Today is Midsummer’s, the Summer Solstice, long regarded as a special day by humanity. This year, the full moon was just a few nights ago—also an auspicious time for mystics and sky-watchers. The Bones of the Earth, my first published novel, begins at midnight on the Summer Solstice, under a full moon. That coincidence does […]
Sometimes when writing, I feel like I’m just rolling nicely. The word count climbs, I describe setting and action, important events flow onto the pages and then, WHAM! I’m stopped by some tiny detail that I need to research. I like the fiction I write to contain as much fact as possible, whether it’s a […]
Writing can go fast, and then you run headfirst into a wall: how did ancient people live? What did they eat? What kind of clothes did they wear? What were their houses like? This gets more challenging the more obscure you get, particularly when you’re dealing with pre-literary cultures. I’m deep into writing The Triumph […]
By J.L. Oakley This is an amazingly good book. The Jossing Affair reminds me of Dr. Zhivago: it’s a story that helps us understand a world-changing, vicious conflict through a close focus on a few people caught in it. At its heart, it’s actually a realistic love story. Janet Oakley is an author I admire. […]