This is not (and cannot be!) an exhaustive list of all of the good information available on the internet, but it should help you get started with general research, and includes some of our favorite specialty sites, as well.

General Reference

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Boolean.pdf will help you get more out of your internet searching through the use of Boolean operators.

http://community.livejournal.com/little_details/781434.html has some great search engine tips.

http://worldcat.org searches holdings of libraries across the world (emphasis on US). Enter your zip code to find out if a library nearby owns the book you're after.

http://www.wikipedia.org/ is a free, searchable encyclopedia. Content is user-generated.

http://www.oed.com/ is the website of the Oxford English Dictionary. A subscription is required for use. If you attend or work at a university, you may have access to one through your library.

http://community.livejournal.com/little_details/profile links to a LiveJournal community called “Little Details,” and is actually a very specific kind of reference resource. Members use it to ask each other questions about tricky writing issues. With over 3,000 users watching the community, someone usually knows the answers.

Maps and Statistics

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html is the web address for the CIA World Factbook, which contains statistical information about modern countries. Useful for both introductory research for modern settings and worldbuilding-by-analogy.

http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/int/tpl/hme/MaHomePage.htm has some excellent maps of Europe.

http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/
climatenormals/climatenormals.pl?directive=prod_select&subrnum= has data about US climate normals.

Some of Caroline’s Research Links – British VisualReference

http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ “maps the streets, sites, and significant boundaries of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century London.”

http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/ “over 90,000 images and sounds from the UK and beyond.”

http://www.countrylife.co.uk/picturelibrary/ features quality images dating back to 1897.

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp is the site for the National Portrait Gallery (just what it sounds like!).

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ hosts “accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.”

Some of David’s Research Links – Assorted Topics

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5402 links to the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: “a dictionary of buckish slang, university wit, and pickpocket eloquence”

http://nineplanets.org/ “is an overview of the history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge of the planets, moons and other objects in our solar system.”

http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article_nc.php?id=59 provides “short summaries on various fighting disciplines from around the world.”

http://www.soundrangers.com/category-results.cfm?storeid=1&cat_id=0108 could be really useful next time you need to describe the sound of a joint dislocating. Soundrangers.com can be searched for reference sounds not involving bodily injury, as well!

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ is “the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet.”

Some of Robyn’s Research Links – Assorted Topics

http://www.palus.demon.co.uk/Sword_Stats.html gives measurements and weights for a variety of historical swords.

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/ is a comprehensive resource about “rhetorical terms current from antiquity through the Renaissance.”

http://sharkysoft.com/misc/vigenere/ will help you encode anything you like with a Vigenere Cipher.

“Why did you do it?” Iris asks
With confusion on her face and my hair in her hand
My own hands aren’t fit to hold
Anything at all, covered
As they are in the seafoam
Of red that is my own blood
Was
Nothing of mine is anymore
Already I feel myself losing
Depth, becoming shade
“Because… I loved him,” I answer
After too long a pause
And I did love him
His body, his mind, all
Except his Gods
“But didn’t you love your husband?”
“I did. I do? I don’t
Know… but yes.”
“But he died, and you
(Died too, Iris, foolish girl)
Lived, and now…”
“I had a city
To build, a brother
To punish, things
I had to do.”
“And are there now no more
Cities? Nothing left?
It is you who have died
Dido, the world lives still!”
She doesn’t understand
The Gods, even
The small ones can never know
What a woman knows
What she learns in her first breath
Before her first blood has ever passed
Some men, you live for, for
Others, you die.

Istahan, I soon discovered, is worse most days of the year. And the desert which surrounds it, the Barra, burns with heat. The scorching wind off the sands has the benefit at least of being dry. It makes your nose bleed, your lips crack, and your eyes sting from lack of moisture, but when you sweat in it you feel a bit of relief. You feel almost as though you’re accomplishing something.

Not so Mansoar. The city is paved, and as man-made as any other place I’ve been, but it’s still in the midst of a small jungle, on the rain-shadowed side of the Asha range. What the moisture lacks in taint of salt, it makes up for in quantity. I have never been anywhere so humid, so oppressively hot.

