Self Care Monday-taking a moment

Sit down.

Enjoy that cup of tea or coffee for just another moment.

Just one more moment, it doesn't have to even be a full minute.

Close your eyes and let it go.

The anger and aggravation, the annoyance at being up so damn early. The dread of another day at work. The screaming and arguing and noise. The whirling thoughts going round and round your head.

Let it go and for one moment--a minute or a heartbeat or a breath, just be. 

Smuggling during Napoleonic Wars

 As with most wars, soooo much has been written about military tactics and troop movements. But smuggling has long been a British past time.

Photo from Pinterest

I first learned of the British Isles propensity for smuggling way back in the day from a Harlequin historical I don't remember anything else about except she was a smuggler and he was the king's man sent to stop her. It might've taken place more in the Renaissance than Regency, but don't hold me to that.

There are many reasons for smuggling, the foremost being the incredibly high tax on certain goods. Like tea. Think 100%+ tax on the price of tea. The Boston Tea Party, the 1773 Tea Act, those were for us Americans to revolt over. The British decided to smuggle their tea instead.

Smuggled tea might be more expensive but since it wasn't taxed, the extra cost was nominal.

Everything was smuggled during the Napoleonic Wars. Tea, Wool from Englan
d to France, the obligatory French wine and champagne from there to England. The French state was in desperate need of gold for their armies. Smugglers and the Napoleonic Wars - HubPages

Tea Tax resources: When was Tea First Taxed in England? - Boston Tea Party Ships and History of Tea - Taxes and Smuggling In 18th Century England - TEA PARTY GIRL

Wool smuggling, called owling because of the sounds smugglers used to signal each other. This article is from the Middle Ages, but the practice was illegal through the early 1800s. Owling - Wikipedia Also this one. The History of Smuggling in Sussex and Kent – Wadhurst History Society

Tuesday Tidbit: Duke of York and Albany

Frederick Augustus (1763–1827), Duke of York, 

Reviewing Troops in Flanders, by William Anderson

In Smuggler's Captain, Captain James St. Clair is under the Duke of York's command. There's a very specific reason for this! Well, several. One, I need James to be flexible for the stories and being in the army during war didn't offer that flexibility.

Two, The Duke of York and Albany (Frederick Augustus, the 2nd son of George III) was responsible for the British Army reformation. Which was fascinating reading! Also, there's a cool jingle about the duke's failure in Flanders, which is what caused him to reform the army.

Apparently, it's a nursey rhyme. 

Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

When they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only halfway up,
They were neither up nor down
The Grand Old Duke of York - Wikipedia

Flanders Campaign 1793-1795 | Napoleonic (british-history.co.uk)

Flanders campaign - Wikipedia

 

Self Care Monday-Progress part 2

 Last week I posted about progress not perfection. Then I found this. You may have seen it, it's been on various social media posts. I think it's worth another share.

Free short story!

I have a short story that takes place during Smuggler's Captain. Want to read it for free?

Louise and Malcolm's first story, One Day with You, is available for free by signing up for my newsletter. There I'll also post more stories for these two, updates on life, books, and food, and cute photos of my 🐕 corgi. 😍 

Self Care Monday-progress

 I'm sure you've heard the saying progress not perfection. Say it with me. That one step forward is progress. I don't need to finish anything before showing it off. Works in Progress are progress and just as valid as a finished product.

It's important to remember that we move anywhere by taking one step then a second. We don't magically appear at our destination. We have to walk there, whatever the means of our transportation.

One step. Just one. Doesn't have to be a leap or a jump or even one of your normal length steps. A small step forward is--say it with me--forward progress.

Research-Opium Trade

 Opium. 

The history of its cultivation and use is long and complicated. What I focused on in Sins of a Rogue was the British East India Company's absolute control over it and the ills that came of it. OK, a very, very, very small part of what the EIC did in India and the wider implications of opium addiction. As I said, it's a long, complicated history. But it's always about the people involved.

This is from the BBC article

Here are a few resources I've used when researching opium, smuggling, and the EIC's role in it all.

 How Britain's opium trade impoverished Indians (BBC)

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple

The Opium Trade in the Dutch East Indies

Tuesday Tidbit-Strait of Messina

 I get horrible seasickness. I'm good on rivers, back bays, or lakes. Oceans? No. It's horrible. The one cruise I went on, I was sick for 2 days once we sailed and on one of the last nights with the heavy swells, it was all over. Never again. I've taken ferries with the same results. Things are going well, I think I'm OK and then...not so much.

Poor Kaya experiences her seasickness based on my own experiences. To be fair, I've never traveled on a wooden sailing vessel below decks. I also do not want to.

The ferry trip in the beginning of Sins of a Rogue is rough on Kaya because the strait is a thin strip of water between Calabria, in southern Italy, and Sicily. The strait connects the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ionian Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. Because it's so narrow, the currents are very strong.

