This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “How do you develop your characters? Do you have a favourite kind/archetype?” We covered part of the idea of character development before and my general method is in the post, Building Characters where I likened it to my daughter’s cosplay outfits. I skimmed…
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group was asked about teaching moments: “What have you recently learned from a REAL LIFE event/happening that you can apply to your writing/writing career?” Have you ever felt like the universe is trying to tell you something? It’s been shouting at me lately. When the…
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “Share at least 3 things you like or admire about each of your main characters. Share at least 3 things you like about your story.” I’m going to focus on my reluctant duke’s story, Beneath His Touch. Main Characters James never expected to…
There isn’t a lot of information available regarding how Valentine’s Day was celebrated in the early 19th Century. Most Regency Valentine’s cards (mostly handmade love letters) were considered ephemera and not held onto except in rare circumstances. You’ll notice I didn’t title this post as a primer, because I didn’t feel I could speak on…
Last week in my acountability group’s HOW I WRITE series, we posted our take on writing advice and mine in particular struck a chord with readers. This week’s topic is “Name up to 5 unexpected finds/treats/treasures this weeks. Things that caught your attention that you may not have noticed normally.” It could be a book we’ve…
Last week’s post on Regency Marriages & Elopements, outlined the different ways one could get married during the Regency Era. So this week, we’re going to take a closer look at what happens when there wasn’t a Happily Ever After (HEA). The topic of Regency Divorce and Annulments is a much romanticized one in Regency…
Seventeen years ago today, my husband and I tied the knot on an overcast morning beside the Chester River in Chestertown, Maryland where we went to college. This was one week before he graduated, four months before his 21st birthday. We had a surprisingly large turnout of all our friends and family considering it wasn’t…
So… Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. I often wonder how someone like me who used to rejoice when the annual Black Hearts Ball rolled around on Feb 14th came to want to write romance? Back in high school, I got dumped on Valentine’s Day. Yeah, a real kick in the teeth. I didn’t realize it at the…
I find myself rather annoyed with Hugh Daniel Leighton, Viscount Barrington. Last fall, he whispered sweet seductions in my ear like the practiced rake he was, urging me to tell his story. So I abandoned the ms where he’d been a secondary character and found him a nice girl with a few quirks of her…
Last night, I was talking to DH about yesterday’s Thursday Thirteen. He made the mistake of asking what I thought of Dr. John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. We started off into a discussion about the types of love, but got derailed on Gray’s “point system” and how men and women…