Renewed and Energized

I returned from Sin City this weekend ready to write and confirmed in the general direction of my plans. The master class on Tension and Conflict was super helpful and so were sessions on Female Archtypes, Marketing, and Medical History among others. Hobnobbing with other writers is always motivating and motivational. What did I learn? […]

Summer Daze

Do you define the beginning of summer as Memorial Day? I tend to, meteorology aside. First of course, we remember the fallen, but it is always a joyful, if hectic, time around here. No parade this year, alas. We headed to the shore last week–feet in the surf, towel on the beach, toes in the […]

Pressing Forward

Big accomplishment last week! I finished “Music in the Night” and shipped it off to Dragonblade for inclusion in Dukes All Night Long. Now, by “finished,” I mean that I merged comments from four beta readers and did a light edit, considered a major insight from one of them, deleted half of the first chapter, […]

Music in the night

Annie Potter has been sneaking into Woodglen Hall, seat of the absent Duke of Glenmoor, for months, using a window the steward kindly leaves open for her. She comes to lose herself in the duke’s grand piano forte, an antidote to her miserable life in her uncle’s vicarage. A week ago a stranger interrupted her, […]

A New Day

Whether you celebrate Easter in the Christian fullness of Resurrection like I do, or spring and the goddess Oestra as the Anglo Saxons did, this time of year is about new beginnings. It seems I’m about to take a new look at some older works and begin again with them. My Dangerous and Children of […]

Cobblestones, Castles, and Cathedrals

Trudging behind my young companion last week was invigorating—and exhausting—but we explored every inch of Rome, at least the old city from the forum to Castel Sant Angelo, from the Bourghese Gardens to the top of the dome of Saint Peter’s in the Vatican City. Awed by art, amused by Irish pubs, and charmed by […]

Details Details

Working in historical fiction is so much fun. You can trip over all sorts of unexpected details. In “Charred Hope” my story for Love’s Perilous Road, I wrote that the innkeeper served my hero pancakes. One of the beta readers asked, “Did they call them pancakes?” Yes they did! I had the same question and […]

Milestones

I read my way through three amazing beta drafts last week, all from wonderful authors. This year’s collection, Love’s Perilous Road, will include the Bluestocking Belles (Alina k Field, Cerise DeLand, Rue Allyn, Susana Ellis, Sherry Ewing, Elizabeth Ellen Carter, Jude Knight, and my humble self). We’ve also invited wonderful guests, Mary Lancaster, Maera Platt, […]

More Coffee, Please

Such a week I had—many visits to visit the readers of my fellow authors, much to post, posts to friends’ blogs, prizes to award, chatting to be done. All of this was in celebration of Snowed by the Wallflower which danced into the world last Tuesday. Yea and hurray! It feels good to have a […]

Running too Fast

Too much, too fast! I didn’t expect baby steps to lead to zooming quite so fast. The big issue is all the promotion needed for a new book. There is no point in writing them, if no one reads them, right? I’ve been on three web blogs and more Facebook groups that I care to […]