I finally, finally finished the last historical fix-its on Congress of Shadows yesterday and sent it out to my first round of trusted critiquers. Whew! (I will, of course, find a zillion more historical problems later...but at least I've fixed the first set I've noticed.) It's been absolutely maddening to search through historical maps of Vienna (so little detail! gaah!) to try to figure out what was or wasn't there in 1814...For instance, my hero spends one scene walking around on the Moelker Bastei, on top of the old inner-city walls, and then he turns onto Schreyvogelgasse, a street I've walked along several times. I could totally visualize the whole thing, I double-checked it against all the maps...and then, yesterday, I discovered that from 1813-1830-something, the head of the Burgtheater in Vienna was Herr Schreyvogel - which means that I'm pretty sure the street must have been renamed after he retired. However, I've been totally unable to find out what the street was called before then...oh well. I scratched out the street name and tried to make the scene work without that detail.

I guess I just have to do the best I can to be as accurate as possible, and then try to forget about the stuff I can't fix. But the academic inside me is shouting "But you don't know that that was there in 1814! How can you live with the possibility of incorrect history?"

Sigh. I spend a lot of time as I write trying to quash that voice inside me.

One interesting thing I found in this round of revisions was that my favorite soundtrack for the novel changed. In the first draft, I listened over and over to Evanescence, a lovely Goth-metal band whose music perfectly expressed my heroine's character and dilemmas. In the second draft, all I wanted to listen to was Mozart - especially his String Quintet in G minor. It set the mood just perfectly. The moment I heard the music start, I was in Vienna in 1814. (Okay, Mozart died 13 years before my book was set, but so what? His music worked perfectly for me anyway.)

So now I'm wondering about other people's soundtracks. What music are you listening to now as you write (or do other kinds of work)? Is it the same music you were listening to for your last project? (Or your last draft of the same project?)

And of course I'm always looking for music recommendations... :)