Western Trade with Japan before 1854

Highlighting Historical Romance: this week we welcome Sofie Darling who highlights some facts about Western trade in East Asia. When I set out to write my newest release, Tempted by the Viscount, I knew a few facts about the hero: he’s the newly minted Right Honorable Lord Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban, who has […]

War and the Victorian Empire

  Highlighting Historical Romance with Michelle Jean Marie and her research about the Victorian Empire It is difficult to grasp in this day and age that the small island of Great Britain was once the foremost global power for over a century. Britain’s imperial century spanned the years 1815 to 1914, most of that time under […]

Pollen and the Fog of Spring

How can something invisible make me so miserable?  I spent much of the weekend languishing in the recliner. I watched four lengthy documentaries and two feature films and also read three books. Why? Pollen people. When my breathing shuts down I get lethargic and wander around in a brain fog. It’s hard to write when […]

English Coastal Defenses: Martello Towers

Highlighting Historical Romance with Jude Knight today. Jude shares her research into Martello towers once used for the coastal defense of England. I saw them on a show about turning old historical buildings into homes for modern families and was impelled to go find out more. Once I did, I had to have a Martello […]

Squirrel Wars

I looked out this morning to see a squirrel hanging upside down on our new squirrel proof bird feeder. Because it is designed to close under the weight of a squirrel, he eventually got frustrated and jumped to the ground I wondered how he got on it, but when I saw him try a vertical […]

Travel in the Regency

We’re Highlighting Historical Romance today with Jude Knight, who brings us insight into the ways in which travel has impacted her Regency novels, and problems writers face regarding it. One of the first things I had to get my head around when I started writing stories set in the Regency era was how long it […]

A Long Road Home

Last night I drank a well-traveled bottle of water sourced, supposedly, from a spring in the French alps, imported into Hong Kong and carried back to Philadelphia with me. Like Beloved and I, it traveled a long way. In the past three weeks we have traveled through three countries (five if you count home and […]

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 […]

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 […]