Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 131

The Art of War - World War One Poster Art

Today's post is what is sometimes referred to as "picspam." I find WWI-era posters fascinating. Here are a few interesting ones. I'll post some recruitment posters later this month.

Posters aimed at financing the war were very common. Here's a German war bond poster.


Here's one for the Russian liberty loan.



Money was needed for relief of refugees and other victims of the war.




This American War Bond poster is unusual because it's a photograph rather than a painting.












Sentimental appeals were quite

Edmund Blunden, "Can You Remember?"

Can You Remember?

Yes, I still remember
The whole thing in a way;
Edge and exactitude
Depend on the day.

Of all that prodigious scene
There seems scanty loss,
Though mists mainly float and screen
Canal, spire and fosse;

Though commonly I fail to name
That once obvious Hill,
And where we went and whence we came
To be killed, or kill.
Those mists are spiritual
And luminous-obscure,
Evolved of countless circumstance
Of which I am sure;

Of which, at the instance
Of sound, smell, change and stir,
New-old shapes for e

Edward Thomas, "This Is No Case..."

This is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.
Beside my hate for one fat patriot
My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:
A kind of god he is, banging a gong.
But I have not to choose between the two,
Or between justice and injustice. Dinned
With war and argument I read no more
Than in the storm smoking along the wind
Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar.
From one the weather shall ris

Jackie Barbosa Guest Post - Confessions of a Sub-Genre Slut

Please welcome my guest, Jackie Barbosa!

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Confessions of a Sub-Genre Slut


Before I get started, I'd like to thank Victoria for giving me a chance to blab about myself on her blog. Of course, the downside of guest blogging is that one has to think of something to blab about. Naturally, I procrastinated as long as possible, hoping I'd have a clever idea. Then, I reached the point where I couldn't wait for a clever idea to come along, so I settled for something else.

Okay, first things first. I write

Guestblogging at Romance Junkies

I'm guestblogging today at Romance Junkies about "Historical and Paranormal: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together."

I'll re-post it in this blog later on.

How To Write A Novel (in 72 easy steps!)

I long ago came to the conclusion that the trickiest part of writing a novel is figuring out how you write novels. You being yourself, a particular author with a particular method of working. All writers know, or should know, there is no absolute right way to do anything. Every writer works in a different way, and I've heard others say every novel they write is written in a different way from the one before.

I think I've figured out what works for me. Note everything I say here is in reference to

Minx Malone Guest Post - Inspiration

Thanks, Victoria, for allowing me to hang out with you today. I wanted to talk about something that is equally relevant for writers and readers alike: inspiration.

I used to be inspired mainly by dreams. I would wake up one day with a great idea or find myself daydreaming at work (bad, I know!) and come up with a new book title that rocked. I never questioned where these ideas came from until recently. I found myself wondering where exactly my subconscious mind was getting these ideas and even mo

Selling Stories to Editors

An interesting question came up on a newsgroup I was reading. Of course all writers write for themselves, to some extent. But what if you discover you have the gift of writing stories a particular editor likes and will buy? How does that affect your output? Do you keep writing that sort of story until the editor will no longer buy it? Or until you get tired? Would you preferentially write the stories you knew would sell?



I've done this, written towards an editor's taste, and it has resulted in sa

Siegfried Sassoon, "The Effect"

The Effect

'The effect of our bombardment was terrific.
One man told me he had never seen so many dead before.'
--War Correspondent.


'He'd never seen so many dead before.'
They sprawled in yellow daylight while he swore
And gasped and lugged his everlasting load
Of bombs along what once had been a road.
'How peaceful are the dead.'
Who put that silly gag in some one’s head?

'He'd never seen so many dead before.'
The lilting words danced up and down his brain,
While corpses

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover Outtake Excerpt

This is an outtake from The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover. It's the beginning of a substantial menage scene which was cut mostly for pacing reasons; it involved the Duchess Camille, Henri, and Lord Maxime. I later auctioned a single, signed printout of the scene to benefit marriage equality in the United States.

This version has been altered to fit your television set, ummm, the age rating on my blog.

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After Camille's bath and meal, one of the blue-garbed manservants escorted her