Brother Against Brother

The preceding blogs about genealogy on this site got me thinking how little I know about my own family’s roots. But several years ago, my huband did a search of his family to try to find an ancestor who’d fought during the American Civil War on the Union side and came up with very interesting [...]

Ten things I love/hate about the Victorian Era

Morning, everyone,
Today is my turn for Tuesday ten. I am, however, sick with yet another cold and my computer died last week. The new one I have has a super-sensitive touch pad that makes writing difficult. Of course I’ll have to fix it, but it may take some time. Between those two things, [...]

New Year’s reads

After Christmas each year, I get a ‘to be read’ pile, but the new year brings no time to read them. Nevertheless I’ve managed to read two.
I won Cynthia Owens’ Christmas contest, and in addition to a beautiful book bag, candles, bath salt and other great stuff, I finally got my hands on her [...]

Alternate Histories

One of the most famous alternate history writers is the Sci Fi guru Harry Turtledove. I’m currently reading (listening to) the first in his series, How Few Remain. In this, a key point during the Civil War changed – Lee’s Special Order 191 wasn’t lost as happened in the ‘real’ war, but was found before [...]

Tuesday Ten: Heroes and Outlaws of The Old West (Part II.)

Part II: The Bad Boys
Like any self-avowed “good girl”, I have a weak spot for bad boys. But reading about some of these guys makes you realize just how baaaad some of them were. Here, for the second half of today’s Tuesday Ten are the guys who put the “wild” [...]

Tuesday Ten: Heroes and Outlaws of The Old West (Part I.)

Before you can create your own Wild West characters, it helps if you know a little bit about the larger than life legends–good and bad–who populated the era and gave it its wild reputation. (Since this blog ended up being a bit long, I’ll post it in two parts.)

First up: The Good Guys. [...]

Family Trees

My mother, Vivian Kirkpatrick Madsen, spent the last ten years of her life working on our family genealogy. I was fortunate enough to be the one who typed her work for her and, in remembering these special stories of my family I decided it would be fun to start sharing some of them. [...]

The Well-Travelled Victorian

I love to travel. I haven’t been to as many places as I’d like, and there are some I’d never go to for various reasons, but there are so many places in this world to see, how can you resist? Where did the well-mannered Victorian travel to? What part of the Empire did one see [...]

Haunted Vineyard House

Built in 1878-79, the Vineyard House stands on a hill overlooking the town of Coloma, nestled close to the American River in the Sierra Mountains of California. This four-story Victorian structure, with nineteen rooms, nine fireplaces, encircled by a porch with a second-floor balcony is haunted.
The story began when two men’s lives became strangely entwined [...]

James Clavell makes record-breaking book deal

Nothing what-so-ever about Victoriana, but the headline caught my attention. In 1986 he got a record-breaking $5 million in a bidding war for Whirlwind. This was the 5th book in his series that includes Shogun.
Ah, the life of Clavell…if only we could all be so lucky.