Wallowing in the Research
Hello, fellow wallowers,
I'm currently revising my magic PhD school novel for the fourth time. I'm really excited about my agent's notes, but it's kind of same old same old around here as far as actual writing is concerned, with one small exception:
Small Wonders will be publishing my flash fiction magic academia job search story! I don't have a release date, yet, but you bet I'll let you know when I do.
But just sending that update along would make for a very short newsletter. So, I thought I'd write to you about wallowing in a different kind of ink this month.
Newspaper ink, more precisely.
Because I've been researching my next novel on the side, and it requires trawling through nineteenth-century newspapers: one of my all-time favorite pastimes. 
Four Things You Might Find in Historical Newspapers
1. Ads you won't want to skip, actually
In a past professional life, I wrote a book-length nonfiction manuscript about serial novels and the patent medicine advertisements that surrounded them in nineteenth-century newspapers.
Some of those ads are really delightful. You haven't lived until you've witnessed the sheer melodrama of Victorian anti-flatulence pills. Or the thrill of casually advertised abortifacients. Or the absolute bewilderment of toothpaste and pills whose manufacturers claim are strong enough to reinvigorate an entire nation's masculinity and save the navy.
Don't believe me? I brought evidence:
I was suffering severely from wind on the stomach, indigestion, and spasms. I read your advertisement, and thought it was just the medicine to meet my case. I was at the time under one of the best medical men in Oldham, but found little or no relief until I took your pills, which I purchased of your agents, Messrs. Braddock and Bagshaw, of Yorkshire-street. I thank God I ever did so, for they have proved a great blessing to me. Before I took your pills I was ill nine weeks, and was never at the end of the street where I live. I almost despaired of ever being better, but I am happy to inform you I am better now than I have been for years, and I attribute it only to the use of your pills. I am never without them, and the best of all is I have never needed a doctor since. — I remain, yours truly, Mrs. RATCLIFFE
Towle's Pennyroyal and steel pills for females quickly correct all irregularities and relieve the distressing symptoms so prevalent with the sex...
2. Theatrical notices and reviews
Sometimes, your character needs to go out and interact with the world. Usually, as the writer, you need your character to do that so that you can do a little worldbuilding and demonstrate how your character fits (or fails to fit) within their world.
Having your character attend a play might be a good way to do that. Thankfully, Victorians habitually wrote full-on, spoiler-laden reviews of even minor, obscure plays. So, dig around in newspapers long enough and you might find something that subtly echoes your novel's themes or sets up a plot point.
For instance, this little snippet of my historical fantasy WIP, in which the male love interest absolutely cannot fall in love or else something dire will happen, and his mothers keep reminding him of that in very conniving ways:
A shout brought him up short. Donovan Audley, surrounded on all sides by ladies—including one blushing personage on his arm––raised his umbrella in greeting.
“Weft! What are the odds?”
A niggling sixth sense, honed to needle-sharpness during his boyhood, told Felix the odds had little to do with the matter. He schooled his features into the bland angles of pleasantry.
“Audley.”
...
“But don’t tell me you’re here for the show?” Audley interjected, gesturing his umbrella at the building in front of which they huddled. “You must join us. I won’t hear any objections.”
The waterlogged theatre bill displayed outside banished any doubts of his mothers’ interference.
A BLIND MARRIAGE splashed large across the middle of the page with the smaller notice,
(LAST NIGHT AT THE CRITERION THEATRE) just above the dramatis personae.
No doubt it was some overly sensational melodrama depicting all the various ills of marriage which his mothers felt he needed to see. As though the threat of unraveling weren’t enough to keep a man well away from the fairer sex.
3. Agony columns
Before Ask Abby or Prudence or whoever the heck it is we're asking things now, there were agony columns in newspapers, to which readers could submit their dreadful personal quandaries and for which they would get answers. Like Reddit, except without all of the replies. Said columns also included a bunch of other juicy stuff, so if you need some nineteenth-century gossip historical newspapers probably have you covered. Here's a great article on Agony Columns and some of the things (proposals! coded exchanges! scandal!) you might find within them: "A whole romance contained in four little lines: Introducing the Agony Column."
4. Weather reports
No really, hear me out. If you're a writer, there might come a day when you need to know––for critical plot reasons––what the weather was like in the greater Boston area on a random day in August. Or how rainy Octobers tended to be in London. You could just make that shit up, of course. But that would deprive you of the ability to procrastinate writing by spending hours and hours looking up one tiny fact the satisfaction of a job well done.
Research Resources
Because of the aforementioned past life as a researcher, I have loads of academic resources I draw on to do my writing research. But, if you didn't do your time in the ivory tower, fear not -- there are still some great historical newspaper research resources available to you:
The British Newspaper Archive is one of my favorites. It's not free, but it's not super expensive either. There are great search features and they add more digitized newspapers all the time.
Welsh Newspapers Online For a free option, with lots of overlapping content (mass media gonna duplicate), Welsh Newspapers Online is a great starting point.
Public libraries in the US often have access to digitized collections of local or regional newspapers. For Mage, All But Dissertation, for example, I did some digging through Oregon newspaper archives and found some great stories about the Ouija board craze of the 1910s and a socialite occultist who wrote a popular newsletter about a house spider she'd befriended (apparently, Tolstoy was a big fan).
May Recommendations
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
I gushed about this book over on Twitter & Instagram, but in short: It's a pandemic novel in the best sense of the term--a meditation on loneliness & community & what it means to be your true self with other people.
It resonated so profoundly with me as a neurodivergent person & as someone who has moved around a lot & lost local community.
It is deeply poignant and unrepentantly joyful and fierce and I will definitely re-read this book, despite the fact that I'm not much for re-reading, which is probably the highest form of praise in my arsenal. Find it here.
Shanghai Immortal (out June 1st!!!)
To round out this month's recommendations, I'm going to briefly yell about my brilliant friend A.Y. Chao's Shanghai Immortal which comes out this June. I've been anxiously awaiting its release for months and it's available for pre-order! Here's the synopsis. You aren't going to want to miss this one!
Pawned by her mother to the King of Hell as a child, Lady Jing is half-vampire, half-hulijing fox-spirit and all sasshole. As the King's ward, she has spent the past ninety years running errands, dodging the taunts of the spiteful hulijing courtiers, and trying to control her explosive temper - with varying levels of success.
So when Jing overhears the courtiers plotting to steal a priceless dragon pearl from the King, she seizes her chance to expose them, once and for all.
With the help of a gentle mortal tasked with setting up the Central Bank of Hell, Jing embarks on a wild chase for intel, first through Hell and then mortal Shanghai. But when her hijinks put the mortal in danger, she must decide which is more important: avenging her loss of face, or letting go of her half-empty approach to life for a chance to experience tenderness - and maybe even love.
Wow, wow, wow. This was a long one. (That's how you know I'm procrastinating revisions.)
Thanks, as always, for wallowing with me!
Until next time,
Courtney
