My latest novella, The Highwayman Came Waltzing, is a whimsical, deliciously romantic, peek into the world of thieves. But today I’m confessing my inner struggle between the romantic myth and the reality of highwaymen.
Do you like to snuggle up in bed with a book? Or do you prefer a lounge chair at the beach? Perhaps you favorite place to read is the quiet of the library or under a tree at the park. Or do you enjoy the sound of life bustling around you while you read; the kids playing or a busy train station on your morning commute? Take our survey and see how your reading habits compare to other readers.
Is it plausible that a young lady in the Regency era would even know how to swim? Some say yes, others say no. Let’s have some fun and investigate this controversy. Hearsay won’t do, let’s look at the evidence. Did Regency era ladies know how to swim? Sea Bathing was common practice, but does that constitute swimming? Letters, engravings, and paintings offer interesting insights, including letters between Lord Byron and his school chum Scrope Beardmore Davies.
Natural born writers catalog sensory data. They store emotional reactions and poignant bits of dialogue as events unfold around them. This happens out of no conscious effort on the writer’s part. It just happens. No matter how nightmarish the experience, no matter how spiritually elevating, how tender, or loving, or awe-inspiring, no matter how devastating or painful – writers record story details.
I enjoyed speaking in Tucson to the Saguaro Romance Authors. Eve Crook sent me a fun limerick for Pantsers.
Jules Verne paid a price to be a writer. What might he have accomplished had he turned his inventive genius to science instead of writing? I’ll bet you he would’ve been just as great.
We’ll never know.
We do know this — he inspired young people to become scientists, explorers, inventors and engineers. He dreamed possibilities, wrote them into fascinating stories, and others turned his visions into realities. Still, Jules Verne paid a price – the same price all great writers must pay. He gave his time and his heart to it.
How would two of our favorite authors, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, fare as writers in today’s world? I have confidence they’d cope surprisingly well with technology and the added demands of promotion in today’s marketplace? Let’s pretend Charles and Jane are contemporaries and very close friends. Observe as they wrestle with the challenges of […]
Writers are often asked, “Where do your ideas come from?” Having studied the psychology of creativity in college, participated in research, taught creative theories in workshops and classrooms, etc, I could give you a list of technical answers that would include explanations about brainwaves, neural pathways, and early childhood development. But today, I decided to […]
