Setting Goals

It’s that time of year again. A new year is upon us and everyone’s thinking of resolutions or as I like to call them, goals to accomplish in 2009.
And as a writer, naturally, most of my goals involve writing projects. I currently have a draft that needs to be completed, an outlined story that I [...]

Christmas

It seemed wrong to post part 2 of my Great Depression blog today, so I’ll hold off on that until January. Just what we need, depression in the midst of January cold.
Many of our Christmas Traditions originated in Germany. The Christmas tree was popularized by Queen Victoria but only because she was German and her [...]

Victoriana Answers Lingering at Cafes

  
In the recesses of my mind, I’ve stored a list of questions that I’ve carried about with me in the hope they could be answered about the Victorian era. Some answers have been found while I was sipping steaming cups of coffee and tea with friends on foggy or icy mornings. From these experts I’ve [...]

Period Photography

Although photography was invented in 1839, before the Victorian era, the Victorians’ embracement of this new and innovative technology greatly increased its popularity.
“In 1851 a new era in photography was introduced by Frederick Scott Archer, who introduced the Collodion process. This process was much faster than conventional methods, reducing exposure times to two or three [...]

The Great Depression (Part 1 of 2)

No, not the 1930s Great Depression. That was the SECOND Great Depression. The first Great Depression was 1873–1896, also known as The Long Depression. It was worse than the 1930s Great Depression.
The Crédit Mobilier of America Scandal of 1872, some say, involved the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company, in [...]

Social Etiquette in the Victorian Era

Do you ever run into this problem when researching? You begin researching one specific thing, which leads to something else that intrigues you, so you decide to learn more about that—and so on and so on until you’ve spent so much time reading and researching, you haven’t had time to write!(That’s my excuse, anyway, and [...]

Petticoat Prospectors

A woman in Nevada’s gold camps had to work harder than men, and also had to prove she could sting like a rattler if the occasion demanded.
 
PART ONE
      Tales of the Comstock Lode – the camaraderie, hard work, adventure, and sudden wealth – filled the fantasies of young women as much as young men.  Trading [...]

Networking

The thing with networking is, you never know when a meeting, contact or friendship will pay off.
 
A few years ago, because of my membership in the Hearts Through History RWA chapter, I had the opportunity to have my first short story, A Frightful Misconception, published with Highland Press as part of the No Law Against [...]

The Wild One, Victorian Romance, Reviews, Info

My second book, The Wild One is due out January 6.  It’s set in San Francisco (and Colorado and Texas–the characters move around a bit–they have to, they end up accused of murder and “on the dodge”) 1885. I have, I think, posted a bit about the research I did on it.  Most specifically research on ballroom [...]