My April 2024 reads
April brought another fabulous – and varied – month month in books. I started the month off with a classic author, Elizabeth Gaskell, a friend and contemporary of Charles Dickens, who published her novels serially in his literary magazines. I had never read her novella of the Salem Witch Trials and enjoyed this interesting recounting…
Read MoreNew BookFest Award for Rome’s Last Noble Palace!
So pleased that my latest novel, Rome’s Last Noble Palace, has just won its sixth literary award! I am very pleased that my dual timeline novel won Third Place in the BookFest 2024 Award in the Women’s Fiction – Historical Fiction category. I had so much fun writing this dual timeline novel (1890s and…
Read MoreBack to those Prague cafés and restaurants
I was recently back in Prague for a couple of days, and took the opportunity to return to a few of my favorite cafés – and discovered some new restaurants serving Czech favorites. Obecni dum café in Starometska (Old Town) was one of my old hangouts, back when it was all dark, with red velvet…
Read MoreBeach reading season 2024 officially begins!
I had a lovely mid-week day off last week and decided to take a hop down to seaside Sperlonga. I love visiting this pretty beach town. Heck, much of my first novel, Three Coins, was set here. In that novel, three women meet and become unlikely friends when they are all in Sperlonga off-season. Some…
Read MoreMozart in Venice…
I was in Venice this past February, during Carnival. As always when in Venice, the best part of the visit is to wander the winding streets around La Serenissima and to climb the countless bridges over picturesque canals. It was on one of these mapless wanderings on this last visit that we bumped into this…
Read MoreMy next novel underway…
I’m so excited to be one step closer to publishing my next novel, which I plan to release this fall. I just received feedback from (wonderful) beta readers and prepared my manuscript to send to my editor. When she returns with those edits, I’ll take another crack at it before getting it to my proofreader,…
Read MorePrague’s Clam-Gallas Palace
When I was last in Prague last spring, I was surprised to see that Prague’s Clam-Gallas Palace was open to the public for visits. Sadly, in the days I was there, it was undergoing some renovations and was not open to visitors. So when I returned this year, I made a point of going to…
Read MoreMy March 2024 reads
Another month accompanied by another great stack of books. My stack was – ahem – a little slimmer this month because I had to read my own work. I’m revising my next novel before it goes to my editor, to be released this autumn. As any writer will tell you, reading novels by other authors…
Read MoreStunning Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice
On my last visit to Venice last month, I returned to a magical place – the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. This was founded in 1458, as part of the networks of “Scuole” that existed in the Venice of the time. To grace the grand halls of this space, Venetian painter Tintoretto was commissioned to…
Read MoreA shout-out to Czech literature
Whenever I live in a country, I enjoy learning more about its culture by doing a deep dive into its literature. This was also the case when I lived in Prague, Czech Republic many years ago. The Czechs have a lot of great literature, and I was happy to explore all of it: Vaclav Havel,…
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