The New Year is upon us and I’m sure a lot of people indulged in the time honored tradition of coming up with, then announcing to the world what they resolved to change, improve, quit, etc. in 2023. I might be a little bit late exploring this subject, but there is a method to my madness. The practice of making promises at the beginning of the new year is not a recent invention, unless one considers four thousand years in…
I have been thinking about changes I’ve gone through since I decided to follow (far, far behind) in my brother Jann’s footsteps and become a published writer. Part of the impetus was my move to Calgary to help care for my mother, but a larger consideration was the fact that I was fast approaching retirement and wanted something that would keep me busy and generate extra income. Jann had been writing for a few years and his choice had…
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…
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…