Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Scorpion House is up on Kindle!

Serendipity: The art of finding something good when you're not looking for it. (my definition) If you read Scorpion House you'll find a bit about ancient Egyptian herbal medicine woven into the story. It's all, as far as I can determine,  accurate. But how I came by this information was pure serendipity.


Strychnine tree on Kitchener's Island,
 near Aswan, Egpyt. Misclassified, but
who cares?
First off, my MS degree is in Botany with a major in Plant Physiology. My research was primarily on an obscure compound called phytochrome, a blue pigment present in some plants but in such tiny amounts you'll never actually see any. When I went to Egypt, I already had the characters of Dr. Lacy Glass and her soon-to-be-friend, Dr. Paul Hannah in my mind. If Lacy's area of expertise was to be plant pigments (chosen, I'll admit, for convenience since I already knew something about it) how was I to work that into a story about archaeology, ancient Egypt, and exploration? Pigment. Color. Paint. Dye. Paint on walls of tombs. Dye on fabric. Linen fabric also found in tombs. Got it.

I needed to know more about all the ways the ancient Egyptians used plants. They ate them, of course, they used herbs in making medicines, and vegetable dyes on fabrics. But which ones, specifically? What plants grew along the Nile around 1500 B.C. and what did the people know about how to use them? As I made my way down river from Aswan to Luxor and finally to Cairo, I asked every guide, scoured every bookstore, and learned exactly nothing. Plants? Medicines? Recipes? Why are you asking? Strange woman.

Ricinus communis, near Aswan, Egypt.
Ricin is the most toxic compound known.
 A ricin pellet in the tip of an umbrella killed Georgi Markov.
On my very last day, our group was in Cairo with a morning scheduled for the Egyptian museum. I needed a lot more time than that but, omigod, our guide got the time mixed up and made us leave an hour early. I had barely gotten started when I had to leave through a veil of tears.

There's a book shop on the right as you leave the museum and I glanced at the display prominent at its entrance. An Ancient Egyptian Herbal by Lise Manniche, an Egyptologist and a true expert in the very things I needed to know. That book, now falling apart, and my email contacts with Dr. Manniche, have helped me no end in writing this story.

Is everything in the book 100% accurate? Of course not. It's fiction.

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