I was recently cajoled, bamboozled, shanghaied, flattered into leading two Sunday morning studies of the Noah story. Not that I know much about the Old Testament, but my bamboozler presented as the ultimate argument: “We know you can tell stories.”…
Blog Archives
Fears for a new book
I’ve done a treatment for my third novel, more than 1000 words, done research (many pages, multiple documents), a character sketch, a “plot sequence.” Even sketched out the first chapter and have a first line. So . . . let’s…
Our lives as fiction
Don’t you sometimes feel that the standard disclaimer for historical fiction could also be true of Life?: This is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of…
Helen Keller, farsighted activist
I stumbled on this letter from Helen Keller. Knocked my socks off. “So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me ‘arch priestess of the sightless,’ ‘wonder woman,’ and a…
The Six and Twenty Book Club
One of the pleasures of promoting your book is meeting book clubs. Many have remarkable histories. For example, the Six and Twenty Club of Wilmington, Ohio, has been meeting regularly since 1898. Here is a photograph of the club in…
Migraines and the Kaiser
The peculiarities of migraines are constantly amazing. There I was this morning at the reference desk of the Knoxville Public Library, asking where I could find an illustrated history of Prussia, since a couple chapters of my next novel will…
Posted in WWWS
You add the vampires
Lots of free, good-hearted advice comes your way as a writer, as in: “I have a great story. Let me tell it to you and you write it.” Or “You’re writing about X. Be sure to put in Y.” My…
German shepherds & novel research
My first published creative pieces were short stories that warped in some way from my own life. I didn’t realize the generative power of research and assumed that for historical fiction, you read sources and took notes, rather as for…
Telling Stories of the Stone Age
It’s a rainy day and I’m thinking about my father. He was a gifted pharmaceutical research chemist with encyclopedic interests. I can see him now, so many evenings when I was growing up, sitting in an arm chair pouring over…
Early, early spring
It’s a warm winter morning in eastern Tennessee, enough for a light jacket when walking Jesse the Dog, in the 40s with a clearing blue sky. All seasonal weather, nothing so special in these parts, but it reminds me of…
pamelaschoenewaldt.com 