Melancholia Takes Over

Did I mention I’ve been working on a novella for the Bluestocking Belles’ next annual collection? The projected release date is September. It features a group of soldiers returned from Waterloo on time for the village’s harvest festival. My hero is the village’s beloved physician whose scars are deep. There was no word for PTSD […]

Emerging from Hibernation

Bears do it. Bees do it. Even little brown bats do it. Why shouldn’t people? Alas it just feels like I’m emerging from hibernation. It was a difficult winter marred by Beloved’s hospitalization and some forced lifestyle changes. (We are doing ***much*** better. Thanks to all who have expressed concern.)   In the meantime, Duke […]

Lewis and Clark

Did you know… …that Lewis and Clark settled in Saint Louis after their return from their Expedition? Meriwether Lewis was the first governor of The Louisiana Territory in 1807. William Clark was appointed general of the territorial militia with primary responsibility for Indian Affairs. Lewis died two years later. During the War of 1812, in […]

Clocks and Curios

Highlighting the facts behind the history with my fellow Bluestocking Belle, Elizabeth Ellen Carter. A special clock features front and center in my new novel, A Curio for the Count, which comes out on 19 January. It’s a statuette clock with a fancy pendulum. In my research for the novel (twenty minutes research for every […]

Do Clothes Make the Duke?

I’m working so hard to catch up, I haven’t had much time for blog posts lately! This one is easy though. Our duke has been living on the edges of civilization along the Mississippi after being beaten, robbed and left for dead. The miscreants have been caught and he’s to testify. The prosecutor is determined […]

Rough Justice

When the Phillip, Duke of Glenmoor, gave his new friends the Archers his formal name with four Christian names, four titles, and a surname, they were highly amused. The Archers, a frontier family with its roots in the Appalachian mountains, have no truck with formality. The seized on the fourth of his names, Arthur, and […]

MidWinter Madness

A few of you may have missed me lately. For a while I was focused on writing Duke in Name Only, and then… I’ve been very focused on Beloved who has been ill and spent 16 days in the hospital. I’m pleased to announce that he is home, feels better than he has since summer, […]

Mississippi Moonlight

This is from Duke in Name Only (April 2023). Phillip plans to go upriver with Nan’s brother to search for jewelry or pawn shops in Saint Louis that might have word about his missing signet ring. He hasn’t told either of them he’s also studying commerce along the river, looking for investment opportunities. He’s determined […]

Crossing the Atlantic

…you could cross the Atlantic in a month in the Age of Sail? I read that Columbus took two months, and then again six weeks. Of course, he crossed the Atlantic more than once. The average trip was probably six weeks in the eighteenth century. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, sailings of three […]

River Pirates

When Phillip feels well enough to talk, Nan begins to interrogate him about how he was injured. She’s worried that the river pirates and low-life rats that infest the Ohio River below Illinois may be moving their operations to the upper Mississippi, putting her tavern at risk. Phillip tells her about a supposed gentleman he […]