Technology Update: On Wi-Fi and Tablets
The time has come again for me to focus on technology. It seems every three years or so I can’t avoid upgrading my devices and/or systems. For the past several weeks, I’ve been deep into wi-fi networks and tablets. Actually, my need to focus on technology began last summer. I am the I/T support in […]
Black History in California
As Black History Month (February) winds to an end, I decided to post a bit of Californian history about African Americans and about my African American characters. I’ve posted before about African American history in the Oregon Territory. California was marginally more receptive to Blacks in that era, but not by much. The Tanner family […]
Cinderella Through the Decades
I follow This Day in History, watching for events that relate to my historical novels. Every once in a while, I learn something that finds its way into my novels. The information also provides fodder for blog posts, such as this one. Most of what I learn has nothing to do with my novels, but […]
What Do I Have After Eight Years of Blogging?
I recently discovered that WordPress could show me how many words total I have written on this blog. From January 2012 when I began blogging through 2019, I posted 502,077 words. That’s five good-sized novels. Before I published my first novel, I was told at writing conferences to build an online platform. That was one […]
Bucket List: Making Music Again
I had my second first piano lesson last week. My first first piano lesson was more than fifty years ago, in September 1964, when I was in the fourth grade. I don’t remember that first lesson specifically, but I know I took piano lessons for six years from that point on, then stopped at the […]
Watching Soaps with My Grandmother
Today, February 12, would have been my paternal grandmother’s 108th birthday. She died in 1990 at the age of 78. I wasn’t as close to Nanny Kay as I was to my maternal grandmother, but when I was a preteen, I spent a week or so with her during summers. Just me, without my siblings, […]
On Hallmark, Haircuts, and the Persuasiveness of Grandmas
I thumbed through a photo album of my son’s baby pictures, trying to think of something to write as a birthday post for him. His birthday is later this week. In the album, I found two photographs taken by a photographer at Hallmark Cards when my son was almost a year old. A month or […]
The Grape Juice Incident
Long before the lemon juice incident or the orange juice incident came the grape juice incident. The grape juice incident happened in the early months of 1970, now fifty years ago. But it is indelibly etched in my memory. Some time in early 1970, probably around March, when I was in the ninth grade, I […]
The Forest and the Trees and Writing Affirmations
I am in the thick of writing my current work-in-progress, approaching the halfway mark. I am in the trees, and I cannot see the forest. I write each scene and feel good about it, but I have no feel for the whole. Each conversation between my characters seems real, but what am I forgetting? What […]
Random Photos: Making Maple Sugar at Middlebury
One of the fun experiences I had during my years at Middlebury College was making maple syrup. Friends of mine knew a local farmer outside Bristol, Vermont, and one winter day I was invited with my friends to visit the farm and watch them make maple syrup. I wouldn’t even have remembered when it was, […]