Joy of Joys

The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light… (Isaiah 9:1) We got a real snow Saturday–the fluffy kind that makes the world look enchanting. Thanks to the kindness of neighbors and family my driveway is clear and I can get out! Kindness is always light in the world. I also got candles […]

The Spanish Riding School

Sara Adrien joins us this week to discuss The Spanish Riding School and the story behind A Taste of Gold What was the rest of Europe like during the Regency-era? When crafting the opening chapters of A Taste of Gold, I wanted Vienna to shimmer with all the elegance, mystery, and gravitas that the period […]

Merry and Bright

In these shortest of days and darkest of nights, my three little trees light up at dusk. So do the timed candles in every window. Over the weekend, I filled my house with red ribbons, shiny things, and reminders of my faith. The latter are in the form of little nativity sets from around the […]

Finding Balance

There are at least two kinds of balance. The first, basic physical balance has been a problem lately. The nice folks at physical therapy have documented quite thoroughly that mine is not what it should be. First I didn’t do well on the exercises and walking tests, then they tested my vestibular system, aka the […]

British Gentlemen and Their Umbrellas

Jude Knight joins us this week with some facts behind the fiction in her novel, A Gift to the Heart. One of the iconic television series of my youth was a British espionage television series called The Avengers, staring Patrick McNee—bowler hatted, in a smart business suit, and armed with an umbrella, which he uses […]

Curveballs

Life throws things at us. Sometimes we don’t see them coming. Sometimes we swing and miss. Last week was like that. I have known for a while that my old version of Word for Mac was aging. It had not received an update in a year or two. I decided it was time to upgrade. […]

Widows’ Pensions during the Napoleonic Wars

The heroine of “Charred Hope” in Love’s Perilous Road lives on a widow’s pension. What does that mean in fact? I assumed her pension would be small and barely enough to live on. I wasn’t wrong. In the Napoleonic era the widow of a British officer was entitled to a pension, and as the widow […]

Moonlight Sonata?

This week let me share with you the challenges in writing about composers in the early 19th century In the opening passage of “Music in the Night” my vision was that Annie would be playing the Moonlight Sonata. The story takes place in 1820, and Owen heard her play it seven years before, in 1813. […]

Old Friends and Archtypes

Once characters, fully formed and alive, populate an authors head, they and their friends and relatives keep coming back. You may remember the complicated family connections in The Ashmead Heirs, in which the old earl’s bastards were named in his will and given all the unentailed property. The Bensons and the Caulfields and their friends […]

The Cefn Flight or Fourteen Locks

Please join Misty Urban for the facts about the Monmouthshire Canal and the Cefn Flight, the setting for her novel The Knight Falls First. Something that drew me to 1799 Newport, Wales, for the setting of my books Viscount Overboard and its sequel, The Knight Falls First, were the enormous changes overtaking the area at […]