More Than Just a Gibson Girl: The New Woman

The New Woman prompted a lot of satirical photos and cartoons by the male establishment who felt threatened by her growing popularity and power. This photo depicts the “masculinized” New Woman. Dressed in turn-of-the-century male garb (the straw hat and knickerbocker pants), she stands over her man with a cocky, stern look on her face, …

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What’s in a Tagline? Picking Apart My Tagline

Photo Credit: Woman with veil, dark Gothic fantasy image, uploaded December 24, 2014 by LoganArt: LoganArt/ Pixabay/CC0 1.0 Last week, the Sisters in Crime organization held a webinar for authors about author branding. The idea of “branding” is relatively new buzzword in business and marketing (when it comes to people rather than products, that is) but …

Not Worth a Cent: Glitz and Excess in The Gilded Age

The idea behind the cartoon is, as I mention below, big business controlled the government during the Gilded Age. In this cartoon, big business is represented by “the robber barons”, the name given to railroad company tycoons (and the businesses that made them possible, such as the steel business), pictured as bloated bags of money, …

Blog Break and Series Fact Sheet

Photo Credit: Illustration from “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton”, Sydney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904: Sebastian Wallroth/Wikimedia Commons/PD Art (PD Old 100) Thank you to all the wonderful people who are continuing to check out my blog. The support and encouragement has been overwhelming! I will be traveling abroad for the next several months so …

Not So HAE (Happily Ever After)

The epitome of the happily-ever-after romance ending — the handsome couple off against the sunset with the calm waters and the palm tree. Photo Credit: Silhouette of a loving couple against a sunset, uploaded 25 April 2017 by 5187396: 5187396/Pixabay/CC0 1.0 “We are writers and we destroy lives and worlds and ideologies. And sometimes, we …

It’s Camp Nano Time Again!

Photo Credit: Summer in Connecticut – The Old Barn at Branchville, J. Alden Weir, 1890’s, oil on canvas, Christie’s, New York: Trzesacz/Wikimedia Commons/PD Old 95 1934 Some of you might remember that I took a blogging break in April because of Camp Nano . Well, it's summer and Camp Nano is upon us again and I've decided to …

Not The Angel in the House: De Havilland as Charlotte Bronte in Devotion (1946)

***This post is part of The Third Annual Olivia De Havilland Blogathon, hosted by the In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Phyllis Loves Classic Films blogs. *** ***Some spoilers*** “Let me introduce you to the real Charlotte Brontë. She was not a wallflower in mourning. She always wanted to be famous; she pined …

Adventurous Perception: The Individual Creative Process

Photo Credit: Photograph of Maurits (M.C.) Escher, around 23 Nov. 1971. Photograph probably made by Hans Peters (ANEFO), Ga het na (Nationall Archief NL): Vysotsky/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY SA 3.0 Many artists talk about the creative process. It’s one of those illusive ideas that fascinates non-artists and weighs heavily on the minds of artists because creativity …

The Emotional Badlands of Language, or, Language is Not Just Data

Photo Credit: Canadian singer Leonard Cohen in Trouville-sur-Mer (Normandy, France), taken 26 January 1988 by Roland Godefroy: Teddyyy/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0 “If words are the arrow, we ourselves — our interior landscapes, our outward actions, the authenticity of our lives — are the bow.” (Popova, par. 1) As many of my blog readers know, I …

Character vs. Plot Puzzles: The Two Sides of My Fictional World

Photo Credit: Multi-colored puzzle pieces, uploaded 17 February 2017: Pixhere/CC0 1.0 Last week, I announced in a live Facebook post on my author page that I’m exploring new directions with my fiction. I also created a Coming Soon page on my website with more details about what I’m doing and why and what readers can expect in …