One great source of inspiration while writing is art from the period in which I am writing about: in this case regency England. One author who proves an excellent source of such inspiration is Edmund Blair Leighton, an English painter who specialized in historical themes, in particular the medieval and regency periods, though Leighton lived …
I have seen a couple of these in very old books I’ve owned; they must have made convenient bookmarks – not sure what that says of their sentimental value, but NPR posted an article about them by Linton Weeks. Read it here.
As the story I am currently working on is set in the romantic, thatched-roofed village of Wroxton in regency Oxfordshire, England, I went on a quest for old online maps of that area, looking for roads, terrain and surrounding communities. And, not for the first time, I found Rootsweb to be a great resource! Traditionally a …
In my last post on Research History Using School Annuals, regarding yearbooks for family history, I mentioned using old school yearbooks as a resource for character and setting development for writing fiction. Why? If you’re planning a book, set in Michigan, for example, in 1945, old school annuals provide a wealth of information about Michigan, or …
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Old yearbooks are very useful when it comes to researching your own family. But for writers they are a huge resource of historical information about a specific town, era and a pool of ideas for character development. I have used old yearbooks for all of the above. School annuals, or yearbooks, have been around since …
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Happy Thursday! Here’s an embroidered table runner I inherited from a house that had been in our family for 90 years. It’s large – 24 X 60 inches of coarse muslin. I love the pattern – very spring-like.
While researching my mom’s family, I learned about a golden nugget that led to finding lost family members – City Directories! City Directories were published in most cities and in many small towns, because they were designed to be a reference for people from outside the community, such as traveling salesmen. They differ from Telephone …
Following up on my last post about family history, here is how I started. In 1998, I read an article in a magazine about asking your elder family members questions about their lives and about the times in general when they were growing up. Liking the idea, I wrote to my dad and each of …
I have always been interested in family history. My mother had a wall of old family pictures, and it took me ages to learn how I was connected to all of those people and what their names were. When I was twelve, I learned my mother had been adopted and that intensified my interest, culminating …