For the first time since we have been married (and I think for the first time in our whole relationship) my husband and I are going out for dinner to celebrate Valentine’s Day. It’s a pretty big deal – getting him out of the man cave takes a highly technical and concerted effort. But he […]
Writing Is Hard Work
“It must be nice to spend all day doing something you love.” It really is – but sometimes, it just isn’t either. I’m making a career out of writing. And while it might sound nice and cushy, it’s actually really hard work – mainly due to conflicting priorities and a lack of focus. What does […]
Bridgerton
As a writer of historical romance, I couldn’t help but watch the Netflix series Bridgerton, based on the series of novels by Julia Quinn. And the series delivered, with ballrooms, gowns, gossip, romances, scandals, and just about every historical romance trope imaginable stuffed into the first episode. While the fabrics are perhaps not quite era-specific, […]
Beautiful Creatures – lovely til the end…
So I’ve just finished watching (well, rewatching, I’ve seen it before), the movie Beautiful Creatures. It backdates to 2013, and if it hadn’t been hot on the heels of Twilight and Hunger Games, may very well have made more of a splash – that is, until the last fifteen minutes of storytelling forget about narrative […]
Loosely Based on Fairytales.
When I go looking for the next idea for my Seven Wishes tales, I look to the old Grimm and Andersen fairytales for inspiration, or the Arabian Nights. Those fairytales always have a great story, a hook, and a moral, which makes them ideal for me to riff off. However, turning a fairytale into a […]
There’s a meeting point between Regency romance and fantasy.
Regency romance, since the days of its invention by the amazing Georgette Heyer, is frothy, light and humorous, set in the times of the King Georges of England, and involves feisty, often impoverished damsels and the dukes and earls who love them. Fantasy is big and sprawling and can be anything from elves to robots, […]
Is there such a thing as Too Much Backstory?
Sometimes when you’re reading, your eyes become droopy because its 3am and you have to go to work tomorrow and oh my god I didn’t notice the time and this book is SO GOOD I’ll just sneak in one more chapter… But then there are other times when your eyes get droopy because The Book […]
Welcome to my Universe.
It recently struck me that all of my storylines fit into the one universe, even though they could be anything from time travel to historical romance. The diagram above shows how they all fit in with each other. Amazingly enough, by doing this, I’ve been able to sort out some timelines that weren’t working for […]
Wanted Movie is Wanting
I just watched the movie Wanted with James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman. And while it was obviously an action movie, with a few awesome unbelievable action sequences (getting the guy into the red Porsche was amazing), at the end of the movie, I was left wanting. I set out to analyze the movie, having […]
Supernatural Season 5 Episode 7
The Curious Case of Dean Winchester. I’ve been rewatching Supernatural in the months leading up to the release of Season 14, and I came across this episode yesterday. I really liked it – laugh out loud moments along with some real heart-string tugs. What I did want to talk about was the character of the […]