It’s enough to make a girl from the northern mountains weep, at times, but mostly I’ve gotten used to it. Looking out at the street today though, as the hot summer rain beats down on the cobblestones, I am struck anew by the strangeness of this place. The rain – which falls every day, like clockwork, in the afternoon – steams as it hits the sun-baked stone and brick. Falling water, water pooling, water rising back into the air, all mix together. The passers-by (the natives, the ones who are cheerfully, uncaringly soaked) seem almost to float. They swim as much as they walk, moving purposefully but slowly down the streets, following the rhythms of this place.

I wonder when I will learn that rhythm, or if I already have, as I lean my forehead against the cool stone of the windowsill. A bead of sweat rolls down from my hairline across the arch of my eyebrow and down, to drip from the end of my nose. The baby kicks, one sharp tap, before lazily rolling over. I cup my hand over my gravid belly, rubbing smooth circles on the tight skin. The discomfort, the heat, is so constant that the ache of it has made me numb. I thank the Gods that it won’t last much longer.

“Soon,” I murmur, not sure which one of us I’m reassuring. “Soon.”

We had just ordered a late lunch at the Dancing Needle, a tavern near the Plaza of Cloth. It was a nice place, clean, and with good food. We ate there often, and the bartender smiled and gestured towards the smaller dining room in a friendly way when we walked in the door. That private room, with its heavy, sound-muffling door, was one of the reasons that Emlyn favored the Dancing Needle so.

We had just gotten settled around the table in the center of the little room, having hung up our cloaks and, in my case, armor and weapons on the rack by the door, when a young woman came in to take our orders. She was new there, a comely girl with soft brown curls and dark, wide eyes. Emlyn gazed after her appreciatively for a long moment when she went to fetch our drinks.

It was when the girl came back with our drinks on a tray, murmuring, “the food will be just a few moments longer,” that it happened.

I was sitting across from Emlyn, and my view of her hands as she served the drinks off the tray was obscured by his body. Wynn, sitting to the side, saw what I did not.

“No!” he said, lunging out of his seat to knock Emlyn’s goblet from his hand, just as our employer was about to take a sip. “She put something in it!”

The goblet clattered to the tabletop, the red wine within it splashing over Emlyn’s sleeve. The girl’s eyes widened, and she drew a long, slender knife from her bodice.

“Emlyn!” I shouted, hooking the bottom rung of his chair with my foot and tugging hard. He tipped backwards onto the floor, chair and all, and the barmaid’s knife sliced through the air where his throat had been but a moment before.

The girl snarled in frustration, and then hissed in pain as Emlyn’s booted foot connected with her wrist from below, sending the knife flying out of her hand. She aimed a kick at Emlyn’s ribs as he rolled away, and then ran for the knife.

She had only managed a few steps before I caught up with her, lunging over the table and bringing her down to the ground under my weight. I pinned her hips between my knees, but she fought like a wild creature to get free, twisting beneath me until we were face-to-face. I captured her wrists briefly, but she wrenched free of my grip, clawing for my eyes. I growled as her nails tore at my skin and shifted my weight so that I could backhand her hard across the face. She responded by kneeing me in the tailbone as I leaned forward and then throwing her weight sideways against my thigh, pushing the two of us into a sideways roll across the floor.

Neither of us would submit to a pin, and we rolled over several times. She had the upper hand when we reached the wall, and tried to loosen my grip on her by slamming me into it, but I held on. I pushed off against the hard surface, breathless as I was from the impact, and attempted yet again to catch her body beneath mine.

As though he were much farther away than he could possibly be, I heard Emlyn shouting. “Get off her, Valmai! Give me a clear shot!”

I was distracted, and the girl rolled atop me again. She drove her elbow down hard against my stomach, just below my sternum. My lungs emptied at once, and I gasped for air. I felt her weight shift, and realized that she was reaching for something on the ground nearby, just past my head – the knife.

