Moving Ahead

Carefully. The big lesson of the month is “don’t rush!” I’ve read through the first of the books in the Great Rewrite Project. With the help of Caroline Warfield’s Fellow Travelers I am close to a series title. This week I plan to send the first for cover specs to the artist. Covers will motivate […]

Not So Fast

Is it Monday? No? TUESDAY??? Oh dear. You may suspect things have been peculiar. Just as a reached a sense that I am back and my writing is in a groove, I fell. Details unneeded, except to say nothing is broken/no permanent damage. What are a few days in the hospital, follow up appointments, home […]

To Be Jewish and Wealthy in Regency London

Welcome Sara Adrien who brings the facts about Jewish families in the upper society of the Regency Era as they appear in her book, Margins of Love. If you’ve read even a handful of Regency romances, you know the world well: Ballrooms—Dukes—Family names that carry centuries of entitlement. But what if I told you some […]

Back to Work

I’m back at my desk, rested and energetic. If you read my newsletter that went out yesterday, you will have read that I feel like my writing picked up speed this summer until it is almost back to normal. Since I got back I did a final edit on Well Done, Harry for the Winter […]

Jewish Jewelers to the Crown?

The UK Crown Jeweler couldn’t be a Jew–or could he? Join Sara Adrien to speculate about what might have been and the secret history behind Instead of Harmony It sounds like fantasy: a Jewish man rising to the title of Crown Jeweler in Regency England. But peel back the layers of fiction, and you’ll find […]

Working Hard

I write this on Labor Day and I am reminded that labor comes in many forms. It be done with hands, with shovels, with machinery, with cloth, with muscle, with mind, or even with a keyboard. However it occurs, it should be done lovingly and with pride. I’m a believer in Lincoln’s statement that capital […]

Is August Still Summer?

While the western US continues to suffer from dangerous heat, here in the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, we’ve cooled down a bit, and there are other signs the season is waning. I’ve been peering over my monitor at the apple tree next to my patio. It is an aging tree covered in woodpecker holes, […]

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 […]

Hitting Milestones

One down and one to go in my parade of novellas. “Well Done, Harry” went to the editor Friday. To get it there I had to consolidate comments from my beta readers***, edit it, add an author’s note and my bio, and proof it word by word. For that last step, I’m now using the […]