A trader in tales from far away

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A long time ago, longer now than it seems (in a place, perhaps, that you’ve seen in your dreams), a friend of mine posted on his blog about eschewing New Year’s resolutions in favour of what he called ‘the One Word.’ It is a tradition that I have adopted, and it has served me well. Last year, my word was Learn, and boy, did I learn a lot! Almost nothing on my list, lol. I had such ambitions…

Traditionally, I like to have a recipe in December, to leave the year on something tasty. Once upon a time, I had a mind to put some historical cooking videos on YouTube. I started with a base recipe taken from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. It was beautiful, I was very proud of it, but I did not do the job of set dressing that I should have, and I had to take it down.…

What it is In November, I usually post something about National Novel Writing Month. For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is a month-long event where participants write a 50,000 word long novel from start to finish. However, in light of recent criticism regarding misconduct within their organisation aimed at kids, and their recent stance on AI, I can no longer…

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of the oldest examples of homegrown American literature, and survives to this day as a staple of the Halloween, as distinct from horror, genre. It was written by Washinton Irving in 1820, as part of his compilation of a whole bunch of things (the 1800s was a very experimental time for literature),  The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. ~This post contains…

This is a post straight from the brain archives of Baby Avon. When I was a little kid, I was OBSESSED with the American Girl books, and my second favourite was Felicity Merriman (my first was Samantha Parkington, obviously). If you’re not familiar, the original books were in six-part series, each focusing on a different aspect of a historical girl’s life, and each including a non-fiction…

Explain it to me like I’m a gun-shy pacifist barefoot hippie leftist from Southern California. -Me on Scribophile, asking for advice on writing guns ***Full disclosure*** This is a very short, very shallow general overview. I am not an expert on guns, I only know enough to write them into my stories, which are set in the 1790s-1810s. This post is intended to answer basic questions for the…

Writing is hard. It’s not laying bricks or open-heart surgery, but it is definitely challenging.  It’s made doubly challenging when you’re trying to make a regular habit of it. The conventional wisdom is that you have to exercise it like a muscle, right? Do it consistently,  and eventually, it gets easier. But getting through the mushy middle to the point of consistency can be tricky. For times…

If you’re here on my blog, you probably love a coffee shop. (If you’re a tea-only person and prefer the tea house, I have a post for you, too) How many of you have pitched a laptop or tablet at a rickety table with a hard wooden chair, listened idly to the hum of chatter, the clinking of ceramic, and the growl of the milk steamer? Bang, bang, bang, goes the barista, before locking fresh espresso…

The Muses So, every so often (usually when Facebook won’t let me share posts to my author page), I poll the Misfits about the kind of posts they’d like to see me write about. One of the most popular ideas was mythology related to gods and spirits ruling over the domain of creativity. So, who better to start with than the actual Muses? *sigh* Full disclosure, I’m not an ancient historian or a…

Every year, I poll the Misfits, and every year they vote ‘time management’ as the topic they most want advice on. I can relate, I also struggle with it. But I do have some tricks, and maybe this one will help you. Time Blocks These three techniques are simultaneously totally different, and basically the same. They’re really all about concentrating your focus on one thing at a time. Time blocks…