Sandra Gulland's Blog

My First Scary-Smart Beta Readers

Yesterday, on a “why-not” whim, I fed the 17,477-word draft of my WIP to ProWritingAid.com, an AI manuscript evaluation website. Slightly befuddled (an entirely human emotion I doubt AI will ever master), I ended up asking for not one but three “reader” reports. OMG One report was 16 single-spaced pages long and the two others […]

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Perplexity.ai: an amazing research tool

And here is my research post follow-up. Try http://www.Perplexity.ai! Let me know how it goes.

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Falling into the Bottomless Pit of Research

I haven’t yet figured out how to fully post a blog I’ve written on Substack to here on WordPress. For now, this will have to do. Falling into the Bottomless Pit of Research: Again by Sandra Gulland Will I ever crawl out? Read on Substack

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Puzzling out Princess Elizabeth Tudor’s Life as a Teen

There are a number of puzzling facts about teen Elizabeth Tudor’s relationship with her charismatic stepfather Sir Thomas Seymour. In his second year as Elizabeth’s new stepfather, he was arrested for a score of misdeeds, including behaving inappropriately with her. A number of people were put in prison and many more were questioned, including Elizabeth […]

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Now: where was I?

For a lock-it-down quiet pandemic life, my husband and I have been moving around quite a bit. In November, we closed down our rural house in Ontario in anticipation of going to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico for the winter. We’d last seen our house there over two years before when we returned to […]

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Figuring out what works

I’ve come to understand that if I don’t spend at least some time early morning with my WIP (with mug of coffee), it’s quite likely not to happen at all that day.  I have a “Cup ‘o Work” habit first thing—usually in bed, and always with my laptop and a hot mug of half decaf/half […]

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“Flaneuring” through a morning: more research joys

It has been so long since I posted here I couldn’t figure out how to do it. My last post was at the end of October of last year, so close to six months ago. It feels more like a year to me, in part because of our molassas-slow new reality. That post was The […]

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The guilt, angst and joy of research

I recently read an article by the elusive Ryan Holiday, a professional book researcher. He made one very important point—at least to me. He said that the first step in researching is to acquire a research library which will include books that you will likely never read. He calls it an anti-library. We all have books […]

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On Plague, Sweating Sickness, and Covid-19

The novel I’m writing now is set in mid-16th century England. During this time period episodes of black plague and the quickly lethal “sweating sickness” came and went. With each epidemic, enormous numbers of people died. Long ago, when I started to research, these events were simply blips on a timeline. With the advent of our […]

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Reporting in: the charms and challenges of day-to-day life

I’m not even going to guess how long it’s been since I posted to this blog. It feels like forever. As with any long pause, I begin with the thought: So much has happened! Where do I begin? I’ll begin with where I am right this instant: I’m in my lovely office our log home […]

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