Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 59
June 22, 2011
Times Square/Union Square Restaurants
For those who are attending the IASPR and RWA conferences in New York City next week, author Louisa Edwards compiled a list of recommended restaurants for the Times Square area, near the RWA conference hotel.
Sarah MacLean offers tips on how to leave Times Square.
Her Campus has a guide to the best new restaurants near NYU's Union Square campus, where the IASPR conference is being held. They also offer a guide to the Flatiron District (between Union Square and Gramercy).
Also in the...
June 20, 2011
Auction for L.A. Banks
It is with profound sadness that I received news that Philadelphia writer Leslie Esdaile (L.A. Banks) is gravely ill. Please know that as Leslie needs all of her energy in this fight, she is not able to receive visitors, answer emails, texts or phone calls, or receive flowers.
While your prayers and thoughts are most welcome and needed, a special support website, including an auction, has been set up in order to help Leslie with the mounting medical expenses facing her and her family...
June 19, 2011
"To His Dead Body," Siegfried Sassoon
To His Dead Body
When roaring gloom surged inward and you cried,
Groping for friendly hands, and clutched, and died,
Like racing smoke, swift from your lolling head
phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.
Yet, though my dreams that throng the darkened stair
Can bring me no report of how you fare,
Safe quit of wars, I speed you on your way
Up lonely, glimmering fields to find new day,
Slow-rising, saintless, confident and kind–
Dear, red-faced father God who lit your mind.
–Sieg...
June 17, 2011
My Youth With James Bond
I have a new post up at The Criminal Element Today: Bond Girl: A Juvenile Fleming Reader, about when I first read the Bond novels.
June 16, 2011
Posts at Heroes & Heartbreakers
I've been away recently on a family matter, but while I was gone, I had a couple new posts go live at Heroes and Heartbreakers: Tea With the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy and Stitch in Snow by Anne McCaffrey.
Tea with the Black Dragon is a fantasy novel with a strong romantic element as well as suspense; Stitch in Snow is one of McCaffrey's romance novels.
June 15, 2011
June 13, 2011
Guest Post – Saskia Walker
Please welcome my guest, Saskia Walker!
#
The joys and challenges of creating historical worlds
by Saskia Walker
As writers of historical fiction we aim to create historical worlds that are as believable and accurate as possible, in order to enhance the reader's experience of the story. This is a challenge, but a rewarding one when we feel we've done a story justice. The scary part is getting it as accurate as possible, knowing that it's so easy to slip up.
When I think about the...
June 12, 2011
"Two Hundred Years After," Siegfried Sassoon
Two Hundred Years After
Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
(Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight)
Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,
And straggling files of men; when these were gone,
A double limber and six mules went by,
Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud
To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago.
Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud,
And soon he saw the village lights below.
But when he'd told his tale, an...
June 6, 2011
The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin
Last month, I read The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody, mostly because it was a lesbian pirate novel, and I'd never read one before.
Plot summary: "The Gulf of Mexico, 1702: When pirates of the square-rigger Original Sin steal ashore to abduct a doctor to tend to their wounded, they end up settling for the doctor's attractive fiancée–Celia Pierce, the town seamstress.
Together with Gayle Malvern, daughter of the wounded pirate captain "Madman" Malvern...
