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….
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…
Lauren Johnson is a medieval historian and consultant for Past Pleasures (the UK’s oldest costumed interpretation company) and a storyteller who has appeared on radio and TV. For all those reasons, I was excited to read her origin story about Robin Hood, and had high expectations for the history. In general, I was happy with…
It’s been a while since I’ve written about writing. With my babyloss memoir, the NetGalley Marketing Experiment has about a month left in it, and I’m continuing to get really good feedback, which makes me feel validated, but hasn’t resulted in a lot of book sales yet. In fact, I got this review last week:…
I found this on my old blog from 2012, and it seemed interesting and relevant, and worth re-posting. Enjoy! Did you watch the Venus Transit this year? You know, when Venus’s orbit makes it appear that it’s going across the sun, and it happens every 110 years or so? Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It…
I’ve written before about how much I love this author, who epitomizes all that is good in hilarious historical humor (history “as it might have happened, but probably didn’t”). The best way I can describe him is to tell you to imagine reading Monty Python and the Holy Grail in a novel format, only slightly funnier. I…
History can often seem intimidating because it seems like only the stories of dead white men. And there’s a reason for that. The white men were the ones who kept most of the records, being the ones who were educated and literate, and so they are the ones about whom we know. I am…
Caitlin Moran talks in her book, How to be a Woman, about the idea that often when we discover a particular book, we are suddenly introduced to all its friends, and so join this society that we hadn’t even known existed before. So if you, for example, start reading Dorothy Parker, suddenly before you know…
Normally I post on Thursday’s about the books I’ve finished. And I’ve had a ton of time to read while I’ve been away from my daughter and home responsibilities while traveling for my shoulder tests. I read two hours a day, at least. So you’d think I’d have all kinds of books I could post…
The fascinating story of Ernest Shakelton and his crew who were trapped in the Antarctic for three years is told in Endurance: Shakelton’s Incredible Journey. Shakelton wanted to be the first person to discover the South Pole. Another explorer took that honor from him, and so he decided to do something even more daring –…