But when the set dresser raids a modern mall aromatherapy store for the candles, which appear in just about every scene, I’m going, I’m sorry, what’s the tech level here? Don’t the poor ever use rushdips? Are you simply drowning in beeswax and bayberries that everyone can afford these, or do the dragons crap paraffin?

I laughed myself sick at a Masterpiece Theater version of Moll Flanders in which Moll makes love surrounded by a sea of candles. Such a 20th century notion — in Defoe’s day, those candles would have cost more than Moll could ever have made in a lifetime of whoring.

Conversely, I was also annoyed in the opening scenes of the movie Elizabeth (well, the whole movie was one vast anachronism and generally wrong-headed) when they portrayed Mary’s court as lit by one or two feeble candles. I’m sure it was a metaphor, but for God’s sake. Mary might not have been the best queen, but she had enough money to light her palace properly!

The thing is, I can forgive these lapses if they’re isolated examples in an otherwise entertaining work, but usually they are symptomatic of a general overall carelessness or (to repeat myself) wrong-headedness.

How long do we expect writers to take in writing a book in order to get every detail correct and how much expertise are they required to have?

I attended a Con last year where an author was literally beseiged by readers who only wanted to debate the veracity of the details in his latest book. It was AWFUL. I am not a fan of this particular writer, but I wanted to save him from his own fans, you know? It was so weird. It was like these readers read his work exclusively so that they could find his mistakes and then come to a public forum and point out every possible niggling detail he got wrong. I have two kids with high-functioning autism who have special interests and obsessions and tack-sharp memories, and this Con event looked for all the world to me like some demented Roman entertainment where a writer is thrown to the Aspies. Good lord! Did anyone notice the characters or the story itself? Apparently not. All these readers were wrapped up in their various lists of supposed errors.

At some point I think the reader bears some responsibility for not getting distracted by details that may not be absolutely correct. A gaping plot hole is hard to read around, but really, if a reader is unable to overlook one or two minor inaccurate details, is the problem really the writer or is the reader coming to the book with a skewed set of expectations?

I do think the writer should try very hard to get the details right. However, I for one will NEVER come to a reading or panel and nit-pick a writer to death over his or her errors. I won’t do it in my blog, either. Writers work hard, often writing as a second job, and get paid crap so that readers (in America) can still get a paperback for less than ten bucks. Frankly I feel lucky that anyone is writing books at all. So if a writer doesn’t get every detail right, well, I try to forgive that.

Hell if I know. The scene had the characters going to the opera house and the two mooks, Frick and Frack (Vienna in joke), were wearing black tuxedos, properly termed Smoking in German but esmoquin in Spanish.

I’m guessing the copyeditor proudly remembered his/her European tour and changed the word to what s/he’d heard, rather than have me use the word Smoking which sounds so dreadfully English, even if it’s proper German (as both my German mother and her college German literature professor stressed to me).

This is the same book where I had the ghost of Guy Fawkes call Dr. John Dee “A wicked old nigromancer” (the proper term for Fawkes’ era) and the copyeditor, being from Atlanta, changed it to the period alternate “negromancer,” which may not look like the dreaded N-word, but sure as hell looks like an embarrassing typo. The same copyeditor changed the Cockney girl’s “mingy” to “mangy.”

This experience led me to reinvent the wheel and send a cover letter to the copyeditor including all variant spellings, punctuation, regional and historical dialect and whatnot I was using throughout a work. Thankfully the next copyeditor I dealt with was nice and sane, and even sent me a personal note thanking me for the style sheet.

I recall a complaint of Crown of Stars, in which the reviewer ridiculed the tiny armies, noting the much larger Roman legions and Germanic hordes, or whatever. Only I was doing my best to be true to the times I was writing about (based on early medieval Europe).

But I too despair, knowing I will never get all the details right.

Was that the reason? For speaking Spanish in Vienna, I mean?

Love, C.

And I love that line, “The suspenders of disbelief were snapped.”

The other thing that really gets me is occassionally reading of a hero feeding his horse only grain. If you don’t feed your horse a ration consisting of at least 50% grass/hay (by dry weight), then your horse is going to colic and die on you. Also, even the best endurance horse can’t canter for hours on end. For long distance riding (like in competitions), most of the riding is done at a trot.

And so on.

I try my best to actually try any activity that is a major part of my story, including the upkeep and use of a sword/bow/staff/dagger/armor, glassworking, blacksmithing, horseback riding, camel riding, basket weaving, baking, etc. I’m lucky to live near an area where historical skills are preserved and taught, so I can at least consult with an expert even if I haven’t done something myself. Yet I still despair the number of small details I’m probably getting wrong. Worse still, sometimes I know that people are going to think I wrote something wrong just because the incorrect information about a subject has become such ‘common knowledge.’ Ah, well.

Of course, things can always be corrected in later publications and versions. My short story currently being adapted for film, “Clove Smoke,” had an incorrect military uniform detail in the published text, but the producer, on consultation with wardrobe (which included a military history buff), had an easy fix simply by changing wars from Vietnam to Iraq, where the detail fit, the detail being camouflage uniforms.