{"id":42203,"date":"2012-04-09T18:46:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T18:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/04\/09\/unintentional-symbolism\/"},"modified":"2012-04-09T18:46:38","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T18:46:38","slug":"unintentional-symbolism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/04\/09\/unintentional-symbolism\/","title":{"rendered":"Unintentional symbolism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Symbolism and motifs are one of those integral parts of a good, solid novel that I tend to overlook. \u00a0Either that, or I make it uber-obvious. \u00a0I&rsquo;ve been trying to explore some possibilities for motifs in\u00a0<em>A God Grown Old\u00a0<\/em>and before last night I was totally stumped.<\/p>\n<p>Then I started reading up on historical Libyan food and dining rituals. \u00a0One of the things that stuck out to me was that three cups of green tea are consumed at the end of every meal. \u00a0While green tea is by no means native to Libya, it does appear to be a commodity they purchased from the traders coming in from the Far East as early as 800 BC. \u00a0That fits nicely into my timeline, so I think sharing a cup of green tea is something two of my characters will do as a representation of their relationship.<\/p>\n<p>I had to make a trip to the library the other day (avoiding the bus tunnels as long as I could and all that) and ended up walking out with two useful books: The Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers and The Hero With an African Face by Clyde Ford. \u00a0I needed information on the history of the karkadann (my previously made-up unicorn species has been switched to this no-less-elusive but appropriately &ldquo;real&rdquo; critter from Arabian mythology) as well as a little extra depth to my African characters and their belief system. \u00a0I perused Ford&rsquo;s book this morning and pulled out quite a few useful gems for the Princess, and I&rsquo;ll take a look at the unicorn book very soon.<\/p>\n<p>Research is surprisingly fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Symbolism and motifs are one of those integral parts of a good, solid novel that I tend to overlook. \u00a0Either that, or I make it uber-obvious. \u00a0I&rsquo;ve been trying to explore some possibilities for motifs in\u00a0A God Grown Old\u00a0and before last night I was totally stumped. Then I started reading up on historical Libyan food &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/04\/09\/unintentional-symbolism\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Unintentional symbolism&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7957,11668,11556,9029,11688,5289,11730,721,6995,11],"class_list":["post-42203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-god-grown-old","tag-africa","tag-aggo","tag-author","tag-green-tea","tag-myths","tag-symbolism","tag-symbols","tag-writer","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}