Am ripping through the latest from one of my favorite authors, Nene Adams. The long-awaited book 4 in the Gaslight series, The Curse of the Jade Dragon. Although I enjoyed the previous three, this one is the strongest, IMO, from the standpoint of both story and execution. Well-structured, well-written, and, as ever, well-researched. Reading the Gaslight series was one of the main reasons that I began writing stories set in Victorian times. I am also a big fan of Adams’ (sadly) stand-alone pirate book, The Water Witch. Aw, hell. All of her books are outstanding, and if you’re looking for something to read, you really can’t go wrong with her stories. Check them all out here.
Was gifted last week with a doming set, a little drill, and a stash of foreign coins, some of them quite old. Now that the most recent bag commission has been finished, and the edits have not yet been handed down from BSB, I think it’s going to be time for a bit of metalwork.
The coins are not worth a lot of money, as far as I can tell, but there are quite a few that I found historically and aesthetically awesome, including:
(1) A set of well-worn Victoria pennies and half-pennies from the mid to late 1890s. The extraordinarily well worn condition makes them worth less monetarily, but SO much more interesting to me. I love to run my fingers over them and imagine who might have held them, and what goods and services they might have been used to procure.
(2) A coin from Vichy France (1942), in which the words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité were replaced, creepily enough, by Travail, Famille, Patrie.
(3) Some cute little farthings from the 1930s, with the bird on one side.
There were also some Israeli coins, and some lovely ones from Turkey.
I am enchanted by this tutorial for making penny buttons, and might just end up making myself a few sets.
Am experimenting with insomnia tonight. Will decaf coffee keep me up all night? If so, is the effect physical, psychological, or just very sad?
Jess Faraday 