No Regrets for Regret: The Filly Who Won the Derby
When she was born, Harry Payne Whitney was disappointed. A filly, not a colt. Her parentage was prestigious. Sired by Broomstick out of the mare, Jersey Lightning, but Whitney didn’t hold high hopes for her, so he named her Regret. Then came the Saratoga Special in 1914, and she defeated her number one rival, Pebbles…
Read MoreOn Being a Lesbian in the Early 20th Century; Branded as Deviants, They Were Sometimes Jailed!
The lives of gay men and the indignities they suffered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has been widely documented — Oscar Wilde made sure of that! All the while, lesbians unobtrusively managed to find love and companionship in spite of the fact that their existence was rarely acknowledged. In Greenwich Village, tea…
Read MoreA Tragedy in 1914 — Ludlow, Colorado
Plaster bust by Paul Manship, photo by moi The dour looking fellow above is John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), founder of Standard Oil. His son was a philanthropist, BUT he kept one of his father’s businesses, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. When the workers, fed up with the terrible conditions and lousy pay, went on…
Read MoreLibbie Grant: Melding the Personal and the Historical
Libbie Grant’s powerful novel, The Prophet’s Wife (William Morrow, 2022) tells the story of Emma Hale Smith, wife of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion. In Grant’s telling, Emma is a woman of intelligence, complexity, and strength with a deep and abiding faith in God. She acts as her husband’s chief supporter but…
Read MoreWhen Your Historical Fiction isn’t all that Historical or Fictional
When I decided to write my historical novel, I chose the year 1913 because it was such a pivotal time period. The Gilded Age was coming to a close; World War I had not yet started. And prohibition was a few years away. Specifically, in 1913 the Grand Central Terminal opened, the famous Armory Art…
Read MoreThe Camera Hanging on the Wall
I had finished the revisions for The Burning Bride, the second book in my Delafield & Malloy Investigation series. Or at least I thought I had. Right before I went to sleep that night, I remembered that my main character (Louisa) takes a Vest Pocket Kodak (VPK) with her on a trip, but when catastrophe…
Read MoreThe Lady Gangsters of Old New York
“Over a period of more than a half a dozen years Battle Annie was the Queen of Hell’s Kitchen and acquired widespread renown as the most formidable female of her time.” — Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York I started a book about ‘high society’ in New York during the 1910’s. So how did…
Read MoreTransition
It’s finally happening. I’ve made the transition! For most of my writing life, my material has revolved around events in my own life. But with maturity has come a greater interest in events that happened before I was born. Now, my historical fiction debut, The Whispering Women, is available! What a journey it’s been. Years…
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