These are the questions I’m most often asked. (Click to see my answers.)
How much is fact and how much is fiction?
Are you ever criticized by historians?
Who is your favorite character?
Questions about reading, writing …
House of books & dreams
Imagine a little house—or, rather, more properly, a two-story reading room—containing thousands of books. Imagine this house on the outskirts of Killaloe, a rural village of six hundred in northern Ontario. Amazing. I had the pleasure of visiting "Love's Healing...
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Like wild! In the pink! On final stage revision …
I started writing this post six months ago, back when The Game of Hope was titled Moonsick. As part of the final check, then, I was looking for "legal" and "illegal" words—that is, words that didn't exist in 1800. Here are the words and phrases I was surprised to...
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A newsletter, finally!
I'm about to send out a newsletter — my first in six months! I've been MIA here on this blog, as well, the result of moving into a house still under construction, all the while working to finish my next novel, THE GAME OF HOPE. Those of you who are already signed up...
read moreTrying to write in 2017 …
I sent draft 9.8 of The Game of Hope to my editor – a partial deadline met, which is always a wonderful feeling. Right now I'm organizing my beta-reader and consultant feedback notes and making further changes. The final-final draft is due in only two-and-a-half...
read morePhantasmagoria: the first horror picture show
I have been doing quite a bit of research into Phantasmagorie for the Young Adult novel I'm writing about Josephine's daughter Hortense. Phantasmagoria was an extremely popular "show" put on for both children and adults in France after the French Revolution, featuring...
read more4 Formulas for Figuring out a Story
Figuring out a novel’s “elevator pitch” — the summation of a story in a sentence or two — is invariably difficult for novelists, at least it is for me. My mind does not lend itself to reductions. I’m more of the expanding type. (Not an asset.) These 4 formulas — which...
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