More interesting facts based on my latest historical novel, The Depth of Beauty... D IS FOR DONALDINA If I were naming a fictional character, I wouldn’t name her “Donaldina.” The name sounds as if a girl’s parents were totally bummed that they didn’t have a boy. Yuck! But Donaldina Cameron was a real person who in fact ran the Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco from 1899 to 1934. She’s a key player in The Depth of Beauty; her mission, in both the story and in life, was to rescue ... VIEW POST
For Chrissakes Don’t Say That!
One of the tricky aspects of writing about a certain historical period is the use of language in dialogue. You want your characters to sound natural to the modern ear, but not out of place within the context of the era they’re living in. The word choices you make are important, because the wrong ones can really jar the reader. In my new historical romance, The Art of Love, for example, most of the action takes place between 1896 and 1903. Men who lived in that era might have used the expression ... VIEW POST
