I am starting the New Year with a new resolve to finish my novel. I have confronted the timeline issue that has plagued me for the last couple of months. I moved the starting point of the story a month earlier, and I have finally plugged the hole which that […]
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Researching an Oregon Parsonage
Many of the scenes in my current work-in-progress take place in a Methodist parsonage in Albany, Oregon. The minister, his wife, and their young daughter live there in 1867. Albany in 1867 was a small town, though it was the county seat of Linn County, Oregon. I envisioned a small […]
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My 1000th Blog Post and Canadian Thanksgiving
I predicted in January of this year, on the tenth anniversary of this blog, that I would hit my 1000th post later in 2022. Well, here I am—WordPress tells me that this post is the thousandth. We are two days past the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday—the older cousin of the U.S. […]
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SAFE THUS FAR: A 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award Finalist!
My latest published novel, Safe Thus Far, was a finalist for the 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. Several of my novels have been nominees for the award in earlier years, and I was pleased that this book was a finalist. My novel was in good company. The winner of […]
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Time Is Relative: I’m One Degree of Separation from 1867
Recently I was doing more research for my current work-in-progress the is set in 1867. (Yes, it’s drafted. Yes, I’m heavily into editing. And yes, I’m still researching arcane issues.) I came across a tidbit of information I hadn’t focused on before, and it got me thinking about how 1867 […]
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HNSNA Mini-Conference: Writing the Past with Authenticity, per Susan Meissner
I wrote last year about attending the virtual conference sponsored by the Historical Novel Society North America (HNSNA). This year, the major Historical Novel Society conference was in England, and I was not able to go. (Someday, maybe I can attend a foreign writing conference.) HNSNA sponsored the mini-conference on […]
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Early Railroad Bridges Across the Missouri River
Although I have a lot of editing to do on my current work-in-progress (the sixth book in my Oregon series), I am beginning to think about the next book. I’m planning for the seventh novel to be the last book in the series, but who knows? I only have the […]
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Insecure Writers Support Group: Plowing In, Plodding Along, and Indoor Plumbing
One of the many websites for writers to which I subscribe is the Insecure Writers Support Group. I’d been writing for several years when I ran across this site. Of course, like all writers, I am insecure. I don’t remember how I found the Insecure Writers Support Group nor what […]
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My Current Take on Social Media: The Good, Bad, and Ugly
Like many writers, I have a love/hate relationship with social media. Marketing gurus tell writers that a social media presence is an essential part of an author platform, and we must have a platform and an author brand to sell books. And yet, we also hear we can’t be everywhere, […]
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How I Came to Write a Novel Series
I didn’t set out to write a series of novels about the Oregon Trail and settlement of Oregon. I only intended to write one historical novel. But I have now published five books in my historical fiction series, and I’m working on the sixth, with a seventh planned. How did […]
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