Zilla Novikov

Bread Santa please stop ruining Regency romances for me:

"Thus did the Tories of England long fancy that they were enthusiastic for the Kingdom, the Church and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the admission that their enthusiasm was only for Ground Rent."

"Mathematics was not the only topic covered at the university—their subject matter was limited only by the expertise of their teachers, and, as any Man might offer to run a course, the curriculum was as diverse as the populace."

Not a line I'd select if I was picking best lines. It's a line with a job to do and it's doing it. But the whole point of this game is it's whatever line comes next after yesterday's line. And today, this is it.

People often ask me how I remember my stories. I do it by thinking about them until they become a part of me.

Stories have jobs to do so I think about how they will perform in six specific ways:

PLOT - The essential structure of the story.
You have to know the plot to tell the story.

CRAFT - The creative skills that bring the plot to life.
You have to craft the story to tell it with style.

ABOUT - The themes that explore the human condition.
You have to know what a story is about to tell it well.

MEANING - The lesson within the story.
You need to know the meaning of a story to tell a story meaningfully.

PURPOSE - The reason for telling the story.
You need to know the purpose of the story to tell the story purposefully.

RESPONSIBILITY - The issues you must take into account when you tell the story.
You need to think about your responsibilities to tell a story responsibly.

-- Carmel Page (sharing this from one of her writing workshops, with permission)

My current work in progress novel--Women's Wrongs--well, here's the blurb:

> An autistic sapphic mathemagician attempts to find love in the era of the English Regency and French Revolution, and accidentally destabilizes two governments; as told by an inebriated 19th century Anarchist being paid by the word.

One part of this novel is a digression where the characters visit an Anarchist utopian commune and the author pontificates on features of an ideal society.

Any idea for book recommendations for me to read to guide my narrator's vision of utopia? I've been reading a lot of Bread Santa but he thinks that communes should use concensus-based decision making and I've been an activist long enough to know better than that. And I'm not looking for utopian visions set in the impossibly far future where--this needs to be a somewhat realistic next step for a French Revolution era community.

Ideally book recs for stuff that's out of copyright, to match the vibe of Women's Wrongs, but I'll take what I can get!