I happened to realize the other day that my bedroom walls are decorated with old photographs and drawings of my forebears, all of whom are no more. There’s my maternal grandmother in her high school graduation picture from 1929. My other grandmother in her wedding...
I pride myself on doing my research thoroughly and efficiently—as my course, Rein in Your Research attests. Yet the one topic I always have to investigate again and again when I write novels set before the 17th century concerns measurement. Many of the units and types...
The first two volumes of my trilogy, The Orphans of Tolosa, came out within a year of each other in 2019. My original plan was to publish the final volume, Voices in the Mist, in 2020. That turned out to be wishful thinking. I had no idea of the long road I would have...
These days are tough, no question about it. It's a time to raise the voices of people of color, hear their stories and listen to their pain. I fervently believe that #blacklivesmatter. But as much as I empathize with those who face personal and systemic racism every...
It seems every day, even when I've thoroughly researched a subject or a person and am in the middle of writing about it or her, a simple session of Internet research turns up new sources and resources that at the very least enrich, at the most reinterpret what I'm...
I firmly believe that 90% of writing is craft rather than art. But that ineffable 10%, the part that elevates a well-constructed, readable story to something more—where does that come from? Knowing how is just the beginning On an intellectual level, I know how a story...
I've had a remarkable week or so, the land of both truth and fiction. First, the fiction, because in many ways that's easier and more predictable. My manuscript is going out to beta readers. Yay! Working title: The Adored. In some ways this novel has very quickly made...
One of the greatest challenges in writing any story is figuring out where it begins and where it ends—most writers know that all too well. What seems like the obvious beginning may not be, and the tidy ending might end up having to come unraveled in order to make the...
I was at a writing workshop a couple of months ago, and one of the participants commented that writing historical fiction is easy, because the story is already there. I didn't say anything at the time, but it's been bugging me ever since how to articulate why that is...
I did it again. Started writing and got caught up in a wonderful line of research. My heroine of the WIP in real life loved to play basketball. This started me looking for what she might have been wearing while she was playing, and I found treasures, treasures,...
Originally scheduled for June, 1902, it was postponed because the Prince of Wales had acute appendicitis, and had to have surgery. The heroine of my WIP attended the coronation when it eventually took place on August 23, 1902. Remarkable to have film records of the...
I was never a true aficionado, but I'd watched my share of silents: D.W. Griffith, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin etc. While doing research for my two existing (unpublished) novels that take place around 1910 in New York, I was astonished to see just how much...
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