Some online friends of mine have recently revived a thread challenging us to write an entire story in six words.
Six words?
Yes. Six words.
This challenge appears to stem from a story Hemmingway once wrote: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Want more examples? A few years ago Wired Magazine challenged a number of authors to try their [...]

Read Full Post »

I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction in preparation for writing the next book this fall. The title of this post is one of these books (by Mary Roth Walsh – 1977). Yes, its an old book, but I was after the historical stuff… She chronicles and examines the history of women becoming physicians [...]

Read Full Post »

What did a nineteenth century family do when they needed more space? Wanted to attach the house to the barn? Or wanted to keep the kitchen separate from the more formal dining room and parlor?
They built an ell. It means exactly what it sounds like – the addition was built at a right angle [...]

Read Full Post »

In Wait for Their Return, my historical character needs appropriate dishes. Some of these dishes are made from redware, a kind of pottery that went into production in America in 1625. Redware was given its name because that was the color the clay turned after firing. The production of redware continued at high levels [...]

Read Full Post »

Wait for Their Return incorporates a lot of historical facts from the 1830s. To get the details as accurate as possible, I spent a huge amount of time reading and researching. The library has seen a lot of me this past year.
*
I also made several trips to Sturbridge Village in order to [...]

Read Full Post »

I was at Sturbridge Village last weekend (detecting a theme?) and there happened to be two costumed interpreters making soap, the old way. In an earlier post, I mentioned that the ashes from all those wood fires were saved for making soap. I had a vague idea of the process, but took the [...]

Read Full Post »