The arrival of the Christmas season lifts my spirits every year. I love the smiles and good wishes we seem to exchange so freely and the peace I feel in my heart that honestly is not present in such quantity through much of the year. I especially love the Christmas carols that play in most stores and over the sound systems in shopping malls. There is something about them that affects me. Some of these songs are beautiful, with gorgeous…
I love Christmas. The season seems to bring out the best in just about everyone, from friends and acquaintances ready with friendly greetings and holiday wishes, to strangers who wish you the best of the season while shopping in stores or passing on a busy street. My first Christmas celebration with my wife still ranks as one of our best. She was three weeks away from giving birth to our first child, a son, so we limited the length of…
The last few days of November are upon us and, with Thanksgiving complete, Christmas preparations are taking over. That’s not to say the shops waited until this week to put up their trees and garland. Heaven forbid! Where I live in Canada, the home improvement stores decorated the trees and started playing carols in late September. My thoughts on this are best summed up in the immortal words of Ebenezer Scrooge: Bah, humbug! Don’t misunderstand, I love Christmas and all…
As some of you know, I am in the midst of writing a series titled Elizabeth Said, Darcy Said, where I take well known portions of Ms. Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and expand on them. Each book tells the story first from Elizabeth’s perspective, then reexamines it from Darcy’s point of view. The first two novellas told the story of Our Dear Couple’s initial meeting at the Meryton Assembly. Books three and four explore Elizabeth’s introduction to Mr. Wickham in…
I confess. The details in my fiction are open to interpretation by readers, as well as other authors. In my defense, though, my stories are set in a period more than two hundred years in the past, so many of the situations I put my characters into are dreamed up as I write. That is not to say the conversations and actions I thrust these men and women into are made up of whole cloth. Their words and manner of…
Today is Trivia Thursday, where we intrigue the trivia buff in you with a bit of trivia! I wanted to do something with a tinge of romance to it, and the Eiffel Tower came to mind as a romantic location. Here are some fun factoids: When it comes to monuments you have to pay to visit, the Eiffel Tower is the most visited monument in the entire world! On average, 25,000 people ascend the tower every day. (I cannot even imagine…
Tuesday Tunes will be a regular part of our posting repertoire, for here you will find some of the best loved music the world has produced. My blogging partners and I have definitive tastes in music, and while I will not claim any superiority for my tastes (though I think I could make a good case for it ;)), mine will flow in certain directions. While I listen to several genres, I grew up listening to classical, which was a…
I’m an author. No, seriously, that’s what I do with myself since I retired. I write variations based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”. But what does it mean when I make that claim? Do I have any published works, or is this something I do in my spare time to stay active and possibly amuse myself? And what is involved in the art of creating and selling a story? Yes, I am a published writer, with nine books available…
Today is Funny Friday, and the purpose of my post is to give you something you will hopefully be able to laugh at. I thought, with that in mind, that I would give you an excerpt from Miss Elizabeth’s Unforgettable Assembly, the first novella in my Elizabeth Said, Darcy Said series. I began writing in May of 2022 and published this story in June. The excerpt, indeed the entire story, begins at the assembly in Meryton, where Darcy resists Bingley’s…
Welcome to our blog, a Glimmer of Gold. This blog represents the blood, sweat, and tears of writers Jann Rowland, Lelia Eye, and Colin Rowland. Well, minus the blood, perhaps. We first ventured out into the publishing world by publishing variations on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but our interests are varied. While many of our works contain the common thread of romance, we have no intention of limiting ourselves to that. The sky’s the limit, so to speak, but…