Love is worth the risk
Swag. Odd word that. All that promotional material you get at conferences, races, fairs, trade shows, and business meetings—pens, magnets, sticky notes, calendars and so on—with your car dealer’s name, dentist’s address, or running show company’s logo is swag. Writers have to bring their swag as well. When asked to bring my swag, I know […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Patricia Preston on that outlaw Frank James. I did a lot of research on the James-Younger gang for Almost an Outlaw and for this blog post I’m sharing the real-life romance of Frank James, Jesse’s older brother, and the love of his life, Ann Ralston. She was a schoolteacher. A pretty brunette, […]
You may have seen this photo of me on Facebook this week with the banner across the bottom that states what ought to be obvious. If you’ve been paying attention to the firestorm that has roiled the romance novel industry the past week or more, you probably understand what it means and can skip to […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Laura Strickland’s research into hiring fairs. I first became aware of the occurrence of hiring fairs in Britain years ago, through a folk song of the same name. The English folk band, Fairport Convention has long been a favorite of mine, and The Hiring Fair is a wistful tune that tells […]
What do you think of when I say I’m “writing?” I suspect most people envision the creation of the first draft of a book, the putting of words on paper, er, or into a word processor, This week I’ve been putting down words, creating new prose, at a steady pace. So. Writing. In some ways […]
Highlighting Historical Romance with Nicole Zoltack and some Viking Lore. Writing a Yule love story featuring Vikings set during wintertime was a lot of fun but required a lot of research. Did you know that mistletoe played a role in Scandinavian mythology? An arrow poisoned with mistletoe claimed the life of Balder. His mother Frigga […]
Highlighting Historical Romance introduces K.A.Servian and Wellington, New Zealand How timely! Just before I leave to go there, Historic Wellington, New Zealand, provides the background for Servian’s novel The Moral Compass. Thought to have been occupied by Māori since 950AD, the first European settlement of the area that was to become Wellington began in January […]
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 […]
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 […]
Jude Knight introduces us to Victorian Tourists to New Zealand. The nineteenth century, says the book I’m currently reading, was the European century; the century in which Europe dominated the world. The nineteenth century was a European one also in the sense that other continents took Europe as their yardstick. Europe’s hold over them was […]