Saturday 4 June 2011

Making space (1100)

A painful day, partly because I went into town to get trousers for no. 1 son and hurt my back, and partly because I have had to sort through and get rid of some more books. In between, even though in more pain that usual, I managed to write 1100 words on Borrowed Time. I found, in the back of my brain, stuff I didn't even know about 'Greek fire', a technology known to the Arabs in the Byzantine era. How did I know that? I had no idea - so I looked it up, and I did know the basic facts about it. That spooked me, like I was channeling some bloke who knows way more history than I!
Then I worked it out. Years and years ago, I fell in love with a series of racy romances by Sergeanne Golon (actually by two people) which are probably the opposite of literary fiction.  But I loved them, and the racy bits went over my head until I was a teenager anyway. But in the middle of one of the books, is an incidence of Greek fire being used and explained. Ha! Crappy genre blockbuster fiction - with impeccable historical research! Not to mention a bit of sex education...

1 comment:

  1. Mon Dieu! I loved Angelique! My Mum had them stashed in her bedroom... I'd nick them one by one so she wouldn't notice. They were my first sex education lessons! Super racy... must check them out again. ;)Thanks for the memory. Hope you feel better soon though.

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