Celebration and Music

How was your weekend? I hope you were able to celebrate an awakening of Spring before snow returned, and that life is good, whatever you celebrate. Our Holy Saturday filled me with joy for sure. I have the privilege of singing in our tiny choir and I’m not sure if Water of Life or the […]

What to write this year?

The Bluestocking Belles met yesterday. It is always a challenge to get everyone in a conference call due to the spinning earth. We have members in Australia, New Zealand, San Francisco, Florida, South Carolina and, of course, the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania. We were plotting our next holiday anthology. Our overall story trope is […]

A Long Road Home

Last night I drank a well-traveled bottle of water sourced, supposedly, from a spring in the French alps, imported into Hong Kong and carried back to Philadelphia with me. Like Beloved and I, it traveled a long way. In the past three weeks we have traveled through three countries (five if you count home and […]

Life in the Colony of Nova Scotia

  Highlighting Historical Romance welcomes Riana Everly and her research into the history of Nova Scotia. Part of the story in my upcoming release The Assistant takes place in Nova Scotia in the year 1800. A reader accustomed to the comforts and luxuries of London might wonder why I would be so heartless as to send […]

Wellington, A Brief History

Highlighting Historical Romance introduces K.A.Servian and Wellington, New Zealand How timely! Just before I leave to go there, Historic Wellington, New Zealand,  provides the background for Servian’s novel The Moral Compass. Thought to have been occupied by Māori since 950AD, the first European settlement of the area that was to become Wellington began in January […]

Packing

Caroline is off again! Beloved and I will be jetting away in the wee hours of Friday. You can imagine we are in the throes of that pre-travel panic and packing, the part where you can’t decide what to take. It is winter here; summer there. Do I have to wear a coat to the […]

Valentine’s Day

Do you love it or hate it? You can make a case either way. Valentine’s Day can feel like one of those contrived opportunities to sell us candy, flowers, cards, or whatever some marketing genius wishes to promote.  It can be depressing to some people, a trap that reinforces the notion that if you aren’t […]

Ewww Leeches!

Highlighting Petie McCarty’s research into Regency medicine and the use of (shudder) leeches. Coming from a scientific background and career, I’m no stranger to research so I eagerly dove into research for weeks for each of my novels before the first draft ever started, checking everything from habitat and indigenous species to climatic conditions of […]

Writing to Order

I received this picture and a lovely thank you this week from the reader who won one of my contests last year. The prize was a short story for which she chose specifications. In this case she wanted a scandal caused by a cat. That took some thought! She also wanted a gruff alpha hero, […]

Beauty’s Poisons

This week we are Highlighting Historical author Cari Davis, and her research into poisons. One of the things I love about writing historical romances is discovering interesting tidbits during my research, like the use of arsenic as a beauty aid during the 1800s. For my novel, Fool’s Gold, I knew the villain would use arsenic […]