Another week, another chapter. Only one chapter? That sounds like such a slow pace, seeing as I spent at least four hours a day every day this week sitting here working (and more besides researching). But I had a few not so stellar writing days this week--you know...

It's the day after Valentine's Day and I'm ready to fall in love.  I've looked...    I've flirted... Throughout the pre-Civil War South, older slaves too worn out for anything else worked daily in the plantation's loom room, weaving and creating cloth...

Midway through January I began a new work in progress (WIP). I started it a few weeks earlier than I'd planned, but the first part of the WIP was vivid and nudging at me to get written, so I went ahead and did the research for that section first (focusing on Fort...

I'm endlessly fascinated with and charmed by non-USA English speakers' accents. Scottish, Irish, New Zealanders, Welsh... the list is long. Which probably explains why many of the characters I write don't sound like I do when they speak. Since my stories are set in...

I just pre-ordered three books. This is a rare thing for me to do, but these upcoming historical novels have, for various reasons, caught my eye and I just can't wait my usual few weeks or months after a book debuts to finally get around to ordering a copy. The first...

From critically acclaimed novelist, Rita Gerlach, comes book 1 in 'The Daughters of the Potomac Series', a timeless tale of love and betrayal, loss and redemption against the backdrop of the American Revolution.  Book 1 in the long awaited 'Daughters of the...

"The past is where we get the raw material we use.... We pick bygone time up by the handfuls and, like clay, see if it feels right and then form it into stories about the past." ~ James Thom, The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction James Alexander Thom is one...

I've spent this month (which is flying by, can it already be the 18th??) doing the background research and developing ideas for two new stories. Now I've chosen one of them to push ahead with. Or one has chosen me. Its protagonists have grabbed hold of my heart, a...

Do you enjoy reading historical fiction? Time-travel? Books set in England/Cornwall? Mysteries? Danger? Adventure? The 18th century? Romance? Lyrical prose that will sweep you away to another time and place and create characters so vivid they live on after the last...

While sorting through my prodigious accumulation of research books in an effort to thin the herd, I was leafing through a book on 18th century gardens (which I decided I could not part with), and ran across a bookmark. It was a halfsheet of paper on which I'd written...