Fun New (Old) Words

My wonderful husband bought me a great gift for Christmas -- the Forgotten English page-a-day calendar.

It's filled with old words which have fallen out of usage. And, in honor of my love of both language and the past, I'm going to share some of them with you, off and on.

My current favorite, which I must use in a novel -- chamberer. This would denote pretty much what you'd probably guess: "a frequenter of ladies' chambers; a gallant; one who indulges in wantonness; a concubine". And also some you might not: "a woman who attends a bedchamber; a chambermaid; an effeminate man; a carpet-knight".

Personally, I can't wait to find out what "carpet-knight" means, aside from chamberer. It sounds more exotic than a mere chamberer, as if a carpet-knight were a brave man who protected all floor coverings from shoes and pets. I'm tempted to make a "cut a rug" joke here, but will refrain, in case carpet-knight turns out to mean merely someone who sleeps on the floor.

J.M. Grant

Welcome, All Who Enter Here

Greetings. I'm an author of historical fiction. While I can and do delve into the far past, I tend to prefer the mid-1700's through to the early 1900's, prior to WWI.

Unlike many historical writers I know, I wouldn't actually have wanted to live in these times. However, growing up I always wanted to visit them, to be able to see 'what it was like'. Movies and books provided that, but not always enough, and not always what I wanted to see. Or, many times, not how I saw it in my own mind. Hence, I write what my mind sees now.

I spend a great deal of time on research -- my shelves are filled with books covering different time periods, including college textbooks. Research can be a trap -- it's so fascinating to read and ingest it becomes easy to ignore that I only need one fact to keep on writing.

But keep on writing I do. I hope to share some of that process with you, as well as research tips (which I hope you will also share with me), and perhaps some historical tidbits along the way.

As we stand less than a week away from the new year, I raise my glass to years past. Some were better than others, some were less exciting than the ones before or after, but each year has at least one fascinating instance within it. My job is to find and share those stories in some way.

J.M. Grant