Love is worth the risk
Highlighting Historical Romance with Rue Allyn Medieval Women: Slaves to Convention or Independent Thinkers (Part one of three) Medieval women were fascinating creatures. The stereotypes that leap to mind include the Great Lady (queens and noblewomen), the yeoman wife, the nun and the downtrodden peasant. Regardless of status, the idea is strange to many fiction […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Barbara Monajem on Smuggling and her newest release. When I first read Georgette Heyer’s The Talisman Ring (eons ago, when I was in my teens), I was particularly taken with the brandy smugglers, who are vivid, rather charming secondary characters. When I decided to write historical romances, a book about smuggling […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Jude Knight on Capetown’s dark history. The second oldest building in Cape Town is a cultural history museum. It was once the offices of the British government who occupied the colony in 1806, and later the Supreme Court and then the home of the Legislative Council of the Cape Colony. This […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Rue Allyn and her tales of the beguines. In the middle ages, a nun was a religious female member of the church who took solemn vows. A Beguine is also a religious female who took solemn vows. What’s the difference? Beguines were not members of any church sanctioned group. A Beguine, […]
Stories inspire our souls for sure. They also heal our minds and I suspect, bodies as well. I’ve always said a good book is my drug of choice and I’m not exaggerating. I have no verifiable proof, of course, but my experience tells me I’m on to something. Under stress, feeling bad, going through a […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Jan Selbourne’s thoughts on World War I battlefields. In 2015 I joined an Anzacs on the Western Front tour, visiting the Belgian and French WW1 battlefields where my grandfather and his brother served with the Australian Imperial Forces. Looking at the lovely towns and villages and soft green fields it was […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Jessica James on history, generations, and stately old trees. Lacewood is really a labor of love that combines a great deal of research I did for my other Civil War novels with a tiny tidbit of my own background and history. To back up a little, the title Lacewood came about […]
It never rains but it pours. The old expression usually refers to an abundance of troubles, but sometimes blessings come as well. We’re having rain daily here in the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania, and the garden loves it. Since it is mostly coming in the evening or overnight, there has been plenty of sunshine […]
One of the most satisfying things for a writer is typing The End on a rough draft. It isn’t the actual end of the process (layers of fixes, rewrites, comments from beta readers, editing, and formatting lie ahead), but it is the point at which the thing exists. I had a moment like that last […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Nancy Thorne with issues around childbirth and pregnancy. Childbirth in the 19th century was the most common cause of death in women. Still, it was expected as the norm that a married woman will bear children, and that they will be her life’s purpose … a woman’s place in society. In […]