This weekend I went to the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville for a reading and it was lovely. For many reasons: 1.Incomparably beautiful drive across the Cumberland plateau where early fall was just beginning to paint the hills rolling…
Blog Archives
How to curse a book thief
I’m reading Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, a fictive biography of Poggio Bracciolini, the great book-hunter, active circa 1417 and pictured here in cute bucket-cap. It’s an illuminating read. In the very first chapter I found a useful suggestion. Did anybody…
Ebooks and wild sightings
I just heard from Amanda Bergeron, my indefatigable editor at HarperCollins, that When We Were Strangers has sold 3,100 ebooks, a record which she says means “confetti needed.” I’ve got none handy but tonight when our house fills up with…
Revising “something”
I’ve been asked to do a workshop on revision for the local Friends of Literacy group. So I’ve been thinking of Revision Tactics I Have Used. I remember my first creative writing teacher, Miss Vincent, repeating: “You can always revise…
Pie charts and crusts
One of joys of writing historical fiction is the researching of it. It was thus that I discovered which 19th C researcher popularized the pie chart. And who was that? While you imagine the “Wait, wait, don’t tell me!” sound…
Food facts of the 1880’s
As Irma was moving west and discovering herself, our food technology was creeping along. I found a site which gives some of the advances of the 1880’s. Here’s an edited list, based on the unscientific principle of things most interesting to…
Corset curiosities
Corsets must rank with foot-binding in “not made by or for women” fashion history. But the search for wasp waists and swan-curve backs did call up the ingenuity of Victorian engineers – and some benighted attempts to make these armatures…
What is historical fiction anyway?
I’m preparing to give a workshop on research for writers generally and writers of historical fiction in particular. (Sept. 17, sponsored by the Knoxville Writers Guild). I got to wondering what this genre is anyway, I mean what do experts say…
Workingman’s neck
Labor Sunday, Sept. 4. Long before I knew the term “red neck,” I was fascinated by my grandfather’s neck. It was reddish, with deep groves in diamonds that grew deeper when he turned his head. He’d lived in the sun,…
Hurricanes and Gingkos
Back when I was a child in Metuchen, New Jersey, hurricanes passed by with some regularity. One came just after my father had planted twin gingko trees in our front yard. While he was normally quite fastidious in tree-planting, for…
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