Magazines have long served as one of my research resources. A favorite is “Archaeology,” a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America. In the May/June 2018 edition, I found a very short but interesting article about early horses. To summarize, Recent DNA research leads researchers to believe that Przewalski’s horses are not the last wild…
In my novel HORSES OF THE WEST SUN (yet to be released and also known as BONE FIRE) set circa 5700 B.C., I based most of my characters’ garments on the clothing and shoes of “the man in the ice” — Otzi. His body was found in 1991 trapped in a glacier in the Otztaler…
The above “Native Flute” is my newest musical instrument. I have a long way to go to really be able to play it, but I love its haunting sound. Like a clarinet, it’s played vertically. This particular version is a “G” instrument and by moving a leather band in the middle to cover or uncover…
For some folks the words CLIMATE CHANGE are a rousing call to arms. That’s not my intent in this post. I’m not interested in the pros or cons of current political clashes concerning the causes and effects of mankind’s contribution to the warming — or the cooling — of the earth. (I was a college…
Last fall my husband dug up a bit of what he calls “gumbo” and what area potters call “Pickford clay.” I ran a few Facebook posts about it as I tempered it with sand and molded it into a sort-of cup. My attempts are far from being good work, but the process helped me understand…
In my current novel (Working title: HORSES OF THE WEST SUN, previously BONE FIRE), I based the houses of the River People on the rectangular, semi-subterranean dwellings used by the Dudeşti people who settled in what is now Romania during the sixth millennium B.C. These houses are built to endure rain and cold weather. By…
My current manuscript (the first book of the BONE FIRE Duet) is set more than 7,000 years ago in the Wallachian Plains of Eastern Europe (now part of Romania). My main male character is Jorn the Word Singer. One of the primary decisions I had to make as I wrote about Jorn involved the words…
One of our guides describes the shape of Croatia as that of a bird flying. Check out the purple image on the map, and you’ll see her description is accurate, with one “wing” of Croatia lying along the Adriatic Sea and the other slanting inland to follow the Danube River. As I mentioned in my…
I have loved horses since I was very young, and one of the “characters” in my novel-in-progress, BONE FIRE, is a horse. Horses from 5000 B.C. (the timeline of the novel) were quite different from horses today. They were smaller, with large heads, and the insides of their legs were striped, like zebra legs. One…
When I began the research for BONE FIRE, it didn’t take me long to decide that I needed to visit the area where most of the novel takes place — the lower Danube River. After a few months of consideration, my husband Neil and I decided that a Viking River Cruise was exactly what we…
End of content
End of content
Get every new post delivered to your Inbox
Join other followers