Candace Simar's Blog, page 14
June 17, 2013
Writing Retreat at Annunciation Monastery, Bismarck, ND
Recently I visited Annunciation Monastery in Bismarck, North Dakota where I spent an entire week in personal writing retreat. Any writer will tell you how hard it is to find blocks of uninterrupted writing time. I am nearing completion of a book of linked short stories and desperately needed time and space to work... [Continue Reading]
June 7, 2013
Western Writers of America Convention coming up soon
Gary Midge, a writer friend, encouraged me to join Western Writers of America a few years back. My historical novels set in early Minnesota are not typical westerns but WWA includes frontier with the western genre. Western Writers of America has been a good fit for me. I attended the 2011 WWA convention in Bismarck... [Continue Reading]
May 23, 2013
Red River Ox Cart at the Grant County Museum in Elbow Lake, Minnesota
It’s difficult to imagine that simple wooden carts pulled by oxen could settle a territory but they did. The Red River ox carts brought goods from Canadian settlements and the northern plains down a long trail to pioneer St. Paul, Minnesota. The carts, filled with supplies and furs, stretched across the prairies in long... [Continue Reading]
May 14, 2013
Lauraine Snelling at the Minot Hostfest
Reading Lauraine Snelling’s Red River of the North Series back in the 1990s gave me permission to celebrate my Scandinavian roots. I remember the euphoric feeling I experienced when I read about her characters’ immigration to America and their subsequent struggle to get established in Minnesota and North Dakota. Her stories reminded me of... [Continue Reading]
April 27, 2013
1863 Murders at Fort Pomme de Terre after Sioux Uprising
This week marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Fort Pomme de Terre murders. Union solders were stationed at the newly-built Fort Pomme de Terre, after the 1862 Sioux Uprising. Letters from homesick soldiers talked of the monotony of the isolated outpost along the Pomme de Terre River between present-day Elbow Lake and Ashby,... [Continue Reading]
April 6, 2013
Farming Seems Easy
“Farming seems easy when your plow is a pencil and you are a thousand miles from the corn field.” -Dwight Eisenhower I laughed today when I read this quote. I’ve done a lot of research about early farming practices and immigrant life. My historical novels tell of the Herculean efforts required to get a foothold... [Continue Reading]
March 18, 2013
Grant Application Successful
Last fall I had a very interesting consult with Springboard for the Arts, a non-profit organization whose mission is to help artists make a living at what they love. The consultant suggested several things I could do to promote my writing career. One suggestion was for me to write a Five Wings Art grant to... [Continue Reading]
January 5, 2013
Fort Pomme de Terre 1863
The U.S. Army hastily put up a fort around the stage station at Pomme de Terre immediately after the 1862 Sioux Uprising. The goal was to provide back up support to Fort Abercrombie farther west in Dakota Territory. Fort Pomme de Terre was a small garrison consisting of troops marched in from Fort Ripley in... [Continue Reading]
December 26, 2012
150 Years Ago Today
One hundred fifty years ago thirty eight Dakota warriors were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass hanging in U.S. history. Three hundred and three braves were condemned to death by a military tribunal at the close of the 1862 Dakota Conflict. Bishop Henry Whipple gathered information proving most were innocent. He contacted President... [Continue Reading]
December 12, 2012
Scandinavian Christmas Recipes
When I think of Christmas, I remember the Scandinavian foods from my childhood: Krumkakke (a round crispy tube cooky), lefse ( soft flat bread made from potatoes and served with brown sugar and butter), pickled herring, lutefisk with melted butter, fattigmand (poor man’s cookies), and klub (potato dumplings with bits of salt pork in the... [Continue Reading]
