Well most people know about me and my preference for historical accuracy. If it's not right, if you haven't taken the time to do a great amount of research, don't do it. Or it's a travesty and an insult to the people who actually lived then.
Fantasy worlds and alternative history - go for it, but if you are writing a historical novel, get it right.
Anyway. Other things. Oh, lots. But a lot of my contemporary set books are about bigotry and (literal) ignorance. Ignorance in the sense of "not knowing," not the more insulting kind. Because when people don't educate themselves about issues, it becomes bigotry and it becomes easier to blame somebody else.
For instance, on the news last night, a "man on the street" was blaming the current economic crisis wholly on the money men. Well no. If you pay a mortgage, buy a house, have savings, play on the stock market, then it's you as well. We all contributed to it. Yes, it was the money men's (and women's) fault probably more than us, since they set the mechanisms, but when the housing market went into a steep upward curve, surely I wasn't the only one to think that it would all end in tears.
It's the price we pay for living in a democratic capitalist society. My house is still worth about five times what we paid for it, and that's far more than we could have got by putting the money in the bank. So something had to give, and it did. Now we have to ride it out.
My problem was that I was going to sell my bank shares the day before the market broke, then I thought "nah, I'll do it tomorrow." Oops. So I'm hanging on now, like most other people.
Fantasy worlds and alternative history - go for it, but if you are writing a historical novel, get it right.
Anyway. Other things. Oh, lots. But a lot of my contemporary set books are about bigotry and (literal) ignorance. Ignorance in the sense of "not knowing," not the more insulting kind. Because when people don't educate themselves about issues, it becomes bigotry and it becomes easier to blame somebody else.
For instance, on the news last night, a "man on the street" was blaming the current economic crisis wholly on the money men. Well no. If you pay a mortgage, buy a house, have savings, play on the stock market, then it's you as well. We all contributed to it. Yes, it was the money men's (and women's) fault probably more than us, since they set the mechanisms, but when the housing market went into a steep upward curve, surely I wasn't the only one to think that it would all end in tears.
It's the price we pay for living in a democratic capitalist society. My house is still worth about five times what we paid for it, and that's far more than we could have got by putting the money in the bank. So something had to give, and it did. Now we have to ride it out.
My problem was that I was going to sell my bank shares the day before the market broke, then I thought "nah, I'll do it tomorrow." Oops. So I'm hanging on now, like most other people.
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