An Historical Fiction Research Library (in the making): A Guided Tour
Recently author Diana Gabaldon gave her readers a blog tour of her research library. While I wish I had the capacious shelves she does (and the avid readers!), my research library-in-the-making is admittedly quite a bit smaller. At present, it's scattered about in...
Muskets, Tomahawks & Gingerbread
This week I came across two 18th century research/writing resources that I've been eager to share with my blog readers. I've been reveling in them all week. Now you can too. Firstly: Contemporary Makers is a blog devoted to highlighting contemporary craftsmen and...
Delayed Blessings
Thoughts from my devotional reading this week, which, as a writer who wrote for twenty years before God opened a certain door, I found encouraging... For the vision is yet for an appointed time.... though it linger, wait for it; it will surely come and will not delay....
From Book to Shining Book
I knew if I kept at it, didn't get this habit under control, that it was only a matter of time before it happened. How could it be otherwise? But I couldn't stop. I just couldn't. And so last night the inevitable occurred. I reached the last page of the last Big Fat...
of Place and Time
The current novel in progress (which has at last got a working title, Arrows of Mercy. Or perhaps it should be Mercy's Arrows... Arrows in the Hand...? Oh dear) ranks as the most research-intensive work I've ever tackled, barring only my first 18th century novel,...
Sent
I hovered over that SEND button for a few extra minutes this morning, my mind spinning through familiar pages, scenes, and chapters. Was there one more thing I should've (would've could've) changed? Should I hold off clicking that button-of-no-return for a few more...
First Things First
So what's been happening since I signed my first book contract back in March? My deadline is June 15th, and I'm reading the manuscript over one more time, out loud, before I send it in. A week ago I received and answered a 12 page Author and Book Questionnaire, which...
What I hold in my hand
I cry out to God Most High, to God, who fulfills his purpose for me. Psalm 57:2 One beautiful old translation of this verse says, "He will perform the cause I hold in my hand." That makes it very real to me today. The very thing "I hold in my hand" -- my work today,...
People of the Standing Stone — Oneida Nation Research
The story I'm working on now is partly set among the Oneida tribe of western New York. Their name, Oneida (Onyota’a:ká:) is translated as People of the Standing Stone. The Oneidas are one of the Six Nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy, or League, now and...
Mystery
Sometimes I'm jarred out of my novel in progress enough to wonder where it all came from, this plot, these characters, this setting.It happened again this week. These are the sorts of questions that race through my head whenever it does: How (and why) did this story...
