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#HistFicThursdays - Medical History (specifically thyroids!)

 This week has been a mad one. Close to the start of the Christmas period, we found out that Mum would be having a thyroidectomy on Candlemas (the final day of the Christmas season). Of course, this was not enough to spoil Christmas. As readers of this blog are no doubt aware, Christmas happens in a big way in this house. But when the day finally arrived it was nonetheless met with, if not fear, definite nervousness. I'm pleased to say that the procedure seems to have been a great success! And wouldn't it have been? Thyroid treatment has been developing for over four thousand years. You know me - somewhat obsessed with putting doctors, nurses, physicians and surgeons in my historical fiction - I made a (very brief) wander into the realms of researching the topic. I was surprised by the results. The earliest I could find a reference to treatments for thyroid issues (in this instance a goitre) came in 2697BC, when the legendary Yellow Emperor recorded the use of seaweed in treati...
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Story Day - plotting a story 1

Every Christmas holiday, Ginny, Jude and I have a story day. This, quite simply, is a day when we all sit down together and have a mega long writeathon. We are fully immersed in our own fantasy world and our poor parents have to put up with our obsession. 

We each have our "story story" which is our main story. Tomorrow I am revisiting my old story story that I finished when I was still a kid. There was a reasonably good plot but the writing was iffy, and there were way too many characters.

Today, I sat down and wrote a list of characters that I couldn't bear to miss out...

Here's my vague list of essential characters to include. To give you an idea of how many have been left out, here's some others I can remember: Jacob, Felice, Calantha, Edward, Nicholas, David, Eloise and Michael. I'm sure there are more which I've forgotten! Yes...that was as well as the list in the picture!!

As you can see, some of the characters stick with you. Aylwin remains one of my favourite characters I have ever written!

Now I have figured out which characters I am keeping, I need to fully determine what they are there for. I also need to jot down the plot ideas!

More updates tomorrow...
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