Had my first professional historical conference today at the Southern Conference of British Studies in Dallas Houston. Pretty great experience, confidence-builder and inspired me to keep working on my historical work while doing creative writing. Plus, it was an excuse for me to put on a suit and act like an adult.
The paper I presented was a paper comparing women munitions workers (munitionettes) in Glasgow and Paris during WWI and the far-left-wing agitators' inability to court them to their cause. For time constraints I had to cut out the most interesting parts, like when women in Glasgow would beat up cops with rolling pins, and in Paris women strikers could only be stopped by armed battalions on horseback. Oh well. The boring stuff is for the conferences and my fellow historians; the interesting stuff will be for the broader public.