuntary King) standing in a sield wall wondering, 'Am I still relevant? Or should I reinvent myself' and wondering which of the King's companions would be a good life coach for him."

I suppose it would not be beyond imagining that Sir Francis Walsingham might "take a meeting" and present h is "agenda" though his attempts to reach consensus would be precluded not b language but by personality.

Did Mary Boleyn complain of sexual harrassment? Well, maybe not complain...

It certainly would not be out of the question that Julius Caesar would worry about imperialism...

I knwo Robin Hood was definitely trying to live green.

As you see, I am a bit out of touch concerning Boomerspeak.. so I shall rely on you for deliverables like that.

The Bottom Line: What They Said About "Beloved Pilgrim"

2011-08-14T20:34:00.000-07:00

It's been and continues to be a joy ride with all the praise and insightful comments Beloved Pilgrim from people who know what they are talking about.

Check out this combination of reviews, excerpts and huest posts and an original story all centered around the novel and the deadly Crusade of 1101.

Brandy Purdy's Book Reviews and news: Review

Blak Rayne Books: Excerpt from Beloved Pilgrim

WildeOats.com: The Squires, a story

Roaring Girls: Adventures in History - The Crusade of 1101 and Beloved Pilgrim

Cocktail Hour Podcast: Interview with nan Hawthorne

Amazon.co.uk Customer Reviews

KQL: "Failling That, Invent" Building Queer History Through Historical Fiction

Bosom Friends review

GoodReads: 4 Star Review by Christy English

Passages to the Past: The Crusade Just Made for a Novel

Historical Hussies: Why We Can Thank the Massacre at Merzican for the Europe We Know

Historically Obsessed: Gay People in Historical Fiction

Christy English: comment and giveaway

Smashwords.com Customer Reviews of Beloved Pilgrim

World of the Bluebells: The Thrills and Chills of Researching the Distant Past

Tanzanite's Castle Full of Books: How NaNoWriMo Helped Me Start my Novel

Historical Boys: Women Fighters in the Crusades

Spun Stories: Book Review

Christy English's Blog: How I Write Battle Scenes

Richard Warren Field's Blog: Book Commentary

Medieval Woman: A Rogue's Fallery

Amazon.com Customer Reviews

Book Beginnings: Beloved Pilgrim by Nan Hawthornr

Getting Medieval: History's mysteries - What Hap[pn ed to Ida of Austria?

Sappho Sings: Why a Lesbian Novel?

Number 589

2011-08-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

If there was anything on this post, it would be Post #589! I hope you are suitably impressed with my commitment and execcution.

Keeping Tabs On.. The Gambling lexicon

2011-08-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

Planning a novvel that will feature a riverboat gambler from the mid 19th century, I started looking into what card games were commonly employed by gamblers. One of the most popular was a game called faro. In it players place bets on which of a full set of a particular suit of cards will be drawn from the card box or "faro bank". Two cards are placed on either side of the bank, one called the banker's card and the other the player's card. If a player matches the banker's card, he loses. If he matches the player's card, he wins.

I still need to learn how to play this game, how one wins and how one cheats. But one thing I learned from a video on YouTube about faro is that players would often keep track of what cards were played on small pieces of paper. These pieces of paper were called "tabs" As they were used to keep the banker honest, to "keep tabs on someone" came to mean keeping track of their actions or assertions.

Wanna play?

History of Riverboat Wagering

2011-08-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

Enjoy this article, obviously creatively translated into English from some other language, extolling the history of gamblling on Mississippi riverboats. I found this as part of the research for my next novel...

The US is very well known for having several worlds’ major and most sumptuous casinos. However, the US also differentiates its wagering presence from other realms in another way i.e. riverboat wagering. In fact, the US has a profound history of riverboat wagering that extents roughly two centuries! If you are a aficionado of gambling world, then you’ll certainly enjoy this look back on the past of riverboat wagering.

