It's a YA historical romance, set in the Neolithic period. Boy, was this a challenge for me. I'm a major history nerd but the Neolithic was a bit ... new... to me. (Ha. That was a joke. Neo-- new-- I'll show myself out). After months of research, luckily aided by my college's ample library, I wrote a book.
In the time period ETERNAL EMBRACE takes place in, life hadn't changed much for thousands of years, but it was slowly starting to morph from the hunter-gatherer society we've all read about into the agrarian lifestyle that we all KNOW. This time in history is so fascinating because it's so reachable. These people lived in a place we all carry deep in our hearts and memories. A simple village, sturdily built, populated by farmers and herders. Some nomadic societies lingered, but as humankind figured out that raising crops and herds meant they didn't have to follow the food, they planted roots, literally and figuratively.
Survival for most people doesn't change much more until the Industrial Revolution. Sure, politics and nations and peoples and cultures came and went, but the structure of humanity stayed with raising crops and livestock to survive. We still do it today. This time period was a cusp between the world we know and a world we can only imagine.
Of course, with the new drive to raise livestock and crops, both those things become very important to the people of this time. Not only survival, but currency comes in the form of said livestock and crops, and a family without them will fare poorly indeed.
Which is important for my main character, as it turns out.
More tomorrow :)
Ooh, that would be hard to write about. You'd have to totally abandon all your modern conceptions and try to think in the mindset of someone from that long ago... wow. Go you for taking on such an interesting challenge!
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