Bedtime for Books

The final push for Summerhouse has ended, at least for the time being. Now it's in the hands of the Beta readers. I'm hoping they'll love it.


I haven't written much on here because I've been doing research on a number of things such as hospitals in the 19th century, tuberculosis and its treatments, especially in the 19th century, 19th century Britain, 19th century Switzerland, and my favorite translation site for Latin and double-checking my German.

It's been an educational journey. For instance, I had no idea that hospitals were that bad back then. One actually had to pay them up front for one's own burial when they went in there, because it was a fairly good bet that they'd die once passing the hospital doors. Often their families had to do their laundry and bring them extra food (especially sugar, tea, and butter). The conditions were absolutely appallingly filthy.

If a person caught tuberculosis, they wrote them off as a goner, since for a long time they didn't know anything about how a person caught the disease. They didn't have the long list of medications we do today either. Apparently it was endemic in Europe at the time.

I spent lots of time hunting through houses in Luzern. It took me back for some truly happy hours. I miss climbing around there and walking through the shops and by-ways.

I wandered around Britain as well. Someday (maybe when Summerhouse gets made into a movie) I hope to go there and haunt the places I love to read about and see.


So now it's time to buckle back down and do re-writes and polishing so I can actually send these babies out into the wide, wide world.