No, I didn’t fall off the face of the earth. My website has been having major problems, and I was having a difficult time getting in touch with my web people. There were (and still are a few) some glitches that made it plain ugly, so I was reluctant to post content that brought people to an unprofessional looking page. …
When history is creepy
I have spent most of my day today re-researching material for my work in progress. I lost all my notes after vacation. Printed notes. Handwritten notes. Not good. Not good at all. I lost my timeline, my calendar–all of it. Now that I’ve re-established my facts, I’ll probably find it in the couch cushions or some such place. But I …
What do you want to read about?
I truly want to create a blog that is fun, entertaining and useful. We are all short on time, aren’t we? The last thing we need to do is waste our time reading blogs that we don’t connect with. I deeply desire to connect with you, Dear Reader. Would you be so kind as to fill out this survey? I’d …
Just call me a gambler
In doing research for my book I’ve had to learn some things I’ve never had an interest in. One of those things is gambling. Did you know that poker wasn’t the biggest game of the North American West in the 1800s? We’ve seen countless westerns with saloons full of poker players. But it wasn’t poker that was popular. Instead, it …
Who knows who you may inspire!
It’s really amazing how things work out in history. As I was doing research for my book about Marco Polo, I learned that Columbus read Polo’s book and it may have spurred him on to look for the far east himself. Is that cool or what? What if Marco Polo had never written about his travels? (Okay, so he didn’t …
Marco! (Polo!)
But even as I write it, I’ll be researching as I go. Learning interesting little details. It’s the details that fascinate me. Such as the food, the customs, the attire.
Q is for Quadroon Ball
A quadroon’s mother usually negotiated with the “sugar daddy” plantation owner for the price of her daughter, but it wasn’t unknown for women of color to be sold by other owners for a generous price.