Romance Author

When I was a teenager, there was a Paul Harvey radio program called “The Rest of the Story,” and Harvey, who had a magnificent gift for storytelling, would share a story about a widely-known person or subject matter, then surprise his audience with a twist of situational irony at the end, a rhetorical strategy that Harvey became best known for. It was in one of his stories that inspiration for my…

My grandparents on my father’s side were Slovaks who came from southern Hungary in the early 1900s. They settled in St. Louis, Missouri, joining a community of Lutheran Slovaks. I knew I had Slovak heritage and that they were born in Hungary, but beyond that, not much more. When I had my DNA tested in 2018, I found Slovak family I never knew existed, both in the States and in Serbia (which was…

I am currently in edits for the third American Heiress novel, The Lady Adeline, while simultaneously writing the fourth and final as yet untitled book in the series. As one can imagine, writing fiction set in a time before one was born requires a great deal of research. Until fairly recently, I spent a lot of time and money locating and purchasing sources to ensure historical accuracy to the…

When I visited Québec City in 2018, I knew I had one ancestor—Jeanne Juin, my 7th great-grandmother—who had emigrated with a group of women called the Filles du Roi (Daughters of the King). What I didn’t know at the time was that I actually had more than twenty ancestors who were Filles du Roi, and that the research I was doing during that trip would inspire two works of historical fiction:…

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For the historical fiction author, diving into the past is a thrill all its own. While researching Mary Wollstonecraft, the protagonist of my biographical novel, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft, I had no shortage of source material. Mary Wollstonecraft is the 18th century British writer and philosopher widely considered the world’s first feminist. Her overarching message was…

History Imagined posts will resume in January. Hope your holidays and 2026 are filled with the love and friendship of those you hold dear!

From my home to yours, wishing you a wonderful day of good food, loving family, good friends, and excellent fellowship! If you know someone who will be alone on this special holiday, I urge you to invite them to your home. As grandma always said, add another potato to the pot. There’s always room for one more!

Ae Fond Kiss is my third novel taking place in the Utopian Community of Rugby, TN.  Over twenty years ago, friends retired to Historic Rugby and built a cottage matching the village’s Gothic Victorian architecture. As I toured the colony, I heard the voices of the settlers who came from the various parts of the United States, Appalachia, and England. In 1880, a flock of young Englishmen trudged…

On February 15, 1915, the first day of the Chinese New Year, a regiment of Muslim Indian soldiers in the British army stationed in Singapore, which at the time was a British colony, rebelled against their officers, slaughtering at least 47 people, including some civilians. The incident, which became known as the Singapore Mutiny, is at the heart of the historical thread in my dual-timeline novel,…

In Gilead’s Physician, journey back to the late 19th century inSalacoa Valley, Georgia, where James Buchanan, a young manwith dreams of becoming a doctor, returns to his hometownafter completing his education. As he steps into his role as thecommunity’s healer, James finds himself captivated by MaryAlice, a woman whose beauty and charm are impossible toignore.Set against the backdrop of a…

Research is the cornerstone of my book creation process, and Mona Lisa’s Daughter was a particularly demanding project. The dual timelines of 16th-century Florence and World War II Florence, separated by nearly 500 years, presented a unique challenge. My mission was to merge these disparate periods into a coherent whole. To embark on this enlightening journey, I immersed myself in Walter…

Setting my romantic WWI-era fantasy novel, All That Shimmers, in New Hampshire prompted extensive research into regional history, with a special focus on the White Mountains.The book is set in 1918 at Twin Birch House, a fictional lakeside grand hotel resort. Guests, staff and locals find escape and adventure in the surrounding White Mountain National Forest, where hidden magical characters also…

Thanks to Women’s Studies, we’ve brought them into the open. But are they now in peril? To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, “Anonymous” was a woman. She lived anonymously, participated anonymously in historic events, and came and went anonymously without leaving much of a mark. That is, until the burgeoning women’s movement of the 1970s fostered Women’s Studies, which in turn revealed extraordinary…

In researching my book on Jo van Gogh and her remarkable dedication to save her brother-in-law, Vincent van Gogh, and his artwork from obscurity, I needed to understand what societal restrictions existed around the ideas of work in the late nineteenth century. Jo’s story is taunt because of an undercurrent of resistance to her decision to become an art dealer—an occupation reserved exclusively…