It's 1965.

Natalia (lead character) is reading The Portable Dorothy Parker.

But what edition? What does it look like? What would a girl of currently modest means who has limited resources have as her copy of a classic.

*watch Barb research*

A-ha! There was a paperback edition published in 1963. Seventeenth printing by Viking press. Yes! Perfect! But oh nooooes, I can't find a picture of it. I just want to see what it looks like. I want to know what it cost in 1963.

Is this a major plot point?

No. Not in the slightest other than to illustrate that my girl has some pretty eclectic reading tastes.

It's simply a little throwaway detail. But dang it, it's imperative if I mention it, even in passing, even with the barest of details, that I... Get... It... Right.

A-ha! Alibris. Alibris has copies of it! But oh nooooes, redux, no pictures of it.

A sane person would just keep it to a generic description. Just call it a paperback and be done with it. Even current publishers at Viking probably don't know there was a paperback edition that was the seventeenth printing released in 1963.

Right.

This is me we're talking about.

Meet Dottie. The newest member of my library.



544 pages.

$1.65

I can haz sanity now?

In researching what New York City Top 40 Radio sounded like, circa 1964.

Sound Files from WMCA's "Good Guys."

If anything can put you right there—the sounds, the sheer knowledge that what you're listening to belongs to real people and is the sounds of how they lived.

It's as close to a time machine as I'll ever get.

For anyone else, this is completely random stuff found while surfing. However, if you're me, this qualifies as research. No, seriously, it does and Selah, quit laughing, dammit.

The time stamp for the video is wrong—according to what I've uncovered, Top of the Pops didn't broadcast in color until 1969, although of course, the song was a number one for Petula Clark in 1965.

But that's less important than the boys. Just look at the boys! They're... prancing. Practically cavorting. They're so... so... twee.



It's still a freakin' great song, though.

I've never before attempted any kind of historical.

You see this?



Yeah, that entire top shelf is comprised strictly of research books purchased for this project. Actually, the entire bookcase? As in the physical case itself? Had to buy that too, because I was running out of space and I was tired of tripping over books. And they're such lovely, lovely books full of Nifty! Trivia! and Pretty! Pictures!

And this?



That's just a couple pages worth of character notes.

And I'm only on the damned synopsis!

If'n I go mad before I get to the end of this, y'all promise to visit me at the funny farm and bring me Cabana Boys?

Why on earth did both of these characters (whose story I don't even actually know yet, btw) but why did they both have to be chefs?

Why did she have to be a pastry chef?

This is very, very bad.

Because now I want to make a tres leches cake topped with a flan layer and circled with dark chocolate ganache-filled piroulines.

Mind you, I don't need to make it.

I just want to.

This is gonna be a difficult story already. Damn them.