We have an amazing book for you this July, a very appropriate work for the month that we in the United States celebrate our Independence Day. Written by Fred Kaplan, a well-known and much celebrated biographer and poet, HIS MASTERLY PEN, A BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON THE WRITER will take its place as one of the…
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…
My current novel-in-progress is entitled GILT. It’s set during the 1870s in New York City. I’m definitely a country girl (actually a backwoods girl), but the first time I visited New York (I was seventeen.), I fell in love with that huge, gritty (grittier then than now), glorious, amazing metropolis. In subsequent visits, both on…
Left to Right: My father, his grandparents, my mother and her parents. I’m currently reading a book by Christine Kenneally entitled, THE INVISIBLE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE. In the first chapter Ms Kenneally tells us about the Maori people of New Zealand and their tradition of whakapiri — the recitation of genealogies to establish…
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…
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…
Welcome to the launch of my monthly blog post about the research behind my books. Allow me to begin with an apologetic…. The twenty-first century is a precarious time to write novels set in any prehistoric era. The development of archaeogenetics and genetic anthropology has sent many cherished theories to the boneyard. (Pardon the pun,…
I have heard experts and non-experts postulate that after acquiring language, humankind’s next huge step toward civilization was learning how to make and use fire. The Aleut word for fire is QUDAX. It’s spoken with short almost schwa-like vowels and a very rough, back-of-the-throat Q and X. I can’t begin to say it in the…
Congratulations to Nancy Stec, our winner of Michael K. Reynolds’ novel FLIGHT OF THE EARLS. Happy Reading, Nancy!
A few weeks ago my friend Trish asked where I find the words and information for Wild Word Fridays. I’m no expert on words, but I’ve found an abundant number of resources concerning words. In no particular order, I usually find my Wild Words from one or more of these sources: 1. Dictionaries. My office is full…
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