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 […]

Fiction and Family Trees

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 […]

Greece: Revolution, and Antiquities

Highlighting Meredith Bond’s thoughts about Greece in the 19th Century I love it when an idea for a book turns into a research project. While it’s true that 90% of my research doesn’t actually make it into my book, the 10% that does makes the book richer and more interesting. This is what happened when I […]

Underdogs

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 […]

All the Time in the World

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 […]

To Blog

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 […]

When is the Book a Book?

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 […]

Christmas in the Regency

Jude Knight Highlights Christmas romance and reminds us how it was celebrated in the Regency With Christmas just around the corner, I’ve been wrapping presents, decorating the house, and making lists of ingredients for Christmas baking. I’ve been writing and reading Christmas stories set in the Regency, and thinking about the differences between then and […]

1916

Welcome Time Travelers. You have landed in 1916, and we’re wondering how you got here—as well as what years you’ve already visited. Perhaps you can tell us in comments. Roses in Picardy, by Caroline Warfield—the final story in the Bluestocking Belles’ Never Too Late anthology—takes place this year, but we hope 1916 is not your […]

Black Friday and Cyber Monday—Regency Style

Julia Justiss highlights shopping! The frenetic pre-Christmas shopping rush used to be typified by US residents leaving their Thanksgiving Thursday dinners to camp out at midnight, the better to score early-bird shopping bargains on Black Friday morning. With the advent of technology, the madness expanded to the on-line shopping bonanza of Cyber Monday. Skipping over […]