My 1000th Blog Post and Canadian Thanksgiving
I predicted in January of this year, on the tenth anniversary of this blog, that I would hit my 1000th post later in 2022. Well, here I am—WordPress tells me that this post is the thousandth. We are two days past the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday—the older cousin of the U.S. Thanksgiving. I’ve decided to use […]
SAFE THUS FAR: A 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award Finalist!
My latest published novel, Safe Thus Far, was a finalist for the 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. Several of my novels have been nominees for the award in earlier years, and I was pleased that this book was a finalist. My novel was in good company. The winner of this year’s Thorpe Menn Literary […]
Time Is Relative: I’m One Degree of Separation from 1867
Recently I was doing more research for my current work-in-progress the is set in 1867. (Yes, it’s drafted. Yes, I’m heavily into editing. And yes, I’m still researching arcane issues.) I came across a tidbit of information I hadn’t focused on before, and it got me thinking about how 1867 wasn’t that long ago, at […]
Cheering On My Rowing Husband: Des Moines Regatta, 2008
My husband took up rowing after our daughter joined the crew team at Georgetown University. Her team was really good, and they took the silver medal for lightweight women rowers at the 2006 Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship regatta her junior year. Her success at rowing spurred him on, and he took a “learn to […]
The Long-Term Impact of the Pandemic on Our Lives
My husband and I have thankfully escaped getting COVID-19 so far (knock on wood), though one after another of our friends and family have reported testing positive. Or if we’ve had the virus, we’ve been among the asymptomatic. So we have not had to cope with long COVID. But that doesn’t mean the pandemic hasn’t […]
When Plans Go Awry
This wasn’t the post I intended to write today. But in the last couple of weeks, not much has gone as I intended. I’ve written before that I am a planner. Before I went to my daughter’s wedding, I’d planned what work I would do on my novel, on my blog, and on all my […]
Post-Pandemic Travel for a Joyous Occasion
I recently returned from my first out-of-state trip since the pandemic began. Actually, it was my first trip of more than 100 miles from home since October 2019, when my son was married. The occasion this time was my daughter’s wedding in Seattle. I worried about getting there, as the news has been full of […]
Lawyering and More in Frontier Oregon
Mac McDougall, one of the major characters in my series, is an attorney who is also an investor in many early Oregon enterprises. Although his background is convenient for the plots of my novels, many real historical figures in Oregon’s history were like the fictional Mac. As I research, I am often surprised by the […]
New Instant Pot: Lots of Room for Short Ribs
I wrote in January 2019 about my hesitation over my husband’s Christmas gift to me of an Instant Pot. I’ve also posted some Instant Pot recipes (see here and here), which I made after overcoming that hesitation, though I was still suspicious of a pressure cooker. Well, over the past three and a half years, […]
HNSNA Mini-Conference: Writing the Past with Authenticity, per Susan Meissner
I wrote last year about attending the virtual conference sponsored by the Historical Novel Society North America (HNSNA). This year, the major Historical Novel Society conference was in England, and I was not able to go. (Someday, maybe I can attend a foreign writing conference.) HNSNA sponsored the mini-conference on July 23 as a teaser […]