Saw an interview with William Boyd explaining his research methods for historical novels. Basically, he reads a couple of hundred books about the period to ensure every detail is authentic.
Long time, no blog, largely because I've been battling away at a willfully intractable novel that resolutely declines to turn into a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
One would have thought that competence and contentment would be fairly close companions, but in my experience they can be poles apart and inversely proportionate.