Recent content by SumnerH

The excellent Writing With Color blog that Chasejxyz linked upthread discusses why food analogies are often problematic. It specifically mentions olive-skinned as an exception: it's a neutral technical term that is generally acceptable, with the caveat that it doesn't necessarily imply that the...

Bitumen goes way back, and specifically in that region it fits your timeline. Asphalt - Wikipedia

Common word with all the vowels in order exactly once, including y: facetiously (there are others, abstemiously probably being the next most common). Longest word with only one vowel: strengths Favorite etymology: preposterous :From Latin praeposterus (“with the hinder part before, reversed...

The collection was mostly burned away in 48 BC when Julius Caesar sacked Alexandria. Seneca and Plutarch both wrote in the first century AD about the Great Library having been burnt by Caesar. Marc Antony transferred a ton of books and scrolls from the Library of Pergamum to help rebuild it...

With many countries, part of it is explained by miles driven. For instance, Belgium has 6.7 auto accident fatalities per 100,000 people each year, compared to 10.6 for the US. But Belgium has 7.3 fatalities per billion km driven, compared to 7.1 for the US. So the difference in deaths is...

The US is pretty middle of the pack as far as public health goes, relative to Western Europe. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, France, and Belgium all have higher mortality rates from alcohol (including DUI and direct drinking) than the US does. Greece, Spain, the Netherlands...

I agree. On the other hand, it's important to remember that not all (or even most) readers are writers. I try to limit truly unusual words to places where they'll help the story without bumping the reader. Things such as: Places where they're used in enough context that either the meaning...

Another explanation for sugar in a cooler climate would be the earlier production of the sugar beet; in our world, it wasn't until the early 1800s that the sugar beet was widely grown, but once it had the growth was huge: by 1880, more than 50% of the world's sugar production was from sugar...

What about just "head off with Fitz somewhere else" or "sneak off/go off/run off/etc..."? FWIW, I'm a 40-something American native and "go stag" sounds extremely dated to me--I've heard it before, but generally from older generations and nostalgia havens like Archie Comics. Sidebar: It's...

Balloons could be enchanted or enhanced somehow, or wind currents controlled to make normal balloons more practical. It's a fantasy world, you have many options. Maybe there are flying ships, magic carpets, flying brooms, tamed dragons, or chariots pulled by flying horses. Or maybe the...

I use it habitually, but there are times when it can cause more ambiguity than the alternative. Tweaking the example from above, if you make the "stripper" singular then the problem reverses: "We invited the stripper, Stalin and JFK." "We invited the stripper, Stalin, and JFK". The former is...

Dry wine just means that it isn't sweet; it shouldn't be bitter. You're probably reacting more to tannins than to dryness; they're a byproduct of heavily oaked wines, which are popular today but were less common in the middle ages. Most medieval wines weren't aged nearly as long as modern ones...

Man vs. Nature is a classic way of handling this in literature. The Martian was a book before it was a movie. There are a bunch of children's survival/nature books that fit, such as Island of the Blue Dolphins (mostly), the Blue Lagoon, Hatchet, and Lost On A Mountain In Maine. The nature...

She's pulling your leg--unless you're headed to a peninsula or island location (e.g. Juneau), driving to Alaska is no problem. The Alaska-Canada highway opened to the public in 1948, and connects to normal road service into Fairbanks and Anchorage via Alaska state routes 2 and 1 respectively.

There's a bit more precise definition than just "books with chapters"; "chapter books" are the interim books between picture books/See Spot Run stuff and full-on YA/adult novels--something like Little House on the Prairie or Are You There God It's Me, Margaret? is probably too advanced to be...