When I was in high school, I for some reason had the bright idea to write a Steampunk-ish novel called The Silk Top Hat Society. It was going to be an action/adventure with a touch of magic and mystery in which a group of old-timey people come across several magical silk top hats, each of which would give the wearer a specific otherworldly ability. I believe there was super speed, invisibility, super strength… maybe teleportation or something.
I decided to write this novel… despite not knowing a single damn thing about history other than like… George Washington did exist at one point, but he’s definitely dead now. To give people an idea, I often say, “I’m so bad at history that I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning.” My “research” for this novel was various movies and TV shows I’d seen (historical accuracy unconfirmed, but definitely unlikely) as well as my best friend, Liz. This led to one of the more memorable exchanges I had with her using the relic known as AOL Instant Messenger or AIM during which I type-shouted at her, “Did they wear hats??”
I was thinking about how old-timey people often wore hats as a rule—not just the magical ones they encountered of a summer day, but like… regulation hats and bonnets that people are always wearing in things like The Crucible and Pride & Prejudice. But when did the practice of wearing hats start? When did it end? Did they wear them indoors and outdoors? Was it a hard-and-fast rule, or up to the preference of the individual? Those questions didn’t even take into account that the answers would definitely vary by country, and probably several other factors. I knew none of the answers to these questions, but I’d decided it was a good idea for me to write a novel that was set in a time period that occurred previous to “present day.”
Cut to… well… present day.
I find myself in the privileged position of not knowing what, if anything, I can share about my upcoming works. This has never happened before. I used to vomit my ideas onto this blog with abandon, sharing sample pages and intimate details of my writing process. Now that I AM GOING TO BE PUBLISHED (SPECIFICALLY IN MAY 2026), I’m pretty sure I can’t do that anymore. So I’m going to be really, really vague.
I like satire. The book that IS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED (SPECIFICALLY IN MAY 2026) is satire. So was one of the other ideas I pitched to my editor. I had one more idea for a satirical novel beyond the aforementioned two, but I knew I could never write it because it was historical in nature. That, and I was concerned people would think I was cribbing from Nimona and Shrek. I wasn’t. The similarities occurred to me only after I came up with my book idea, but who wants to deal with the headache of smugly and self-righteously saying, “There’s no such thing as an original idea anymore” over and over again? Not me!
Anyway, since I thought it was a good idea, but a touch derivative and also WAY out of my wheelhouse to write (“Did they wear hats?” haunts me to this day), I made myself accept that it was only ever going to exist as a concept in my head.
For reasons I’m pretty sure I cannot get into, things changed, and I am now writing pieces of that book. Just pieces.
And it happened again! I was writing a scene that takes place in a sitting room, and was absolutely stymied by what words to use to describe what the characters were sitting on. Which means, you guessed it, I now have to scream into Google: Did they have couches?? (I suppose I could ask Liz again, but she is very busy opening a book shop and also it just wouldn’t be the same without AIM. RIP AIM.)
NOTE TO MY SISTER: I will absolutely be bothering you about this at some point. You’re just working full time and running after a freshly-walking baby. You’re probably not busy.
When was the couch invented? The sofa? The divan? What did people sit on to eat? To relax? To pray? What were the things they sat on made out of? Did rich people have more cushions than poor people? Did they have some sort of old-timey word for couches and chairs that no one uses anymore?
What the fuck is a settee??
Needless to say, I am not well-equipped to write historical fiction or any form of fantasy novel (fantasy novels always seem to have their roots in historical time periods from the real world). This will likely be my one and only foray into the genre, and I hope I don’t flub it too badly. I also hope that if I do flub it, you will find it in your heart to forgive me.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go Google the history of couches.
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