Researching the Etymology of Words for Historical Fiction
I try to keep the language I use in my historical novels true to the time period I’m writing about. This is particularly important in the dialogue between characters and in the thoughts of my point of view character. The accuracy of the language I use is as important to the verisimilitude of the novel […]
Da Vinci: Renaissance Man and Inspiration for the 21st Century
I’ve always wanted to be a renaissance woman—to be like the educated class of the Renaissance, free to pursue a variety of interests, not as a dabbler, but as an expert in each area I explored. The only drawback I could see to such a life was the lack of indoor plumbing. (Well, antibiotics and […]
I Almost Lived in San Diego
When my husband and I were in our third year of law school, we had to decide where to settle after we graduated. We’d spent the summer after our second year in Los Angeles, each clerking for a different law firm. Neither of us liked Los Angeles—we’d worked there primarily because that was the city […]
La Jolla, California—A Jewel of a City
My husband and I were fortunate to spend a recent weekend in San Diego, California. One afternoon we drove through La Jolla, a suburb to the north of the city. According to the La Jolla visitor’s website, the origin of La Jolla’s name is not clear. It either derives from the Spanish “la joya”, which […]
Milestones: On Turning Sixty
We have a tendency to mark milestone birthdays more than others. In my last post I described my twenty-first birthday. I don’t remember my thirtieth birthday—I was too busy with work and child-rearing for the day to make much of an impression. In fact, I remember being bothered more when my husband turned thirty (the same day […]
First Birthdays With My Husband
My husband-to-be and I started dating about a month before my twenty-first birthday. We were first-year law students at the time. When my big day rolled around, he gave me flowers and took me out for a really nice dinner in downtown Palo Alto, California. (We were law students. Any dinner in a restaurant with […]
An Empty InBox
Many years ago, my department at work took the Gallup StrengthsFinder survey to find out what we were best at, as defined by Gallup. At the top of my list was “Input.” That sounded odd to me, but the description of this strength said it meant I liked to collect things. I’ve never had a […]
Cloisters: Transplanting History Across the Seas and Through the Centuries
My son says that when he lived in New York several years ago I told him I wanted to see the Cloisters when I visited him. I don’t remember that conversation, though he has a better memory than I do. In any event, we did not make it to the Cloisters when he lived there […]
Party Like It’s 1850
The main plot and some of the sub-plots of my work-in-progress revolve around relationships between the sexes. I try to be faithful to the attitudes of people of the mid-19th century in my book, even though modern readers are often put off by how formal people were compared to our own times. My characters come […]
Telling History Through Family Stories: The Tenement Museum
My husband and I recently spent time with our son and his girlfriend in New York. They took us to see the Tenement Museum in Manhattan, which explains what life was like at various points in time in a tenement building at 97 Orchard Street on the lower East Side. This tenement was built in […]