Curious about what’s behind Pastiche? Explore my author notes about the historical details behind the book.
These notes do contain some plot spoilers! Otherwise, they’re as shared at the end of the book, with edits only to share the most useful links and cleaning up some formatting for the web. Posted March 2026.
My thanks (as always) to Kiya Nicoll, my inestimable friend and editor. And I owe a lot to my early readers, including Erin and Anne Libby (along with half a dozen others) for making this book much better through their comments and suggestions.
The Edgartons have turned into a family making many repeated appearances. To get the complete list, check out my authorial wiki. Under the “Series and Arcs” section you’ll find “The Edgarton Family arc” which has the most updated version of what’s out and what’s to come.
I should start with the most complicated piece of this book: The Guard. I wrote this book in the winter of 2019. I started editing it in May of 2020, a week or so before the massive protests (rightful protests) around police brutality and the death of George Floyd and far too many others. The news from Minneapolis hit me particularly hard: I lived there for over a decade, at the edge of one of the neighbourhoods most affected.
I knew, long before I started this book, that The Guard worked differently than police in the United States or modern Britain (which has a rather different police history). Those protests and the real injustices they brought up, however, made me certain I needed to explain not only how it was different, but why.
In short, it’s a lot easier with magic.
As explained in the book, the Guard take an oath that binds them specifically in how and when they use magic in pursuit of their duties. Much like the oaths each person in the magical community takes at the age of twelve to protect magic, these oaths are self-enforcing. Someone who abuses their power or position for self-benefit won’t be doing so for terribly long.
They are also anchored rather firmly in Arthuriana. Richard’s love of chivalry has a comfortable home here, the idea of protecting those who need help and protection is at the core of what the Guard should be doing.
And yet, those oaths are also quite limiting. As Richard notes, the oaths he takes as Lord are very specific about a particular set of duties. The oaths a magistrate takes are about performing a specific set of rather complex magical actions, and do not particularly limit the magistrate’s activities outside of the formal court settings. It’s a tentative balance, helped by magic, but magic doesn’t solve everything.
On the other hand, Albion desperately needs its Guard. A community spread out over a substantial distance but with access to nearly instant transportation (through the portals) needs a unified way to respond to everything from a natural disaster to a fleeing criminal to a missing child. Or for that matter, notice-me-not wards failing or a dangerous magical creature too close to people. Individual village Guards report back to the Guard Hall in Trellech, who then send out suitable help.
And on the Trellech side, as you see by some of Richard’s comments, while there are some specialists, many of the Guard take on whatever cases come up, since they also handle a number of fairly routine magical checks and safety concerns.
On to the rest of the book.
First, the title. A pastiche, if you’re not familiar with the word, is a creative work in the style of someone else. I chose it for the title here, both because of the art forgery and because of the way that Richard and Alysoun are trying to form their lives in a way that does not actually suit them.
Wedding customs in Albion vary, but the First Families trace their origins back to Rome, and they have over the years built up their own customs over the historical Roman scaffolding. Many of the details here – the flowers and palla, particularly – are Roman. Others, like the burning flame on the cup, are taken from traditional omens, with a magical flair.
Veritas itself does date back to the Romans, at least in the basic outline, as you can see by the baths. To be honest, this is here partly because I’ve always wanted a Roman bathing setup all my own, but also because it fit particularly well with Alysoun’s needs. The ability to go from a cool bath to a hot one, to steam, has always seemed the height of luxury to me. With magic, a hypocaust system is an eminently efficient method of heating a manor house, too.
The earthquake in chapter 3 actually happened (and as Richard says, there were no casualties.) It was centred on Swansea in Wales. The heatwave that summer is also entirely historical.
I never directly explain what Alysoun’s chronic illness is, largely because it wasn’t named in the non-magical literature until later in 1906. Then, they’d have called it fibrositis, and now we call it fibromyalgia. Alysoun’s insistence on wanting to have a good life despite the pain, and her deep fondness for immersion in a hot bath both come from one of my dear friends who has fibro. One of the things that’s particularly frustrating about it is the variation without being able to sort out why one feels better some days and much worse on others.
The variations of stained glass are much as they are discussed in the book itself: it is an art form that has had a rich history for a surprisingly long time. The trick they use to track it down is a variant on the doctrine of sympathies, one of my favourite magical theories, partly because it allows some truly ridiculous applications. (Look up the powder of sympathy and the use of a dog and a knife to figure out longitude in the 1600s…)
The library windows in the museum being made of translucent sheets of stone are like the walls of the Beinecke Library, the special collections library at Yale University. I’ve come across occasional other references to the technique, but it was a natural application here.
Both Gil and Richard served in the horrible war and fighting in the Sudan (also known as the Mahdist War), though about ten years apart. Gil was injured in 1884, but he was spared the siege of Khartoum. Richard served briefly, including at the battle of Omdurman in 1898. The fighting was bloody, brutal, and horribly managed imperialism. Both of them have very complex thoughts about the army that you’ll see a bit more of in the future.
Ghost orchids are an exceedingly rare species of orchid that grow on trees, rather than in the soil. They require very specific growing conditions, but do in fact sometimes appear in a fairly sizeable number. Only a few samples exist in museums, though.
Duelling is of course a classic activity through the centuries, and Albion is no different. Many people duel for style or show, but Richard and Magni take it seriously, as a deadly martial art. You may imagine my references to various authors and styles to be quite similar to historical fencing manuals.
Finally, the Penelopes are the forensic experts of the Guard, the people you go to when you need some arcane magic unwoven, or a new technique to investigate a particular crime. They’re named for Penelope from Homer’s Odyssey, unweaving her work every day.
If you haven’t had enough of the Edgartons yet, The Fossil Door features their son, Gabriel. Gabe is a delight and entirely their child, in all the best possible ways. You’ll also get a lot more about the Penelopes, and more about Mason. Charlotte’s romance is in Perfect Accord (out on February 9, 2024).
Magni and Gil’s romance is now available in a novella set in 1884, Four Walls and a Heart. They also appear as secondary characters in various of the later Edgarton family books, and live at Veritas from the mid-1930s.
Several of the Land Mysteries books set during the Second World War focus on Gabe and Rathna, particularly Old As The Hills and Upon A Summer’s Day. At the end of the war, Alysoun is involved in solving an old mystery in Three Graces. I do recommend reading the Land Mysteries books in series order (especially the first two here, which form a duology around a specific question) but the others can be read in any order.
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