I’ve been reading Janet Burroway’s book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. I started it a few months back, and every so often I dip into it again. I’m not reading it linearly. I started with the chapters on character, then moved to theme and setting, and last week […]
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A Tale of Two Retirements
I retired nine years ago from my corporate job to become a writer. My husband retired from his law firm a little more than a year ago. So how is our retirement working out? As I intended, writing has been my primary activity for the past nine years. In the […]
Continue readingMy 400th Post: On Planning, Flexibility, and Commitment in Blogging and in Life
To my surprise, this is my 400th post, which seems worthy of mention. I last wrote about blogging in any detail on my 250th post, on July 28, 2014, about a year and a half ago. I write two posts every week—a schedule I have now maintained for almost four […]
Continue readingDepicting History in Images and Words (Thomas Hart Benton, Hollywood, and me)
Over the Christmas break, I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to see a special exhibit called American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood. I’ve always liked Benton’s artwork. Each piece tells its own story, and his murals show aspects of an era or of our […]
Continue readingChristmas Cards Through the Years
Smithsonian.com published an article on December 9, 2015, entitled “The History of the Christmas Card,” by John Hanc. According to the Smithsonian.com article, Christmas cards began in 1843 in London, when the very busy Henry Cole decided to send post cards instead of handwritten notes to his friends at the […]
Continue readingGoogle Alert on the Oregon Trail: The Small Pleasures of Being a Writer
I have set up a Google Alert for references to “Oregon Trail.” Every week in my email inbox, I get a list of internet articles referencing the Oregon Trail. My purpose in setting up the alert was to keep up on what is happening along the trail. Most of what […]
Continue readingWeddings in the 1840s
My wedding anniversary is tomorrow, November 26, so for this month’s post on life during the 1840s, my topic is weddings of the times. In the early years of our nation, weddings were low-key affairs, typically held in the bride’s home and attended only by family and close friends. Weddings […]
Continue readingThank you to readers!
Today’s post is a simple thank you to readers and followers of this blog and of my novel, Lead Me Home. For an update on Lead Me Home, please click here.
Continue readingBack to Research: Oregon Land Laws in the 1840s
The reason most settlers went to Oregon was because they could claim free land. In my first Oregon Trail novel, Lead Me Home, all I needed to know about the Oregon land laws was that settlers could file land claims once they got there. But in the sequel I am working […]
Continue readingHow I Launched My Writing Career
Almost exactly ten years ago, in late September 2005, I attended a three-day diversity training program in Toronto. The program, called “Women Supporting Women”, was sponsored by Procter & Gamble. Most of the attendees were P&G employees, though they had a few guests there like me. The women attending the […]
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