Sara Donati's Blog, page 16

The Winner of The Gilded Hour Unabridged Audiobook

I’m pleased to say that Jacqui has won the drawing for the unabridged audiobook of The Gilded Hour. Jacqui please get in touch by email so we can work out the details.

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The Paradise Sun: Revisiting Paradise

On Sara’s FaceBook page Paula asked about the newspaper articles I posted, once upon a time, that didn’t actually show up in any of the Wilderness novels. I went to have a look, and I do have a small pile of them. Some of them are pretty sad, and some are amusing. I’m going to post a few of them, one or two at a time, between now and the release of The Gilded Hour.

The newspaper, founded by Elizabeth Bonner, had this masthead:

Here’s one small article.

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Having trouble commenting? Two fixes. I hope.

I think I’ve identified the problem some people are having withleaving comments. It seems that the only time this is a problem is when people are ona mobile phone using a browser. The weblog is set up to be mobile-responsive, but clearly that isn’t working for some people.

Joelle has run into this and worked out a solution:

I have found that if I am reading the post through the bloglovin app or if I link to it from Twitter or Facebook then I don’t see the comments or the comment form. But I’m...

Creaky old bones, in the ether.

I’ve been hearing quite often from people who have not been able to enter contests/giveaways because they just can’t get the comment system to work. I’m trying to figure out (1) what exactly is wrong and (2) how to fix it. I really dislike the idea that people who want to enter giveaways can’t. If you could please answer this poll (you can chose more than one answer), and further, if you have had problems, be specific on the nature of those problems in the comments or by email, I would much...

Cure my fits.

I’m always looking for novels set in the same time and place that I’m writing about, a kind of professional curiosity. How do other authors handle X or Y or Z? A detail oriented historical novelist won’t just have a character drive off somewhere in1883 without some idea of the details. What kind of carriage?

Look at the page for horse-drawn vehicles on Wikipediato get an idea of themagnitude of the question.

You’re thinking I’m obsessive. Of course I’m obsessive, I write historical fiction. B...

Confusion, solutions, and one more unabridged audiobook drawing NOW with a poll!

Edited to add a poll. Part I: Minor Disasters

Things sometimes go wrong on a weblog of this size. Bitsstop working, and I may not notice at all unless somebody emails to point it out to me.

Recently the comment form stopped working. Maybe not even recently, maybe for months. But somebody found another way to contact me and brought it to my attention.So it was an endless loop: if you wanted to tell me about a problem and the only way you know to reach me is through a broken contact form, then...

Why did you kill your wife? Or: a new excerpt from The Gilded Hour

19th century Italy, via Miklian Maps

Quite some time ago I posted here and on FaceBook, asking for help with translating a single sentence (“Why did you kill your wife?”) into a wide variety of European languages and dialects of those languages.

The response was terrific, and tremendously useful. Over a couple weeks I learned the sentence in something like ten dialects of Italian, five of French, six of German, and a handful of Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish (European, and different parts of So...

Gilded Hour Unabridged Audio: 29.5 hours

I just now got this image for the unabridged audio/cd editionfrom Blackstone. Note thewhopping 29.5 hours. Here’s a small confession: I won’t spend an Audible credit on a book that’s less than ten hours long, and generally, unless I am very, very interested in the novel, I want twelve hours for that credit. So for my tastes, 29.5 hours is great.

The Gilded Hour is still not showing up on Audible.com, but it should be there within the next few days, according to my agent.

Oh and, I’m giving aw...

Ariana Franklin: Gone, but then again, Here

I have been reading Ariana Franklin’s work for twenty some years, starting with her earliest novels, published under Diana Norman (her own name). We had a correspondence for about five years, up until her sudden death in 2011 at age seventy-seven. In 2008 I posted an interview with her, which I updated in 2011 shortly after her death.

It’s unclear to me how this happened, but I somehow missed the fact that her last (unfinished) novel came out in February,and that this was possible because her...

Unabridged Audio Giveaway: The Gilded Hour

Stop by Twitter to win The Gilded Hour on unabridged audio: here, running until Friday evening. Next week I’ll give another copy of the unabridged audio away on Facebook.

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