Kathleen Buckley's Blog, page 5

I���m running a little behind this year. Today I put the...

 

I���m running a little behind this year. Today I put the Halloween decorations away except for the skeleton sitting on the rollator between the kitchen and the front room. I also put up a string of lights to augment the string still up from last December���or maybe the December before that.

I meant to do something seasonal and New Mexico for the blog this time but ran out of that commodity. So instead, here���s a semi-seasonal ditty:

My Favorite New Mexico Things (with apologies to The Sound o...

I’m running a little behind this year. Today I put the H...

 

I’m running a little behind this year. Today I put the Halloween decorations away except for the skeleton sitting on the rollator between the kitchen and the front room. I also put up a string of lights to augment the string still up from last December…or maybe the December before that.

I meant to do something seasonal and New Mexico for the blog this time but ran out of that commodity. So instead, here’s a semi-seasonal ditty:

My Favorite New Mexico Things (with apologies to The Sound of Musi...

Inexplicable Happening: Halloween must be coming

 Cue the Twilight Zone music.

I've long suspected that sometimes in our rational universe, weird stuff happens. This morning I used a ratty old bath towel to blot up water on the floor (the mop bucket leaked). Then I threw it in the washer and set it for hot water, heavy soil, and prewash. Turned it on and went away to do Isn't this vintage washer's 
expression sinister ?
something else. Came back to hang it to dry outside because why waste gas and electricity when New Mexico's air will dry it in ...

18th Century Dance

 I've often written about doing research for novels. YouTube has generally been fairly far down on my list of resources because I'm a word, rather than a video, person. Another problem is that the camera work for many of the demonstrations is not well done. 

However, when they're good, they're often very good indeed. 

When I started writing historical romance, I knew nothing about period dance. Disclaimer: I still don't know much about it but at least I've now seen it performed, thanks to various ...

Wednesday, October 20th 2021 is Hagfish Day!

How is a hagfish like a book cover? According to https://nationaldaycalendar.com/hagfish-day-third-wednesday-in-october/,"Hagfish are considered to be the ugliest of species. The idea behind this observance is to encourage everyone to look beyond the exterior...Not unlike a book cover, the day points out the benefits of looking deeper into the subject."
How ugly is the hagfish? Really, really ugly. 
Hagfish (two shown) are unlike most fish. They don’t have eyes, jaws or bones. From: https://www.sc...

Things That Last

 I have always loved old things: antiques, traditional ways of doing things, old photographs, stories about earlier times. This is probably why I write historical fiction/historical romance.

A while ago as I poured water into my Mr. Coffee®, it occurred to me that I’ve been using the same coffee maker almost every day for thirteen years. Now I’m wondering what its life expectancy is (for purposes of comparison, the dishwasher, refrigerator, and the washer, all new in 2008, had to be replaced in ...

Do You Know Where North Macedonia Is?

 

No, neither did I. But at the beginning of February, I mailed a copy of my first Georgian romance, An Unsuitable Duchess, to a new friend in North Macedonia.

I can hear you saying, “North Macedonia? Where’s that?” I had not heard of it before either (but I still tend to think of the world’s nations as they were when I was in grade school) and it’s a whole different world now. The post office clerk had to look it up.  

The Republic of North Macedonia is in the Ba...

Review of A Peculiar Combination by Ashley Weaver

 I spent a delightful afternoon and evening with Ashley Weaver’s historical novel, A Peculiar Combination, set in London shortly after the beginning of World War II. The characters are quirky and likable, so much so that I’m going to be looking for the next book in Ms. Weaver’s Electra McDonnell series, of which A Peculiar Combination is the first.    

My only quibble, the one bit that stopped me for a second or so, was the use of an anachronistic phrase by one of the characters: “…lose your cool...

Review: Exodus from the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth by Phillip Thomas Tucker

 

I don’t usually review nonfiction. However, I’m making an exception for Exodus from the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth by Phillip Thomas Tucker (Ph.D. history, 1990).   

First, because although I’ve long suspected we weren’t getting an entirely accurate story from our grade school history class, it never occurred to me that almost all of what we thought we knew was wrong. Wrong, or worse, outright lies.

I’ll hit the high points. The Alamo had no strategic value whatsoever and was in...

Portia & The Merchant of London on sale for $0.99 for one month

 My latest historical fiction/historical romance ebook is on sale from March 19 to April 17, 2021 on Amazon, Nook and ibooks. 

No bodices are ripped in my books; they aren't steamy. There is some "language" as my characters get into situations where "Zounds!" is not adequate.  

After her father's stroke, Portia Gillespie finds they have just enough money to live on, so where is her brother's

school tuition to come from? She and Mama have no idea until a moneylender comes to call. In spite of the p...