Rachel Dacus's Blog, page 5

Art in My Life and Stories

Why Art and Artists? My time travel novels often feature art and artists—you may wonder why. It’s because I grew up with an artist father who painted constantly and invited many artist friends to our home. He took us to working studios, local art exhibitions, and art museums in the Los Angeles area. The smell of oil paint and turpentine evokes childhood memories. Saturday afternoons, watching my father mix oil paints and dash paint onto…

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A poem on mortality & the heart

I’ve been thinking about my heart condition and looking at poems I wrote shortly after having a heart attack. Contemplating my mortality is a new thing for me. I’ve had to adjust my thinking about time and the future. It’s a subtle shift but a profound one to consider that my time to be, to write, and to love is limited. It’s unsettling in the most interesting way to think of the body as having…

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Sculptor, Quaker, Spy – A Character Interview

A character interview with Patience Lovell Wright This is a character Interview with Patience Lovell Wright, a Reviolutiuonary War era sculptore and featured character in the time travel novel UNDOING TIME. Women artists feature in my stories because they don’t feature enough in art history. It’s my way of bringing to our attention extraordinary painters, writers, sculptors, and musicians who didn’t make it into the canon of history — precisely because of their gender. Patience…

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A clover and a bee .. a Zen Revery?

I’ve been re-reading Emily Dickinson’s poems lately, one or two a day. Although her early editors removed her original groupings — the “fsaciles” or small booklets in which she grouped them — I enjoy the section “Nature” that groups together a major focus of her writing. Emily doesn’t write about nature as pretty or ornamental, though she certainly finds beauty and delight in it. But she writes more like a Zen monk, or like my…

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A Poet in Spring

I can’t help it. I’m a poet intoxicated in springtime, renewal and faith. Step aside, war and riot, prejudice run amok, mass shootings and atmospheric rivers, ignorance abroad and becoming endemic. Step aside, the ruin of the world — it’s like the ruin of winter. And I am a fervent believer in humanity and spring. Evrywhere, I find evidence to back up my faith. To celebrate (before the next bomb cyclone drops on our heads…

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Creating Characters in Springtime

Spring equinox I’ve forgotten to count the atmospheric rivers that have gushed across the San Francisco Bay Area, but the incredible deluge seems to have sparked a lot of literary ideas for me. When the 50 mph winds are bending trees sideways and sinkholes are appearing in the roads, it’s a subtle hint that you have nowhere better to go than your writing desk. I’ve cradled my laptop many of these dark, rainy mornings. I’m…

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So You Dream of Being a Writer

Story of a Young Writer One of the joys of having a writer website is hearing from aspiring writters. Recently I received an email from a librarian and teacher who has a very special student — a girl who dreams of being a writer. At an early age, she shows seriousnes about pursuing her dream of writing. At 12 years old, about the age I got serious about my dream, this girl has not only…

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Lunar New Year Poetry 2023

New Poetry February 2023 I seem to be writing more poetry in this new year. Lunar new year feels more like a fresh start than did January 1. Flexing my February 2023 without regard to form, publishing opportunities, or any of that. A form of journaling with line breaks and compression, if you will. A new year calls for new tunes. And haiku is returning in my reading hours, so I’m thinking sometimes with a…

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How Jane Austen Began Time-Traveling

People ask how I got the idea to send Jane Austen time traveling forward, rather than sending an Austen-adoring hero or heroine back to her era. Simple. I read a book called The Real Jane Austen, a Life in Small Things, and discovered a version of the author who would make an excellent main character. This Jane A. was not meek and sheltered, as history (and her family) liked to portray her. For one thing,…

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Why I Like Weather – a timely poem

In the San Francisco Bay Area and much of California, we’re experiencing a train of historic “atmospheric river” storms. Like a firehose pointed directly at the state’s northern region, we’re being showered with an epic series of heavy storms. Following our multi-year, devastating drought, the ground and reservoirs are not prepared to absorb this much-needed water. But as a weather geek, connoisseur of the names for extraordinary weather events, I can only wish everyone safe…

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