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This month we’re remembering holiday meals of years' past. I don’t have a story about a meal that came out wrong. No one trusts me to cook. For example, this year I am charged with bringing fruit salad to Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve been told it’s because I do such a nice fruit salad. Uh-huh. I do have a story about a memorable Thanksgiving. In 2000 I was in Leeds, England visiting a friend over the week of Thanksgiving. She’s an American and was without family that Thanksgiving. I wanted to get away because my fiancé had dumped me and called off the wedding a few months before…but that’s a different story. So there we were in England. It was cold and rainy and damp as only northern England can be. I brought two cans of pumpkin in my suitcase, so my friend and I could have some sort of Thanksgiving meal in between visiting the home of the Brontes and stopping in every local pub in the greater Leeds area. I had an affinity for cider that year. So Thanksgiving Day we walked to the groc...

No, I have not been afflicted with brain-melt due to the San Joaquin Valley heat and projected my mind forward 6 months in a desperate attempt to cool down! I know it is summertime and that is our theme. But for me, since I do live a good portion of my time in a world 200 years in the past, I began thinking about what summertime meant for the English elite of the Regency Era. And that boils down to one common phrase: The Season . The English custom of the elite in society passing months in London rather than their country homes began somewhere in the 17th century and continued to dominate the culture until well after WWI. Roughly coinciding with the sitting of Parliament, the official Season launched in earnest after Easter and ran until August when Parliament adjourned. The purpose was originally a time for the aristocracy and landed gentry to gather in Town to discuss politics and workings of State, but quickly evolved into a period of socialization and entertainment. Events such as ...

by Sharon Lathan “Elizabeth, ….. forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change,…. The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do.” The above quote is from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and is one of my favorites. I really wish we could pick Jane’s brain and discover just what she imagined as how Mr. Darcy expressed being “violently in love.” Most likely, considering the Era, he waxed eloquently and poetically, and at most grasped her hand. In fact, given the following sentences in the novel I suppose we can be fairly certain he did not bodily embrace Lizzy and plant a long wet kiss! Still, it is fun to dream and clever Jane did leave it open for entertaining interpretation. What I do appreciate about that quote and all the car...

Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark is now available! I'm so pleased with the reviews this book, the first in a series, is getting. Publisher's Weekly says: Simpson (Awaiting the Moon) launches her Lady Anne historical mystery series with flair. Read through this blog and then comment to win yourself a copy! A couple of years ago I was happily writing paranormal romances, werewolves mostly, with a fallen angel thrown in for contrast. Paranormal is great stuff; you can make anything happen as long as you offer a good explanation and stay consistent. Who can tell you that your werewolves can’t transform any old time they want, not just at the full moon? But I'm a natural born skeptic. If someone told me there was a werewolf in the next room, I’d say, “Get me a leash and a pupperoni, ‘cause I’ll bet my argyle socks that werewolf is a husky or a malamute!” So… that’s where Lady Anne began, to be honest, with me, and my natural skeptical sarcasm. However… the Lady Anne series ...