Missed Collection!

While I took vacation between jobs (started the new one today! yayy!), I took a vacation from reading those many other sites and blogs from which I cull the Collection posts which have become a feature here.  Those blogs and sites, however, have not taken a break - and, predictably, I missed out on some excellent pieces.  Hoping it's not too late, I hereby now share some of the backlog with you all ...

The History Blog, which originates several of our links today, shares the eye-popping digital color restoration of a 2800-year-old Japanese statue.  The photos here are truly worth the click!  HB's commentary, as always, is worth the read.

HB specializes, too, in historic forensics - and here we have the digitization of medieval bones.  I'll need to follow this project on Twitter, this is the sort of thing that makes Twitter so compelling for me.  I've already seen Tweets which look pretty fascinating ...

For those who find history's mysteries endlessly fascinating, take a look at the new light shone on the long-lost Roanoke Colony, also at the HB.

Take a look at a baby bottle shaped like a pig and tell me whether you wish you'd had one of these when your tots were small ...  I'll make you click through, to find out what kind of toy the bottles also served as, once baby drank enough to drain their use in feeding ...  (As to the theory of the absence of a baby in the burial, I hope the preserve the soil in case it is or may become possible to test whether an infant once lay in situ but is no longer corporeal.)

Stay tuned for a link on repatriation - but here is an expatriation of sorts.  The Dying Gaul visits Washington, DC.  Another innocent abroad ... ?  Sounds like perhaps not.

And the final History Blog link to share today - another repatriation from Britain, this time to Cambodia.  The statue is truly striking.  The blow against the crime of looting is striking in another way.

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Okay, and now to Janet Reid, always an excellent resource for those of us aspiring to publication - and always a good (and even encouraging) read!

Here, she discusses the hard, even difficult, numbers on the road from self-pubbing to traditional success.

Making me feel better and better that my book is not as short as "everyone" says a first novel "needs" to be.  Ahh, thank you Janet - we histfic authors do need room for the furniture and the art.

On the question of whether you have even ordered, paid for, and received the stove before you start trying to turn it on ...  "Cart, Meet Horse."  Yup.

And, at last - did I query before revising TWO more times?  Yes.  Yes, I did.  And, to me, two seemed to be the obvious answer.  Why would you NOT???  *Finishing final polishes before requerying one, and initial querying two, agents met at the 2013 Conference*