Still gasping for breath, I reached up to grip her shoulders and thrust my forehead up against the bridge of her nose as hard as I could. I was too late to prevent her getting the knife, but she reeled backwards onto her heels, blood streaming freely from her nose, instead of finishing me off. I scrambled up onto my knees and tried to grab her wrist, but she sliced at my hand with the knife and split the skin of my palm.

Her attention was focused on my left hand, and she never saw the right one coming. I balled it into a fist and delivered a wide, roundhouse punch, connecting with a satisfying cracking sound against the side of her jaw.

Too satisfying, as it turned out. Her head snapped sharply to the side under the force of my blow, and she slumped limply to the ground, knife falling from her outstretched hand.

No one said anything for a while, and my choking gasps as I struggled to take in air were the only sounds in the room.

“Merciful Night,” Wynn said, at last, breaking the relative silence. “Is she dead?”

Emlyn crossed the room and knelt at her side, feeling for a pulse.

“Yes.”

He turned to me, pulling a handkerchief out of his belt-pouch and pressing it against the side of my face.

“I told you to get off her, not snap her neck,” he murmured.

“My… Apologies…” I gasped.

“Are you all right?” He pulled the handkerchief away briefly to reposition it before pressing it against my face again, and I saw that it was spotted with blood.

“Fine,” I said, beginning to regain my breath. “And you?”

“The shirt is ruined,” he said, with a sidelong glance at his wine-soaked sleeve, “but otherwise I’m quite all right. Thank you.”

“I don’t think she was one of Sondra’s.” Wynn was holding the barmaid’s knife in one hand, and going through her belt-pouch with the other. “It’s a Valerian blade, not like what they use out in the Barra.”

“If not Sondra, then who?” I asked Emlyn. “Who else wants you dead?”

Wynn looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. “Who doesn’t want him dead?”

We were careful, after that, never to make a habit of eating at any one place too often.

Jael's Gender: A Story of Appropriation

“Don’t cry,” my mother would say, dragging the comb fiercely through my hair, once she finally got me to hold still long enough for some basic grooming. “Don’t cry. A woman must be stoic.”

I sat as still as I could, holding back the tears, biting my lips to keep from making a sound as little bursts of pain exploded across my scalp and my mother explained stoicism to me.

Some lessons were less painful than others.

“You’ll never be stronger than them,” Charlotte Hwang said to me, when I was an adolescent. I was the only girl in my age and rank range in the Dojang, and the boys were all bigger, stronger, for the first time in my life. I had been a tall child, but I am not a tall woman. “You’ll never be stronger, so you’ll have to be braver. That, I know you can do.”

I learned to be brave, to ignore my fear of a man’s fists, of his greater physical strength. I learned to spar with cunning where I lacked power, memorized the mechanics of the human body that allow a small woman, with her low center of gravity, to shift the weight of a much larger man. I found other ways to be strong.

These wise women helped to shape me into the woman I am today – a second degree black belt, an outspoken feminist, a woman who writes fantasy that isn’t all about escapism. They’ve made me strong, and stoic, and brave. I’m proud to be able to help shape the girls I come into contact with, in my turn.

A few weeks ago, I combed Charlotte’s daughter’s hair.

“I’m very proud of you,” I told her, as she sat perfectly still for me, even when I had to tug on the tangles to work them loose. “You’re being very stoic. You’re such a brave girl.”

“It hurts,” Esme said, calmly.

“I know, sweetheart,” I said. “But I have to do it. I’m almost done. You’re doing such a good job of holding still, I know it’ll only take a little longer.”

When I was finished, I gave her a hug, and said, “there, don’t you look pretty!”

I felt a flash of irritation with myself, while Esme admired herself in the mirror. She’ll have enough people telling her that she’s pretty, that she ought to be prettier, that prettiness is worth going through pain for, in her life, I thought. You should give her something more useful than that.

“So, Esme,” I said, as I was helping her down off the bathroom counter. “Now that you’re four, have you decided what you want to be when you grow up?”

“Do you think it would be hard to be a firefighter?”

“Well, you’d have to be very fit, and go through lots of training,” I said. “But if that’s what you want to do, I’m sure you can do it.”

