Both my first novel, When We Were Strangers, and my current one (coming in September, 2013), put the main character for some time in boarding houses in the years between 1880 and 1911. So I did some research and find…
Blog Archives
Dickens & Little Red Riding Hood
The New York Public Library has an exhibit on characters of Charles Dickens, including illustrations, notes, merchandising (he was very into this) and some astonishing quotes. Like this one: “If I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should…
The terror of Sherwin-Williams
My office at work is being painted. The paint brand is Sherwin-Williams and suddenly I am thrown back to me at age perhaps six, just able to read. A hardware store on Main Street in Metuchen, N.J. has a sign…
Communion, with squirrel
Taking communion today, I flashed back to a conversation with a guard in a museum in Spoleto, in the center of Umbria, the green heart of Italy. It involved squirrels and happened like this. I was in a writing program…
The infidelities of Spell-Check
In going through some papers of my college teaching years, I came upon a handout which I innocently thought would be enough to warn students out of blind faith in Spell-Check. Alas, faith is hard to shake. Here is the…
Writing at the Lake
We went to a friend’s house last weekend at Laurel Mountain Lake, near Sweetwater, Tennessee. As you see: water, sky, peace. No phone, TV or internet (and I don’t have a fancy phone so really no internet). It is astonishing…
The novelist’s magic tool
Sure, sure, Google does yeoman’s service for the hard-pressed fiction writer, but if a few minutes of banging around on the internet won’t get me to the factoid I need, it’s time to get smart and . . . use…
Posted in WWWS
Odd thoughts on writing
I’m revising today, staring at the screen and perhaps that brings the odd thoughts. For instance: 1. Did it ever strike you as odd that black marks on a page (or screen) arranged in certain ways can bring an emotional,…
What Americans ate in the 1910’s, etc.
Ohh, I just found a wonderful site called Food Timeline if you’re wildly or mildly curious about what people ate in the 1910’s (my case) or in decades after. You’ll find menus, cookbooks, recipes, prices, new rages, like the “cocktail party,”…
Where do cops come from?
This time travel began some hours ago when I wanted to make sure that my character in 1911 could refer to a policeman as a cop or perhaps a copper. Would this be an anachronism? It’s a lot of work…
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