Blog

  • Buttered eggs and spells to face the rising dark

    There is no glittering frost outside today and the lengthening nights shut me in earlier and earlier. To make it through such dark hours I want comfort and enchantment, and for this I turn to the books I read over Read more

  • Predecessor of the more famous Aching? Rosemary Sutcliff’s Tudor witch Tiffany.

    All my book projects are waiting for other people to do various things before I get on with them so I’m back to working on my new fiction project and thinking about character names. This one’s a historical fantasy set Read more

  • Uncareer advice and the thinginess of things

    So, this is it. It’s almost a year since my PhD was awarded and I’m branching out into my own uncareer – a hodgepodge of things that earn money and don’t, with the main nexus being creative writing, and archaeology.* Read more

  • All sewers lead to Puteoli.

    I’m in that limbo between sending off a book draft – hurrah! – and the return of peer review – ouch! Or ouch it probably will be because it is highly unrealistic to expect that everything about the draft is Read more

  • Pastoral idyll or industrial landscape?

    Took a walk around this rather spectacular modern earthwork and quarry and of course had to head down the research rabbit hole it offered. It is a disused quarry with some form of track and what looks like an enclosure Read more

  • Archaeological recording: 3D models part one.

    One thing I’ve wanted to explore more this year are digital methods to record inscriptions on stone with their monuments. What I really want to do is practice recording inscriptions using Reflectance Transformation Imaging, but this needs some basic kit Read more