This is a photo from NASA's Earth Observatory. This is what they say on their page about the strait: 

Between the island of Sicily and mainland Italy runs a narrow strip of water, the Messina Strait. The Messina Strait’s strong currents can rip seaweed from the ocean floor. The main current runs from south to north, but a smaller current runs in the opposite direction. The currents alternate about every six hours, and the strait’s complicated wave patters can be seen from space.

Image of the Day for April 29, 2007

As beautiful as it looks, I think I'll pass. My poor stomach is as delicate as Kaya's.  

Self Care Monday-Worry

 A few weeks ago, I was listening to a video on Youtube. I wish I remembered anything else about that video other than the quote that stayed with me. I listen to a lot of Youtube videos on a lot of things so I have no idea where it came from and deeply apologize to the woman (it was definitely a woman!) who said it.

Worry and anxiety never changed anything.

I heard that in the shower and spent that entire shower arguing with the logic of it. If I worry and am anxious over X, then I can plan for different outcomes. That was my refuting logic.

But the comment nagged at me. Because it's true. Which was so hard to accept!

Planning different outcomes for a situation does not change the situation. It only makes you  obsess over that situation until you make yourself sick.

How do we change that? One day at a time. 

Pause. Stop. Deep breath. Step back. It'll be ok! You got this!

Research-Historical Clothing

I found this on the Wiki page for the Early Modern Period of Calabria. it's titled Costumes in Calabria about 1800. I like it, it shows period dress that is different than what we think of as English or French clothing about the same time period. Nothing from court or nobility, but true, local clothing. It's colorful and multi-layered, as so much clothing was.

I don't really go into clothing a lot in my stories unless there's a point. Such as people are sneaking around a warehouse at night in December like in Smuggler's Captain. I do go into more detail about clothing in that story because of what my characters don't wear and their reasons. In both Husband of Convenience and Sins of a Rogue I detail what Paul and Kaya wear because they need new clothing for several reasons.

 

There's a lot that goes into dressing for historic time periods and while I find that fascinating, to read I think it's tedious. Maybe I'm in the minority?

 

Several years ago I visited Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and took one of their short informational courses on how to dress during that era, so early 1700s ish. Man there's a lot to wear! I sometimes don't want to wear shoes, but all those layers, with no zippers...maybe for a day, for dress-up but I'm not so sure about all the time.

Tuesday Tidbit-Italy

 I learned so much about the history of the Italian Peninsula during my research for Sins of a Rogue. Not just the history of the area, but geography and language, too. It's a convoluted dance with random sources, but here's the Wiki page I used most for the historical feel of Calabria during the 1780s.

For several hundred years between the 1400-1800s The Kingdom of Naples, Southern Italy below Rome, was ruled by the French, Spanish, and Austrians with varying degrees of interest in the location. The monarchy cared only for profits, so taxed the people of Southern Italy to death.

The area suffered from plague, earthquakes, corruption, more corruption, heavy taxation, disinterest, and finally Napoleon. Check out these maps from Wikipedia that helped me get a sense of things, geography wise.

This disinterest led to the rise of what we now call The 'Ndrangheta.   I've read several books on them. Not too much delve into the history or origin of the 'Ndrangheta, but they were all interesting such as Blood Brotherhoods: A History of Italy's Three Mafias by John Dickie.

This is from the Wiki Page:

The 'Ndrangheta was already known during the reign of the Bourbons of Naples. In the spring of 1792, there was the first official report in history on the 'Ndrangheta, and a mission as "Royal Visitor" was entrusted to Giuseppe Maria Galanti; these travelled far and wide throughout most of Calabria, often also making use of reports (answers written on the basis of a sort of questionnaire to fixed questions, prepared by himself) of local notables deemed reliable and trusted. This resulted in a bleak picture, as well as on the economic situation in the region, especially on that of public order.^[11] This work has been analyzed by various contemporary historians.^{[12][11][13][14]} Luca Addante writes in the introduction to the re-edition of Galanti's report ("Giornale di viaggio in Calabria", Rubbettino Editore, 2008):^[13] "the murders, thefts, the kidnappings were infinite; the ignorance of the clergy was scandalous; the village notables, obsessed with the idea of enriching themselves and then ennobling themselves, rapacious monopolizers of local administrations, who grew up in the shadow of a decadent nobility whose remains were being prepared." Galanti, in particular, reports in the Giornale the descriptions of disturbing crime phenomena, noting how the inefficient administration of justice, the corruption and the monopoly of the barons, was starting to produce cases, as in Maida, of "a small bunch of young, freeloaded young men who commit violence with the use of firearms. Justice is idle because without force and without a system malicious people become policemen (a sort of urban guard)." In the District of Gerace, "the raids of the criminals in the countryside are general. Almost all the militiamen are the most troublemakers in the province because the criminals and the debtors adopt this profession and are guaranteed by commanders in contempt of the laws. With this, the crimes, which grow every day".^[15]