Esme nodded, thoughtfully. “Or maybe I can be a police officer. Do you think that’s hard?”

“There are lots of kinds of police officer,” I said. “I’m sure you can find something that would be a good fit for you.”

“I would be the kind that carries handcuffs, and catches the bad guys. Because I’m very brave.”

“You are,” I agreed. “Very brave. Do you want to go pick out a video to watch, now?”

“Yes,” Esme said. “Carry me?”

I picked her up, and she wrapped her arms around my neck, and leaned her head against my shoulder.

“I did a good job, didn’t I? Holding still. Stoic.” She rolled the new word carefully in her mouth, memorizing its shape.

“You did,” I said. “I’m very proud of you.”

Could you kick
In those shoes
In that skirt
Could you run?
Could you drop everything
And yell
And scream
And fight?
Keep your nails short
Keep your teeth sharp
Keep your keys in your hand
And your hands free
Walk straight to your car
Don’t stop
Never stop
Lock all the doors
Put on the chain
Keep an eye on your drink
Go with a friend
Leave with your friend, not someone else
A plan only works if you stick to it
And when the man on the street asks you “Miss…?”
Don’t stop
Better to be rude than dead or worse
Trust your instincts
Trust your impulses
If you don’t like that guy
Cross the road
Get out of the elevator
Pretend you forgot something
If your gut says go, then go

Remember: Instep Knee Groin Solar plexus Throat Eyes
As he passes you, look at his eyes
And keep your eyes moving
Look alert
Look dangerous
Don’t look like a victim
Don’t listen to a walkman
Don’t isolate yourself
Keep yourself safe
Don’t panic

Always fear

Her origin is not so secret, she
Was a girl, like many others; but when
The little girls were taught that they must bend,
She schooled herself in ways to disagree.
She chose red over pink, and skinned her knee,
Running so fast she almost flew, and then
She knew she was strong, knew she could defend
Her silenced sisters – she could set them free.

She has no costume, doesn’t wear a mask,
And her weapons are not knives, or guns, but
Words; carefully chosen and swiftly hurled.
For daring to speak, she’s called bitch and slut –
Why does she do it then, this thankless task?
Because somebody has to save the world.

The first time we met, we both
Wore theory; so embarrassing
When two women wear the same gown to a party!
But feminism, that little black dress, is
One of those things that can be endlessly
Accessorized for a different look.
The Bible (me) and pornography (you)
Can seem alike from a distance, but really
They’re as different as sandals and stilettos.
With a conspiratorial, confident wink and
A whisper, you put me at ease.
“Phallologocentric,” you said, and I
Replied, “homosocial,” and we
Understood one another, and
Damn all the rest.

There were lots of meetings, after
That; soon, we had our novel
The way other couples have
A favorite café, or
A baby. And we
Shared sentences, and
Thoughts, the way others might
Share keys, or grocery bills.

But when I met you, when
You were real (you’ve always been
Real, really, but you
Understand) – when I had
Seen you, when I
Heard the words
Spoken in your own voice, terms
That I had only
Read, before – well!
How can I describe it? It was
A riot of language, and plans, and Diet Coke
Cans, and bottles,
In the foot-wells of my car, chocolate
Everywhere, and the two of us
Hand in hand and
Silver-ringed, subverting the male gaze
Of trees and aggressive kiosk vendors alike:
“Nice boobs, baby. Want to
Overthrow the patriarchy?”

That was the best meeting
Of all, and all
Too brief. A handful
Of days like water
Held in the hollow
Of my palm for a time, but
Inevitably seeking freedom between
My fingers. You slipped
Away like that, except
No ocean ever had so much
Luggage, and I have never watched,
Anxious, to be sure that a wave passed
Straight through airport security.

You left so many things behind! Your
Secret-message-writing bubblegum gun,
Leftover Greek,
A feathered mask, all
Scarlet and gold, the memory
Of your dancing, and my
Elbow at your shoulder in the dark
Theatre, subtext all over the screen.
And me,
Missing you. Yours –
Until we meet again
(And after).