What a find!

            Since I have a little boy in my story, The Colonial and the Cottontail (part of the Northern Roses and Southern Belles Civil War anthology from The Wild Rose Press), I thought I’d blog about Canadian mothers in Victorian times.
            That’s when I found this website.  I may find something about mothers and children [...]

Story props

With only three days left until the official release of Northern Roses and Southern Belles, I wanted to talk about something that has been slowly driving me insane since, oh, about the time I sent back the first round of edits on my story, The Colonial and the Cottontail.
As you might have guessed, my story [...]

Public Reading

Happy Belated Birthday to Queen Victoria (I’m only two days late), and thanks for the day off last week.  My man and I have decided that Mondays off are much better than Fridays off, because you get to enjoy them longer when you realize (every day) that it isn’t Tuesday, it’s Wednesday etc.   So do [...]

Winter was the Good Season!

As I look out my window, it is dark, cold and blustery.  I’m so pleased to be inside where every room in the house is nice and warm.  I’m glad I don’t have to go anywhere because the roads are covered with ice, and snow banks make visibility at corners difficult. 
This isn’t exactly the same [...]

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 [...]

It is Election time in both Canada and the United States, so I thought I’d take a look at what elections were like during Victoria’s reign.
Less than a decade before Victoria ascended the throne, the electoral situation in England (Wales, Scotland and Ireland too, but I’m not focusing on them) was badly in need of [...]

Happy Coronation Day!

“Queen Victoria was crowned at Westminster Abbey about a year after her accession, — June the 28th, 1838. It would be easy to fill many of these pages with accounts of a ceremonial which has increased in splendor as it has diminished in significance. The whole ceremony was founded upon the belief that the Sovereign [...]

Public reading

Tonight I’ll be giving another public reading at my library. Let’s recap prior experiences, shall we?
Reading number one: Although practice had me a minute under time, apparently I went over during the actual reading. The moderator of the evening, while without a giant hook, did cover the microphone just as I finished. [...]

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 [...]

Tuesday 10 Follow Up

I’ve got one for you, Dee, and it’s even Victorian!
In Canda, the U.K., and I think the other Commonwealth countries, we still carry on the tradition of Christmas Crackers. I spent Christmas in Florida once, and while I didn’t particularly miss the snow and cold, doing without the traditional stupid cracker nonsense totally depressed me.
So, [...]