Prohibition

 It took me a little while to get back on track with my novel — our dog Emma has been sick with pneumonia for the past month, and all of the vet visits and medications and coupage, on top of everything else in my life, has hamstrung my efforts a little bit.

But I'm finally getting started on my research again.  Last week I started researching potential guns for Ruby to carry, and I think I've found one, but more on that in another post.  This post is about Prohibition — or, more accurately, Ken Burns's Prohibition.

My mom had watched all three episodes of the show back when I was working on the first draft of the novel, and recommended it to me then.  I was lucky enough to find them in their entirety on YouTube (otherwise I would have had to get the DVDs from Netflix, since it's not available streaming anywhere else, and I didn't want to buy it from iTunes because I wouldn't have been able to watch it on my Nook Tablet).

I've watched the first two episodes, and so far I'm impressed.  They provide fantastic information about the era — including some things that I should be able to use in my novels — and being able to see footage from the 1920s, including the entrances and interiors of the speakeasies, is invaluable as it will enable me to create a more realistic-seeming setting for my characters.

If you are interested in the 1920s, I highly recommend watching these, especially episodes 2 and 3 (since the first episode is more about the years leading up to the passage of the 18th Amendment — it's great as background, but not really about the 1920s themselves).

Enjoy!