my heart is a glorious machine;

Oh for heaven's sake. I am trying to write the Novel and have stuck on the most ridiculous of details, which has rather unleashed a lot of pent-up frustration. Why did I have to set my novel in 1912-1913? Ten years earlier and I'd have more information than I could ever hope to use, but apparently nobody cares about the Edwardians. And if they do, it's all about the hedonistic upper class and the aristocracy, or, because sordid is always fun to be shocked about, the most abject poverty of the London slums, all twenty people to a tenement and children losing their limbs in factories. I am quite sure that the middle class wasn't all pretending to be wealthy, because that's not how people work. Every time I try to find information on the homes people would have lived in, normal everyday ordinary people, in London, I get all of this nonsense about either manor houses or squalid tenements. NOT HELPFUL. I got a book out from the library, Domestic Life in England, and it devoted at least a chapter to the Victorians, with lots of very pertinent information -- but anything about the Edwardians was scant, mixed up with details from later years, solely about rationing and bomb scares (and zeppelins? is it callous that my first thought was OMG THERE WERE ZEPPELINS OVER LONDON THAT IS SO COOL?), or to the '20s, lots more fun, with the hair shingling and the make-up and the very short skirts. GAH. I want to know about houseguests, particularly in apartments, and if they come up to the door of the flat they want and knock there, or if they ring something down below, as one often does nowadays, and who answers the door, and I am Googling ridiculous things like "history of the doorbell" and "doorbells in edwardian england" and not getting anything remotely helpful.

I wonder how eccentric it is that the Noxes haven't got any servants, but they don't really need them, and would one still have servants if one lived in a flat, anyway? Am I completely wrong in thinking that a family of four would live in a flat? But London was huge and urban even then and it seems as though an actual by-itself house would be hideously expensive whether or not it was even very nice, and nobody would have one. Uh, kind of like Boston.

It's all of the weird little details that are tripping me up, like, how exactly does Mr Caruthers get himself to the Noxes for dinner and who lets him in and where does he go afterwards and are there doorbells involved at all? How large would a decent flat be, with how many rooms? What are the floors made of? What sorts of dances do people attend? Are there places where there's always some music thing going on and anyone can show up to dance if they have the desire? Which ones are respectable and which aren't? (Like today people go clubbing, or to bars or pubs, and all sorts of things.) If a man is trying to conceal Evidence of Vampire Attack, what sort of neck-covering things are at his disposal? Where does one park one's motorbike? 

Every few paragraphs I run into a new problem, and the more I read, the more it seems I don't know, especially since everyone is much more interested in talking about the aristocracy or the Victorians or the slums or the War, except that they'd actually rather talk about the Second World War, so seeing the domestic information one wants getting passed up for a war which is mostly passed up for a different war is enormously frustrating. Hasn't somebody written books specifically for historical fiction writers? "Everything You'd Never Think To Ask About The 1910s", say. How to use the toilet and what to feed your cat and what sorts of sweets one might have on hand. How to get to and from work. How to let your hosts know you've arrived for dinner after they've bleeding invited you. (How to greet a woman you've been secretly in love with for several years when you recently saved her from a mysteriously burning room with vampires in, she's been unconscious for the last several days, and you have probably done nothing but pace around your office and clean up vampire damage and fend off the government, and now you are at her house for dinner but it is 1912 and embracing is scandalous and you are deliberately repressed anyway for what you think are extremely good reasons. Okay, maybe that one I have to figure out myself...)

At this point, the vampire stuff and the underground city stuff and the scientific application of magic is the easiest part.

I have come to the conclusion that writing is really only an excellent excuse to learn about things I am fascinated by, and my subconscious takes advantage of this by subtly sneaking in especially interesting things into my story. (That, and I have a tendency to think, "THAT IS AWESOME AND I NEED TO PUT IT IN MY STORY NOW.") So, things I have to pursue knowledge of: 19th century drugs and their affect on human psychology; underground cities and the catacombs of London; the worldwide political situation that led to the Great War (sociology ftw!); mental illness and the human mind; the Industrial Revolution; libraries in the modern and ancient world; any and all arcane bookmaking; linguistics; how cultures develop (the vampires, separated from their formerly human state); poker; early twentieth century insults in British; race and culture in 1912 England; why colonialism sucks and leads to Bad Things; literature in 1912; vintage clothing and hairstyles; turn-of-the-century music; cultural understanding of vampire lore (VAMPIRE PUMPKINS FTW!); the three sisters archetype in literature and folklore; Tam-Lin and related ballads; turn-of-the-century food; British Christmas traditions; street-fighting techniques; sword-canes; whether or not they had fish and chips back then and if they were wrapped in newspaper... And I keep digging up more as I write, dear me.

Also, this guy needs to make it into my story somehow. Somehow. Possibly as one of the bureaucratic Department of the Supernatural types. (One primary thing I aim to work on in Draft the Second: making the Department blokes less flat, stock Stupidly Evil Bureaucrats, because... that's senseless and boring. There is no reason for them all to be out of touch and too enamoured of their own power, and I hated it while I was writing it. Bah. That does not mean they can't have silly moustaches, however.)