Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
Now that I’m back in Spain and not solo parenting like I had been there for a while, I’ve been doing a lot more reading. My goal is always to read about 5 books a month, but I haven’t had a month this year where I’ve achieved that. Last week I did finish two, though….
I’ve been podcasting with Tudor Times again, this month about Catherine of Aragon. I have read countless books about Henry’s six wives, and Catherine always takes up a huge proportion of each book simply because of the large role she played in Henry’s life. She was married to him the longest, she fought him tooth…
New development on life in Spain. This summer we will be working in our huerta (vegetable garden). Everyone in Spain seems to either have a garden or belong to a community garden. Our rental house has lots of land with olive trees, and there’s room for a big garden, and so on Saturday we went…
My most recent Renaissance English History Podcast was a short intro into the life of Shakespeare, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his death. I had been extremely negligent in not talking about Shakespeare before. It’s simply because my interests – which have driven the sporadic nature of my podcast up until recently – have…
Today we drove two hours to Nerja, a sleepy town about 40 minutes north of Malaga. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t think about going there. They have a pretty cool bridge, but it doesn’t have much on the bridge in Ronda, close to where I live, so it wouldn’t appeal that much to me. But…
I haven’t written much lately because Sideways and Backwards, my novel, went live on April 15, and I was furiously working up to that. Followed by a much-needed refresher break afterwards. While this wasn’t the first book I self published, it was the first one I did under my name, and the one that took me the…
In my latest episode of the Renaissance English History Podcast I talked to Melita Thomas of Tudor Times about Jasper Tudor, uncle to Henry VII and perhaps the true Kingmaker of the 15th century. I hadn’t know much about Jasper, other than what I’ve read in historical fiction (there is a lovely train of thought that he…
The story of my novel release continues. This week I officially launched my Preorder Push. If you don’t know yet, preorders are useful because they all count towards your first week of sales at once, which can help push you into the charts. Obviously this isn’t a long term marketing strategy – you want your book to…
As most of you know, I currently live in Andalusia, in southern Spain. What I’ve never really written that much about was the paperwork hoops we had to jump through in order to become legal residents. If you are an American and you want to move to Spain, you will need to do some (or…
Last week I got podcasty with Elizabethan Theater, which is appropriate considering Shakespeare’s birthday is coming up. I’ll be doing several episodes on the theater – this was a general introduction to this great Elizabethan institution, and then my next episodes will be more focused on Shakespeare, Marlowe, Burbage, and the other great personalities of…