Toward a Definition of Historical Fiction
If you follow me on social media, or read this blog, or have been within half a mile of me recently, I probably mentioned to you that I have a book coming out in October that I wrote with Genevieve...
View ArticleFor the Love of…Work
I haven’t written a rambling, pretentious blog post in a while, and I have about 850 other things I should be doing, so…yeah. I’ve been thinking about why I seem to have written so many romances that...
View ArticleThe Everlasting Yea
As of this weekend, I have finished a book. On my own. As in it’s done and I don’t hate it. This was one of those things I had started to suspect would never happen again until it did. Bear with me...
View ArticleThe Books that Write Well…and Those that Don’t
Last month was Private Politics‘ second book birthday, and next week is Star Dust‘s first. They’re a tale of contrasts. It took Genevieve and I approximately nine months to write the first draft of...
View ArticleArt, Bare Life, and Fragmented Identity
(This post is for a friend who’s contemplating how the self can be divided between being an academic and writing fiction; it started as an email, but I’m publishing it here to balance out all the promo...
View Article“Stir the Bubbles Out”
Two weeks ago, my kids were sick, which isn’t in itself terribly interesting. But it was the first week-long illness of their lives, and their first full week out of school. And that meant it was also...
View ArticleUrbanization, Secular Holiday Music, and the Simulacra
I was in my kitchen this morning drinking tea and listening to Christmas music. Bing Crosby’s recording of “Silver Bells” came on, and I started singing along. In between the city sidewalks and the...
View ArticleTempo Rubato
This is a torture device. So I’ve been teaching myself to play the piano. I took a few years of sullen lessons in childhood, but I was more interested in singing and not terribly gifted at either. I...
View ArticleDust and Ashes
What follows is a long and rambling post about my reading history with War and Peace. It’s basically a book report. This probably doesn’t have value for anyone except me, so you have my apologies in...
View ArticleLeaving on a Jet Plane
One of my cat nips is when characters in a book or film debate the meaning of another work of art. Think 500 Days of Summer (2009), in which the narrator tells us that Tom misunderstands the ending of...
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