Love is worth the risk
Family, as I’ve written before, is one of my passions. One of the ways that manifests itself is my ongoing absorption in that 21st century form of ancestry worship, genealogy. History and family are tightly linked in my mind and in my writing. I never met a clue about an ancestor I didn’t want to […]
There is something about unlikely victories that make them particularly sweet. We know something about that here in the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania. That guy named Washington fled across the Delaware from New York near here with a rag tag group of troops and one of the most powerful armies in the world on […]
Highlighting Elizabeth Ellen Carter with some thoughts about time and its historic context—while giving us a bit of her Revenge of the Corsairs. In the 21st century we might be ‘time poor’, but at least we can tell the time – in fact, there is no avoiding it! Personal timepieces are everywhere! Just about all […]
Blog, verb, the act of updating a website on which one records news, opinion, thoughts, and insights. This relatively new English verb out lasted the short-lived noun weblog, on which it was based. It is now ubiquitous. I blog, he blogs, you blog, they…I wonder what a Latin conjugation would look like? Ahem. Sorry. I […]
On Saturday just after 3 PM, I typed THE END—another book finished! Or was it? It rather begs the question, when is the work finished? A book is most certainly not finished when the author types “THE END.” First of all, let me explain that I’m what writers call a pantser, someone who writes by […]
Highlighting Susana Ellis’s love of Vauxhall Gardens. Vauxhall Gardens has become a bit of an obsession with me. I even visited there last September, even though it has become little more than a small grassy area between the Vauxhall Underground station, Kennington Lane, and the busy Vauxhall Bridge. The Orchestra building being long gone, […]
Alina K. Field joins us this week Thank you for having me as your guest today, Caroline! I love historical romance that draws on the current events of the story world. (Your most recent novel, The Reluctant Bride, does that beautifully!) So when I came up with the idea for a series about the children […]
I leave for California and InD’Scribe on Wednesday. If you’re anywhere near Burbank, join us, especially on Saturday, the fan day, which has programming and opportunities designed for for readers. What are the benefits? You can meet your favorite author, discover new ones, browse books in abundance (who doesn’t like that?), and meet folks who […]
Recently John Le Carré gave CBS’s Sixty Minutes five tips for novel writers. You can find them here. One was easy: “Keep a travel journal.” Some were lessons I learned the hard way: “Make the verb to the work,” and “Start your story as late as possible. One is giving me fits. “Start writing at […]
If you were lucky enough to attend the Bluestocking Belle’s Cover Reveal party on Saturday, you’ve had a preview of our 2017 anthology, Never Too Late. We present eight timeless love stories across eight centuries, with eight unique takes on a single trope (a compromising situation that isn’t), an older heroine, a wise man, and […]