Rachel Dacus's Blog, page 6

Poetry as a Winter Sport

I’ve finished a novel and will see it published on December 27 of this year. Attending to a lot of the homework of promoting a new book, I find myself yearning for a new long-form story, wading through many plot, character, and title ideas, and yet frozen as the leaves that remain on the trees in this wintry month. I can’t summon energy to write scenes and do plot outlines, so I fall back into…

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Jane Austen Time Traveler – Bonus Character Interviews, Part 1

Some authors interview their characters. I enjoy that idea, but I decided to put a spin on it, and have characters interview each other. This week: Jane Austen, 200 years in the future, interviews her host and superfan Will Fleming, while visiting his estate. JANE AUSTEN INTERVIEWS WILL FLEMING Will Fleming’s light blue eyes captured Jane’s curiosity. They widened and narrowed, gold flecks shifting like fleeting clouds, the nuances of his expressions changing through many…

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Radar Girls: a review — women in wartime

Radar Girls: A Review of Historical Fiction – Women in War I don’t normally read WWII historical fiction, but I made an exception for a favorite author. Reading Sara Ackerman’s lovely novel Radar Girls was a delight. And it made me nostalgic. Though I wasn’t born until after WWII, both my parents served during the war. I’ve long loved and connected with Hawaii, both from beautiful travels there and because my mother was born in…

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Jodi Taylor’s Time Travel Series – a Book Review

Review of Jodi Taylor’s Time Travel Books If you could spend an hour in another century, where would you go? Would you time travel to watch a famous battle or attend a royal ball? Would you want to solve a mystery or observe daily life in another time? And if you time traveled in history and saw unexpected events, would you then try to set the historical record straight? That’s the premise of Jodi Taylor’s…

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Why a Novel About Jane Austen?

Jane Austen Time Traveler Why make Jane Austen a time traveler? With her wit and insight, I wonder what she’d make of our century — would the 21st century fascinate or repel her, and might she find love? She was a genius at exploring the morality and heart of her characters — their self-interest or goodness. She might find people very different in our time, or  their essential strengths and frailties might be the same…

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The Department of Lost Hours: a magical realism poem

The Department of Lost Hours Where do they put them, the lost hours of saved daylight? Are they stored in a dusty government office, an accidentally-funded pocket of the federal budget? Stashed away by clever clock drones who save enough to craft an alternate century. As autumn hones our edges, brightens the leaves, and billows gray above, the hours dim, shrink, and turn in on themselves. All I want to do is turn and go…

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The Department of Lost Hours Where do they put them, the ...

The Department of Lost Hours Where do they put them, the lost hours of saved daylight? Are they stored in a dusty government office, an accidentally funded pocket of the federal budget? Stashed by clever clock drones to craft their own alternate century. As autumn hones our edges, brightens the leaves, billows the sky, the hours seem to dim, shrink, turn in on themselves. All I want to do is turn inside, switch on lamps…

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Haiku Poems in a Pandemic

Early in the pandemic, before a vaccine had been developed, when it seemed as though death walked the silent streets, some of us wondered how to write about this sudden shift in the world. Whole cities had gone silent, absent of the normal traffic rushing from place to place. Work, shopping, worship, social life, dining out, going to movies — all suspended. We dared not go out exept to walk, masked, keeping carefully apart. I…

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A Writerly Adventure in the Hospital

I recently had a little writerly adventure in the hospital. The scare of a possible stroke sent me to Emergency when my smile wouldn’t rise up and my eyelid drooped. Then a two-day hospital stay for testing. My local hospital is one of the best, but I was not a happy camper. I was in the midst of editing my next novel and being stranded in a bed was not my idea of making progress…

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How to Self-Publish Your Book on KDP

Many people ask me how to self-publish a book on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). What are the steps? Is it easy? Do you have to pay someone to help? What do you need to have ready before starting? This article provides some answers and links. It’s relatively simple, if you consider making a nicely puffy cheese souffle simple. You don’t need to hire people, but I do. If you have hours of time to…

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