The Family Motto
The Family Motto Let’s try a thought experiment: Family motto! Don’t we all have a family motto? By this I mean the secret or open
Tag: craft of writing
Making Memories and Hooking Them Later Part 2
After compiling that memory book for my parents, I realized that there’s something special about the physical representation of memory. I used to scorn my
A story song that echoes across centuries (well, 20th and 21st C): Ode to Billie Joe
Bobbie Gentry, a Mississippi singer/songwriter, wrote several great story songs. “Fancy” is my favorite, the story of a poor but beautiful girl being coached by
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya.” -The story of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”-
So the first “story song” I’d like to discuss is Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” This 1976 folk ballad is in
Three Things to Tell Your Teenage Writing Self: #2 And then stuff happens
via GIPHY One joyous discovery I made along my journey to full-on authorhood was that the middles of books are hard, yes, but they are
Family Friendships with Trollope’s Women
Finally the Bechdel Test! The Bechdel test is the invention of cartoonist Allison Bechdel, who in the 1980s noticed how frequently Hollywood films diminish
Putting into Words What Cannot Be Put into Words
The late and beloved Ursula Le Guin once wrote that the writer’s job is to “put into words what cannot be put into words.” Writers
Research-reading Trollope: The Garden-Variety Bad Husband
The Garden-Variety Bad Husband Now, after the operatically self-destructive Kennedy and Trevelyan, we come to a more conventionally bad husband, Ferdinand Lopez. He was an
Research-reading Trollope: The Poison of Power
Louis Trevelyan, Domestic Tyrant Trollope understood that men can be the victims of masculine power and violence too. There’s Phineas Finn, for example, who is
Trollope, the Postal Pillar-box, and the Fourth Wall
But first, a digression into postal history! (British history and literature are so charmingly replete with such odd anecdotes. Trollope most of all would approve,
Trollope: Bad Marriages and Toxic Masculinity
Trollope’s Bad Marriages Anthony Trollope was an advocate of marriage, having famously said that a woman’s “best right” was to a husband, not the vote.
Research-reading Sherlock: Holmes and Money Crimes
In the last post, I discussed currency in the Victorian period, and how the Holmes stories give precise information on the price of everything from
Sherlock Holmes and Money Matters
Sherlock and Money Matters By Alicia Rasley The British money system in the 19th C (actually, well into the 20th C— the decimal currency wasn’t