Category: Writing
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Pharmacists and Authors
I spent the night in Old Saybrook in the James Pharmacy, which, once upon a time, was a pharmacy, but is today a French bakery and B&B. A century ago, it was owned and run by “Miss James,” the first African-American woman to be licensed as a pharmacist in Connecticut. (I stayed in the Miss James…
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Bending but not Breaking History
My essay for the Historical Novel Society-North America has finally appeared on their website at the HNS Conference site.
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California Writing
I’m writing a new story that takes place in the Los Feliz neighborhood of LA, below Griffith Park and the Observatory, and around Venice Beach and the canals. Rather than rely on my fuzzy memory and imagination, I flew out to LA last week to do a little ground-truthing. Yeah, it was also an excuse…
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Historical Fiction
From the Historical Novel Society North America (HNSNA): A guest post on “Using ChatGPT to Write Historical Novels.”
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Writing and Sucking
“Why Choose to Write Historical Fiction?” A nice article on the writing of historical fiction online here. Also, I recently participated in a webinar run by Jane Friedman and Allison Williams entitled, Getting Past the Gatekeepers: Learn to troubleshoot your novel’s first pages and query letter—and increase your chances of getting out of the slush pile. Very…
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On the Eastern Shore
Last weekend, I attended the Eastern Shore Writers Association annual conference at Chesapeake College on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It was a good one-day event. While I was there, I drove down to the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge and saw my first bald eagle. Actually, I saw two, so it was definitely worth the drive…