Connie Lacy's Blog, page 3

Pre-order available

I'm thrilled to announce pre-orders are available for the Kindle edition of my new novel "A Suffragette in Time." Introductory price is 99 cents or the equivalent. It's a time travel novel set in the 1850s.

My new novel available for pre-order!

I’m thrilled to announce pre-orders are available of the Kindle edition of my brand new time travel novel ,A Suffragette in Time. Introductory price $0.99 or the equivalent. The paperback will be published later this month.

Creating a protagonist who becomes a women’s suffrage activist has been quite an educational odyssey. Because Sarah Burns rubs elbows with abolitionists involved with the Underground Railroad, I learned a lot about anti-slavery activities of that period. That’s one of the th...

Blushing as I write a sex scene

I’m re-sharing a popular blog post from 2016 about writing sex scenes in The Shade Ring Trilogy. The Shade Ring, Albedo Effect, and Aerosol Sky are set a hundred years in the future in a time of runaway global warming, when oceans have risen fifteen feet. I made a decision to include sex scenes, although they’re not as explicit as the sex scenes in many romance novels.

Read on:

To each her own. Some readers like their sex scenes hot and steamy. Others want the details left up to their imag...

Brushing your teeth with a twig

Doing research for my forthcoming novel set in the 1850s, I learned that toothbrushes did exist back then, but they wouldn’t be mass produced in America until the 1880s. Wealthy people were more likely to have toothbrushes, perhaps with bone or wooden handles and horsehair or pig hair bristles. In fact, Napoleon’s toothbrush is on display in a London museum. It has a silver gilt handle with fancy engravings and horsehair bristles. But regular folks in rural areas of the United States continued t...

The Gossip Bench

In my sixties coming-of-age novel A Daffodil for Angie there's a “gossip bench” or “telephone chair” in the hallway. It was a piece of furniture common to homes in the fifties and sixties that looked a bit like a school desk. There was a small table on one end where a rotary telephone sat. The other end was a chair. That’s where many a teenage girl or boy sat to talk to their latest heartthrob. Angie’s older sister, Deedee, spends hours doing just that – talking to her boyfriends and then callin...

Ain't it fascinating?

Doing research for a novel is a blast. You run across some intriguing information when you’re poking around. Like the history of the word “ain’t,” a word that will be put to use in my forthcoming novel set in the 1850s. “Ain’t” is frowned upon by sticklers for proper English, but how is it any different from “aren’t” and “isn’t?” Or “hasn’t” and hadn’t?” They’re all contractions.

In fact, before “ain’t” appeared in print, the contraction “amn’t” was used for “am not” as early as 1618, maybe e...

My debut audiobook is here!

https://youtu.be/E-vdnzGBN0k

I’m excited to announce that my first audiobook is now available on Amazon and iTunes. The narration of The Time Capsule is performed by none other than yours truly. See the brief guided tour of my humble recording booth above.

When I first decided to create an audiobook, I had no clue how challenging it would be. I worked in radio news for many years and was used to anchoring newscasts, doing live reports as a field reporter and an inside reporter, and recording a v...

Abolitionists make cameos in my next novel

I’m excited to have two inspiring abolitionists make cameo appearances in my next time travel novel. Both lived in Philadelphia where the story takes place in the 1850s.

Lucretia Mott was a tiny Quaker woman who fought long and hard to persuade white Americans to abolish the sin of slavery. Mott was also an activist for women’s rights. She called the two movements “kindred crusades.”

Of course, a lot of Quakers were abolitionists. Known during that time as The Society of Friends, it was the ...

Not for sissies: Train travel in the 1850s

The image is a romantic one. Women in fashionable full-length dresses boarding well-appointed trains for a scenic journey on the rails. But as I research my forthcoming novel set in 1850s Pennsylvania, I’ve discovered that railroad travel for women – and men – was usually anything but romantic.

As railroads began offering passenger service – the first passenger train was operated by the Baltimore and Ohio rail line in 1827 – seating was what you might call egalitarian. There were no luxury cars...

Like thrillers and mysteries? Let me introduce you to author William J. Cook and "sneaker waves."

From his perch along the scenic coast of Oregon, William J. Cook has written some really fine novels and short stories. I recently finished his latest, Dungeness and Dragons The Driftwood Mysteries Book 4. Some of the scenes had me on tenterhooks. This guy can write! (And it was free in ebook last time I looked.) Or you can start with Seal of Secrets, Book 1 of The Driftwood Mysteries. (Only $1.99 for the ebook.) Bill and I have a virtual friendship through a Goodreads author group. We sat down ...