In the earliest incarnation of WITCH I tried to avoid naming the currency, opting instead for ‘gold,’ ‘silver,’ and ‘copper.’ One of my first (and best) readers objected. ‘Too generic,’ he told me. ‘Call them pounds, francs or dollars, but call them something.’

I thought about what he’d said. I struggled to differentiate the word ‘franc’ from the history of the French peoples. Pounds, likewise, tilted my thoughts towards the United Kingdom. If I wanted to create a plausible new world, I realized, I needed to learn the history of currency.

Which, you know, thank heavens for wikipedia. But another problem nagged at me. How many different varieties of currency were in play in the American colonies in the 16th century? The British, Spanish, and French (to name just three) all had influence in the New World. I didn’t need to develop a single currency system; I needed three or four.

And I needed to preserve that information so I could refer to it later.

(to be continued.)