In mid-August, I toured England with my husband and two dear friends. The trip included Worldcon in London, and then off we went for fun and . . . research! My work in progress is a paranormal novel set in England, and I was excited to really take in and experience the places I am writing about.
England did not disappoint. As in all travel, we encountered unexpected marvels and mishaps. Trying to get to London from Bath we nearly ended up in Portsmouth, except for the kind intervention of a bunch of rowdy guys sitting in back of us who, when they learned we were heading to London, said “Oh no you’re not!” But not to worry, they worked for the railroad and told us not only where to get off but how to make the right connection, and when. Whew.
Arriving at what I hoped would be the highlight of the trip, the ruined Rievaulx Abbey on the North York Moors, the gate came down. They were closing! Our schedule did not permit us to drive the long way to come back, but the man kindly let us through, and we had this fabulous ruin to ourselves. The climactic scene of my WIP takes place there, and I would have been heartbroken to have missed it.
Here are some highlights, and more in a future post.
Arrival from Heathrow at Paddington Station. Beware, travelers, you need British coin to use the bathrooms!
St Pauls at dusk from Blackfriars Bridge.
The Thames from the Arab Emirates gondola.
The Thames from the upper walkway of the Tower Bridge.
Machine Room at Tower Bridge with Victorian apparati to raise the bridge.
At Tower of London, poppies memorializing each of the fallen from the Great War.
The fabulous Rievaulx Abbey on the North York Moors. A Cistercian Abbey so far from towns that it is preserved much better than most. A haunting, numinous place.
Back from Loncon and a very long trip to England. Unpacking always seems to take as much time as packing; plus I have organized the many momentos and items of research that I collected for my work in progress, and also came home to a cat who was feeling poorly 
and seemed blameful for my having abandoned him for three weeks, despite the fact that he had a perfectly lovely housekeeper waiting on him. You cat owners will know what I mean.
Loncon? A blast. The venue was the ginormous Excel center in the Docklands, so huge that there was a train stop at each end (I am not lying.) But the con was actually tucked into one end, so it was even easier to navigate than some smaller Worldcons I’ve been to. (I think 8,000 or so attended in London.) While I liked the venue, it was quite a long haul into central London, with the need to either cab it or take the light rail to a tube station. And one Did have to get into London, of course! The dealer’s room had all the excitement of a world con, including this amazing dress.
Best of all, there were thousands seductive SFF books, with an emphasis, naturally, on British authors, and I loaded up, with an eye to how much I could get in my suitcase considering that I was then going to travel through north and south England . . . I made judicious choices, including this wonderful book by Ian McLeod, a winner of the world fantasy award. Dense, stunning prose, elegaic in tone, it’s an alternate history of 1940’s England, meticulously 
drawn. I was privileged to be on a panel on alternate history with Ian MacLeod, and also several other authors including Jon Courtenay Grimwood, author of the wonderful Assassini books, and a smart, articulate panelist.
d take a closer look at their iconic cities, such as Kushner’s unnamed town in the world of Swordpoint. And then there is Kathleen Ann Goonan’s stunning Cincinnati of Queen City Jazz, a classic, perhaps the best city in SF.
On the surface . . . my Victorian world is a recognizable one, with elegance, manor houses, and women seeking good matches. It is a world of carriages and colonialism, matchmaking and manor houses. My alternate England is a land where science reigns supreme, but where a woman, no matter how brilliant, cannot be admitted to the realm of science.
Coming Soon