From My Fantasy Writing Desk
The highlight of my writing week was, once again, my socially-distanced get together with a writer friend. We accomplished so much. Writing is definitely a project best pursued in the company of intelligent friends.
It’s true, at 107 or whatever the temperature rose to today in Phoenix, our outdoor meeting on my terrace was hot and sweaty, even in the morning. But I just don’t care. Definitely the best part of my week.
We ran through the changes I’d made to a major plot thread and confirmed that I was on the right track. Now I can barrel along without that nagging doubt that is so self-defeating to any writer.
As a jump start for her project, we laid out her plot on a board. We divided her scenes into acts, sections, and climaxes. A new system of plotting to her, but we are old friends who’ve organized any number of programs and committees together, so I knew she would love a color-coded board with her novel all laid out before her.
Archaeology I Enjoyed
Egyptian Game Board
This afternoon, I went down a research rabbit hole reminding myself of plausible objects of Egyptian origin for a scene I’m writing. The job was to find things my character Hattu could have stockpiled as loot from my fictional Pharaoh. (I call Egypt Egarya in my books—best to let a reader know there’s fantasy afoot amid the history.) I had forgotten about this gorgeous blue faience senet game board. It even had a drawer for the game pieces.
When I created my own fictional game of Sphinx and Griffins in Priestess of Ishana, I looked carefully at all the ancient Egyptian games. Tesha will find a game board or two when she goes looking through that storeroom—as soon as I stop procrastinating with pretty photos and get writing. (The photo at the top is of another Egyptian game called Hounds and Jackals)
Pungent prayer and altered states in ancient Judah?
From Science News: “A limestone altar from an Iron Age shrine in Israel contains remnants of the world’s earliest known instance of burning cannabis plants in a ritual ceremony, a new study finds.
This altar, along with a second altar on which frankincense was burned, stood at the entrance to a room where religious rites were presumably held inside a fortress of the biblical kingdom of Judah. Previous analyses of recovered pottery and documented historical events at the site indicate that the shrine was used from roughly 760 B.C. to 715 B.C.”
Apparently, the frankincense was mixed with animal fat to burn hot enough to release the sweet odors. That was necessary because the cannabis was mixed with animal dung in order to make it burn at low temperature so the fumes could be inhaled. The THC levels in the examined residue was high enough to, well, get high.
It does explain some of the wilder mentions in the Biblical tradition about happenings in the temple, doesn’t it?