Mississippi River: an attraction for the Professional Gamblers

The most prehistoric days of the riverboat gaming date back to the early on in the 19th century when the Mississippi River was packed with dealers. Since water haulage was huge in the US deal scene during this era, many rich dealers pursue the map and down the Mississippi River. Moreover, considering as how it is an extensive journey from one end to the other, wagering became a trendy way to overtake the time.

It was not long before when the proficient gamblers found their mode to the riverboats at Mississippi. Soon the riverboat gaming was flourishing as the card games and the other games of likelihood were ordinary among the traders and the pro-gamblers.

However, many of the rich dealers began to grasp onto the card cheats, and it was not long before people in progress taking the matters into their own hands. In the year 1835, five gamblers were hanged for being deceitful in a card game; other experts observe this message and the riverboat wagering began fading down. Surely, there was still riverboat wagering, but not in the equal capability that it had been ever before.

In 1861, the Civil War bust out in America and the riverboats were not able to do much itinerant on the Mississippi River – or any other rivers for that stuff. In the outcome of the war, riverboat wagering pretty much vanished except for hardly any remote card games now and there.

The Birth of the Riverboat Casinos

The US is not a very open-minded country when it comes to the matter of wagering. Most of their land-based wagering is done in the Las Vegas, Atlantic City, a few top quality cities, and the Indian qualms. Therefore, when small state of Iowa was appearing for a way to proffer officially permitted wagering as a means of accumulating the tax revenue, the state of affairs looked bleak. That is pending they discovered riverboat gambling.

Iowa officials found that if their casinos were dwelling on the riverboats, they could lawfully function as long as the cruisers sailed out into the river so often. This dodge enabled Iowa to proffer the United States’ the first riverboat casino. It was not long before the supplementary states such as Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Mississippi and Michigan had riverboat casinos of their own.

Modern Day Riverboat Gambling

The commandments surrounding the riverboat wagering have loosened significantly over the last two decades. Now the riverboats do not even have to leave the wharf, and they can be kept on the stilts while keeping hold of the legality. The sloppy laws involving the riverboat wagering has given mount to lots of sail ships wagering too.

Today, many of the riverboats and the sail ships proffer full-service casinos along with the slots, blackjack, poker, roulette and the other games. Moreover, what is grand about the riverboat casinos is that they allow the gamblers from all the states to take pleasure in the nearby wagering; in the past, populace had to tour to the Las Vegas or Atlantic City just to wager.

Ofcourse, with the mount in the online casinos, citizens do not even have to depart from their dwelling to wager!

Stolen wholecloth from http://www.superonlinecasino.com/casino-articles/general/history-of-riverboat-wagering.

Expressions and Where They Really Came From: "Deadd Ringer"

2011-08-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

Nope, not this.

The other day at a pizza restaurant our waiter, who said his name was "Awesome" and who kept feeding us trivia questions hit on a wrong answer I had heard before. He told us the expression "dead ringer" came from a period when premature burials were creeping everyone out so they started putting bells on caskets. I knew that could not be right if only because the expression "dead ringer" means a perfect imitation. How would that follow from tinntinnabulating coffins?

It doesn't. The actual origin of the term comes from another meaning of both "ringer" and "dead".

You will be familiar with the term "ringer" meaning someone who steps in to take another person's place, the implication always being that the replacement is a much better performer than the original. Sometimes a ball team puts in a ringer to throw off the strategy and expectations of the opposite team. This comes from horse racing originally. A "ringer" was a horse that looked just like one with a poor record of performance and therefore higher odds against winning. The "ringer" will be mistaken for the less able nag, so when it wins, being a better racer, the trickster will win big.

"Dead" also means more than just deceased. It also means precise or exact. Like "She hit it dead on."

So a "dead ringer" is someone or something that is absolutely identical to something else. You say "The actor who played him was a dead ringer for Thomas Cranmer."

In general, if an expression's claimed origin does not reflect it's current meaning in some way, it's wrong.