An Awkward Encounter

Here’s a bit from The Upright Son in which the heroine encounters her new neighbor, the very proper Earl of Clarion, in his woods. *** She had given in to her children and joined the hunt for frogspawn after Alfred, her eldest, announced he wished to set up a water barrel in the kitchen yard […]

Fathers Know

The Upright Son is, as I said, off like a herd of turtles. Father and son encountered a group of children wading in a creek on the Clarion Estate. They turned out to be the new renters in the dower house. Neither father nor son could quite get the, er, unusual group out of their […]

A Herd of Turtles

To manage my new pace of releasing a novel every four months (thank you Dragonblade Publishing!!) I have to create a draft in two months. That pace requires that I write at least 2000 words a day (10,000 a week) for eight weeks. More or less. Those months are bracketed by a month of beta […]

Naming the Enslaved

Did you know that: Slave registers were kept for the former British Colonial Dependencies between 1813-1834 The practice began as a result of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. That law outlawed trafficking in enslaved people between Africa and British colonies but considered those already in place to be “lawfully enslaved.” […]

Holidays Are Upon US

November is evaporating fast, and I, for one, am happy to see it go. My heart wants to welcome the season of joy and light! Hanukkah—one of those seasons—began last night, and Christmas looms over the horizon. We celebrated a lovely Thanksgiving last week. Issues involving older family members had us traveling and running about […]

Ten Years and Still Learning

Last week was a little rough. Joyful, but rough I’ve been writing much of my life. I’ve been publishing for ten years. This year everything ratcheted up a notch. I recently read something from Virginia Heath. She said, “Being a professional writer, I always have a new story on the go and at least another […]

Rambling Through York

Various characters visit various parts of the city, and now York has moved very high up on my real life travel list. I long to wander through The Shambles, view the city from the top of the medieval Clifford’s Tower (and shudder over some of its darker history), gape in awe at York Minster, the […]

Release Week!

The Defiant Daughter remains 99 cents the first part of the week until it is released into the wild on Thursday. Early reviews have been really, really GOOD. I have scheduled four Facebook Group takeovers and two video interviews this week. I’ve had no time to plan a celebration, so I will probably just have […]

Rambling in Chester

Eli had legal business with the bishop. I stopped to enjoy the medieval cathedral. Its construction dates to the eleventh century, the sort of date that makes my American jaw drop. It was built by the Benedictines and survived the dissolution of the monastery by being promoted to cathedral in 1541. Goodness. It also survived […]