Sometimes I literally forget what month it is or even what season it is, and I think it's the current month in Lothere. That may also be a sign that I spend too much time in front of computers and not enough in front of windows.

I can also tell you without hesitation what the current date is in Lothere but I'm lucky if I know what day of the week it is in the real world, much less the date. Does that count?

I recently had a teacher mention the Battle of Hastings and ask if we knew anything about it, and the only thing I could think of was "Hey, that's where Leofric got shot!" To this day I'm relieved I didn't actually put my hand up

I am beginning to have some rather proprietary feelings about Hastings myself. And a definite sense of injustice! I never cared for the Anglo-Saxons before I started this story, but now my opinion of the Normans is approximately Sigefrith's.

I hope someday I will get a chance to go there. As an untraveled American, the whole historical geography of England seems practically as fictional to me as my own story. It would be stunning, I think, to actually stand on that battlefield -- to realize that it really did happen. Or to go to France and see the Bayeux Tapestry and see the actual contemporary depiction of Harold and William, who actually did live.

And I think at that point I would start questioning where history ends and fiction begins. Perhaps it is in fact at that battlefield, where Leofric did and did not die -- where certain things really did happen and other things might have happened, for all we know...

I would love to see the Lake District and pick out the landmarks of Lothere (on 1/4 scale, sadly) and so on and so forth, but I would imagine that if I ever set foot on Hastings field, I would explode in a collision of parallel universes.