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Out of the Omnibus: Violet Hunt
Who? Don’t worry, I’d never heard of her before either, and I have no idea why not. I started my dive into THE OMNIBUS OF CRIME in the back, in the section labeled: MACROCOSMOS (Stories of the Human and Inhuman) pt. 2: Tales of Blood and Cruelty. Why? I’m not sure, except it sounded good. And of the six stories there, I decided to start with “The Corsican Sisters,” by Violet Hunt. Who? Well. Let me tell you. First of all — this is Violet Hunt here. Now, that’s an interesting face. She’s an English writer, and nobody I ever heard of before. But I like her. A lot. She…
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Out of the Omnibus
So, I found this book in the second hand store. Fifty cents, I kid you not. The intro by the splendid Ms. Sayers alone is worth the price of admission. I love reading old books. A deep dive into the strange and the obscure is my favorite catnip. Also, as an untrained urbanite, it’s the only kind of archeology I get to do. And as I’m writing madly on my next mysteries and thrillers, I figured getting some deep background on the genre would be useful. But let’s face it, mostly, I just have an impolite passion for old, weird books. FIRST UP: THE CORSICAN SISTERS by Violet Hunt
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A Purely Private Interview
Fresh Fiction puts me in the Cozy Corner for an interview about Rosalind Thorne and A PURELY PRIVATE MATTER!
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Longest Title Ever
When doing historical research, you end up reading strange books with strange titles. Take, for instance, this classic that was written for young men reading law in the Inner Temple by one Mr. John Impey: The Practice of the Office of the Sheriff; Shewing The Powers and Duties of those Offices. The Manner of Appointing the High Sheriff, the Under Sheriff and their Deputies. The Elections of the Serrifs of London and Middlesex with the Bye-Laws of the City Relating Thereto. The Nature of Actions by and Against Sheriffs Including All the Modern Determinations and Necesary Precedents of Retursn to Writs &c. Also The Practice of the Office of the…
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Announcing New Books from Darcie Wilde
The contracts are signed, and now it can be told! My next two books will be….MYSTERIES! Set in Regency London, A USEFUL WOMAN will follow the life and struggles of Rosalind Thorne, a gently bred woman of reduced circumstances with the unenviable job of trying to untangle a mystery involving the corpse discovered in that most excluve of London ballrooms…Almack’s.
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Book Day Never Gets Old
I don’t get much done on Book Day. Oh, I do a lot. I post a lot, I check the various social media a whole lot. I agonize over views and clicks and reviews. I also pace, sometimes literally, sometimes just metaphorically. I have further, I confess, been known to go to bookstores to see my baby out there in the wild, so to speak. But mostly I sit at the keyboard saying to myself “I can’t believe it. It’s MY book. There is is. Right there. On-line. With my name on the cover and everything! It’s real!” So, happy Book Day to me, and to you. Here’s hoping you…
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Maleficent at 47
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS! You read that up there about the spoilers right? Right. Okay. I saw the original Disney Sleeping Beauty in the movie theater. I was 9. Disney was doing one of it’s periodic re-releases of its classic animated features, and Mom took me as a reward for having memorized my multiplication tables up to 6. I never saw the ending (at least in the theater), because Mom also had to haul me out of the theater because when Maleficent turned into the dragon I started screaming in terror. So, me and that bad fairy, we got history. I took my son to see Maleficent this weekend, just…
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That Old Time Feeling
Writing is, by necessity, a profession of emotions. This is not going to come as any kind of surprise to readers, especially Romance readers. Emotions are at the heart of character, and character is at the heart of story. And at the heart of the human brain is a quirk that by describing a feeling, you invoke it in yourself. So, there’s no part of writing a novel that is not going to put the writer on an emotional roller coaster. And people wonder why we tend to drink so much… But there are other ways that the work itself gets emotionally involving. One comes at the very beginning. There…
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My Romantic Times — Day 4, Most of it Anyway
Got up early enough on Friday that I was able to get out for a walk. Cold was entirely gone and I strolled down Canal, in part so I could find The Ruby Slipper where a bunch of fellow Berkely authors and I were due to have breakfast on Saturday. From there I walked down Rampart Street, because it was there, and it was Rampart Street. Found Lafayette Square. Found the appellate court, which is housed in the John Minor Wisdom building. And the jokes just sort of write themselves, don’t they? Saw a bit of the warehouse district as well before turning back to the hotel and the conference.…
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My Romantic Times — Day 3
Woke up Thursday feeling much, much better. Good enough, in fact, to head back to Cafe Biegnet for, you guessed it, biengets, and strawberries, and some really strong coffee. Life was very, very good. Thursday’s item on the agenda was the “Exorcising Your Writing Demons,” with Patricia Rice, Patricia Burroughs, and Mary Jo Putney. 3 of us met up at Daisey Dukes, a 24/7 diner next to the hotel. I finally had red beans and rice. And fried green tomatoes. Delicious, and plentiful. The panel went really well. We spent time talking about things that hold us back from writing — feelings of insecurity, unsupportive surroundings, fear of what relatives…