Warfield: Author in Bloom

Ah Spring at last! Much thanks to Dianne Vennetta for inviting me to be part of Authors in Bloom. There are prizes! How can you participate? Read on to the end. Spring in My Neck of the Woods I confess that I am more an admirer of gardens than I am a person dedicated to gardening. […]

Weather, Atmosphere, and Storytelling

Lately, I’m obsessing on the weather. Winter has been unrelenting and the swings have been dramatic—rather like a well-plotted novel, but much less satisfying. Saturday night we ate out on our patio, enjoying a dead perfect evening—not too hot, not too cold, no bugs, bright sun—knowing full well such evenings are rare. It was 80 […]

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 […]

Life in the Colony of Nova Scotia

  Highlighting Historical Romance welcomes Riana Everly and her research into the history of Nova Scotia. Part of the story in my upcoming release The Assistant takes place in Nova Scotia in the year 1800. A reader accustomed to the comforts and luxuries of London might wonder why I would be so heartless as to send […]

Packing

Caroline is off again! Beloved and I will be jetting away in the wee hours of Friday. You can imagine we are in the throes of that pre-travel panic and packing, the part where you can’t decide what to take. It is winter here; summer there. Do I have to wear a coat to the […]

Ewww Leeches!

Highlighting Petie McCarty’s research into Regency medicine and the use of (shudder) leeches. Coming from a scientific background and career, I’m no stranger to research so I eagerly dove into research for weeks for each of my novels before the first draft ever started, checking everything from habitat and indigenous species to climatic conditions of […]

Writing to Order

I received this picture and a lovely thank you this week from the reader who won one of my contests last year. The prize was a short story for which she chose specifications. In this case she wanted a scandal caused by a cat. That took some thought! She also wanted a gruff alpha hero, […]

Beauty’s Poisons

This week we are Highlighting Historical author Cari Davis, and her research into poisons. One of the things I love about writing historical romances is discovering interesting tidbits during my research, like the use of arsenic as a beauty aid during the 1800s. For my novel, Fool’s Gold, I knew the villain would use arsenic […]

Fiction and Family Trees

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 […]