Katherine Keenum

This delectable recorder-playing dragon appears in the margins surrounding of a large illumination in Boccaccio's Fates of Illustrious Men and Women. It would make a great jigsaw puzzle. Better yet, it could prompt a story. Is it part of a musical quartet (if so, who else plays?)? A runaway from dragon life (if so, why?)? Is it a dragon brought up in a human court after hatching from a captured egg? I think it's alive and not a toy, but I suppose it could be a clever marionette. Now, if it is a dragon buttoned into a onesie, what are three other things that must be true of its world?

This reconstruction of a Viking house in Schleswig is from an article on Open Hearths, Ovens and Fireplaces. Among other topics, it reviews studies in how much wood it takes to heat reconstructed Viking dwellings. Conclusion? No one could have lived in the famous long houses during the winter. They required far too many tons of fuel for medieval woodcutting technology to meet. In contrast much smaller houses, like the one here, are bearable—for modern graduate students, at any rate.

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During an interesting and very convincing recent lecture on the symbolic imagery of curtains in Byzantine liturgical practice, Professor Warren Woodfin discussed this image of Night, the prophet Isaiah, and the little boy Dawn. He connected Nyt's starry shawl in the Paris Psalter to iconographical traditions including the parochet that covered the Ark of the Covenant and altar veils of the Byzantine Christian church. I have to admit though that when he put up a detail of Nyt, my thoughts jumped immediately to Mara's cloak of pocket universes in The Dark Lord of Dernholm and then to all the lovely strands of Greer Gilman's imagery of weaving, scarves, and the Pleiades in Cloud and Ashes. I was trained as a medievalist, but you know what? I'm keeping my fingers crossed Nyt inspires me to something wonderfully fantastic.

The Sverresborg Trøndelag Folkemuseum website has several items that could be helpful in conjuring up the setting for a fantasy or historical novel, including this visualization by K. P. Keller (about whom I could find nothing else on line).
 
I adore the way artists can translate archeological remains from holes in the ground into fully imagined places. Just look at the sweep of the bay in the background of this one, the texture of tiled roofs, the plowed field under the bluff on the right, the rockiness of the mound on which the castle is set. All these and more could supply either touches of realism or odd hinges for a plot point. For a good article on how it's done, click here.

For my fantasy-novella-in-progress, I have a character visit a silver-mining town. It's not a long section, but to write about it well I needed to be able to visualize the setting so I gathered some images including the one shown here. This one of men in tunnels that are little more than holes in the ground isn't pertinent to my story, but I was fascinated when I spotted the two dowsers on the left. Dowsing for water I'm familiar with, but in mining? To avoid water, which is always a danger in mines? No! It turns out that people believed metals could also be located with a dowsing stick. A bit of trivia that goes straight into a notebook for future inspiration!

Having just finished The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, I've gone back to reread the book to try to understand it point by point—that is, to work through my own confusions and queries. One way, of course, is to go slow and ponder. Another is to call in speculative fiction—to read stories that flesh out concepts that are quantified by physics and mathematics. Exhibit 1: Lifelode by Jo Walton.

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Imagine a group of internationally known, avant-garde artists building an amusement park together in 1987—attractions by Salvador Dali, David Hockney, Michael Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein (with music by Philip Glass, no less). An over the Big Top extravaganza. So delicious! So Tom Stoppard! So It-couldn't-happen now! Only wait: it can happen now, at least Luna Luna is being revived; and one day next year, you may be able to visit it in a city near you.

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Magic alert: The most magical thing I've seen in a long time—the promotional trailer for Wild Folk Tales from the Stones by Jackie Morris and Tamsin Abbott. Whole worlds of inspiration about friendship, age, place, workspace, art, and myth in this five-minute video, plus word of a must-have book.

A few years ago, I borrowed a library copy of The Hobbit illustrated by Alan Lee. On the back of the jacket was an illustration of Bilbo joining the dwarves in front of the Green Dragon pub which was not included inside. Oh, well, I decided to spring for a second-hand copy just for the pictures and ordered on line what I thought was the right edition. When it arrived, lo and behold, its jacket was different. No Green Dragon. Phooey. To my amusement, when I searched for the illustration this summer, it turned up at a website with exactly my story of disappointment about the Green Dragon jacket illustration. That set me thinking about the difference between fan fiction and fan illustration.

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Blog post alert: Henry Mayhew's Street Traders reproduces a few of the engravings in London Labour and the London Poor of men and women who made a living on the streets in the Victorian era and quotes the text that accompanies each. The passage that accompanies this picture, for instance, begins, "I am a seller of birds'-nesties, snakes, slow-worms, adders, "effets"–lizards is their common name–hedgehogs (for killing black beetles), frogs (for the French – they eats 'em), and snails (for birds) – that's all I sell in the Summertime."

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