I believe that although having your family and friends read your work could sometimes be useful, most of the time it’s not. As a writer we need constructive criticism and our family and friends are not usually able to give it.
This isn’t always true, of course, and if you have someone close to you who [...]

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Writing a novel is not an easy thing to do. You have put time and effort into your planning stages and built your character profiles, now it’s time to… write! Remembering what was said in Beginnings and Endings, let’s take a look at the middle.

Constructing a Scene
Every scene in a story has both a verbal [...]

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In 1327 BC, Tutankhamun was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
On 25 November 1922 AD his tomb was discovered by a team of archaeologists lead by Howard Carter.
Modern archaeologists began excavating the valley seriously in 1898, but they never found a tomb with its treasures still intact due to tomb robbers. [...]

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Population figures for the Middle Ages are not exact, so it is difficult to know how many people died of the Black Death before the epidemic stopped in the 1350s. However, it seems likely that over all Europe at least one person in four died from it. In many places, the figure was much higher. [...]

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People who caught the plague first started to shiver, and then they became feverish. They began to sweat, cough up blood and vomit. Their heads, backs and limbs ached violently. They felt giddy. Even the dim light of the cottage hurt their eyes. They could not sleep, and diarrhoea set in. They felt dazed, and [...]

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Deciding where to start your story is probably one of the hardest decisions you will have to make because the first pages, if not lines, of your story will decide its outcome. If you can’t get the reader interested straight away you will lose that reader forever (and that reader just might be a publisher [...]

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The Italian town of Genoa was one of the busiest ports in Europe. Ships sailed from Genoa to trade all over the Mediterranean and into the Black Sea. Some goods were even shipped around the coast of Spain and France to England. Merchants traded many goods from Asia such as spices, precious metals and silk. [...]

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Introduction
When we think of chivalry, the most likely image to spring to mind is one of the perfect gentleman - an impeccably mannered individual who displays gentle and courteous behaviour, especially towards women.
The word ‘chivalry’ has its earliest roots in the French word for horse, cheval, and a knight in that same languare is called [...]

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The ancient Egypians didn’t only mummify people. They also mummifed animals.
Some of the most popular animal mummies were ancient Egyptian cats, which were said to be looked after by the god Bastet. The bodies of favourite cats were taken to the city of Bubastis. There they were embalmed and wrapped in cloth before being buried [...]

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A Scribe’s Education
At the beginning of Egyptian history, in the time known as the Old Kingdom (about 2575 BC to 2130 BC), scribes passed on their knowledge from father to son, in their own homes. This system was eventually changed to one in which boys were sent to special schools. The schools where built within [...]

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