This completes this three-part series. Go here for Part One and Part Two. For me, biographical fiction—novels built on the lives and times of real people—is the most interesting and challenging of all fictional genres. I read all I can find, from Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck to Melanie Benjamin’s The Aviator’s Wife to the superb Watergate: A Novel, by Thomas […]
In the first post in this 3-part series, I wrote about why I chose to begin doing research into the life of Rose Wilder Lane. In this post, I’ll continue the story. When I first learned about Rose, back in the early 1970s, I had no idea that, years later, I would write a novel […]
This post was originally published at HerStories, a Story Circle Network blog (June 10, 2013). I’m reprinting it here (slightly revised) at the request of friends and fans who watched the recent American Masters program on Laura Ingalls Wilder and were disappointed (as I was) in its scant depiction of Rose’s life and the role she […]
They may be tiny, but they’re beautiful: a landscape in miniature, a tiny garden, so small that they are usually beneath our notice. Which, given the destructive habits of our species, is probably a good thing. But being tiny doesn’t mean being unsuccessful. Lichens are among the oldest living things on earth. They inhabit every […]
My early Christmas present arrived last week and I’ve been enjoying it enormously–not just for the pleasure of playing again after decades away from the keyboard, but because of the memories. Lots of them. Like many kids, I started piano lessons when I was eight–not yet old enough, certainly, to appreciate the opportunity. That came […]
We’re having another book giveaway to celebrate the publication of The Darling Dahlias and the Voodoo Lily. You can win these four signed hardcovers for yourself or for gifting. One of the things I enjoy about this series is writing about Southern food–especially (since these are 1930s novels) the foods that were popular in the […]
I love old recipes. They show us what foods people liked, what ingredients were available, and–sometimes–what traditions and events they celebrated. I was browsing through a late eighteenth-century cookbook not long ago when I came across a recipe for something called Election Cake. “Old-fashioned election cake,” I read, “is made of 30 quarts of […]
We’re lucky enough to live on the Central Flyway, a bird and insect migration route from the northern Great Plains in Canada down to the Gulf and into central Mexico. The continent is home to so many traveling species. In the spring, the flyway brings birds and butterflies north to their breeding grounds; in the […]
The Kindle edition of the latest Dahlias mystery is now available for preorder! The paperback edition will be available next week, the library hardcover edition will be published next spring, and the audio will be announced soon. It’s 1935 in little Darling, Alabama. The town has a new radio station, Voodoo Lil has a little […]
We’re having a Book Giveaway to celebrate the upcoming publication of The Darling Dahlias and the Voodoo Lily–coming later this month. Win these four signed hardcovers for yourself or for gifting. Quick-and-easy entry–simply comment below, telling us what you like best about the Dahlias. Continental U.S. only, please. One entry per person. Comments close on […]
This rose bush doesn’t look like much–only a flurry of unremarkable green leaves. But just two weeks ago, it was a mass of leafless brown sticks. This was a first, for over the 25 years of its life, this resilient New Dawn had never lost its green leaves until after December’s killing frosts. But August’s […]
I’ve always loved old herbals–illustrated books that describe plants and their uses. I especially enjoy browsing through my collection of reprints, noticing how our understandings of plants have changed over the centuries. Take the dandelion, for instance. Every year, Americans dump over 90 million pounds of herbicides on their lawns, primarily to get rid of […]
The current cross stitch project. This one is a Dimensions kit called “European Bistro”–16″ x 11″ on Aida cloth, 18 count, so it’s big and a bit picky. I started it in April 2020, and it’s going pretty fast–except that I haven’t done much of the detailing yet–the outlining that creates the illusion of depth […]
It looks like an orchid, doesn’t it? It isn’t, and it isn’t a willow, either. Chilopsis linearis is actually in the begonia family, along with the catalpa tree and the trumpet vine. But the leaves look willow-ish and the native peoples used it in the same way they used willows. Close enough. Here in the Texas […]
It’s been a blistering summer already, 108 at Bill’s weather station yesterday afternoon. But summer has another way of announcing itself here in the Texas Hill Country. The beans are beginning to ripen and drop from the honey mesquites (Prosopis glandulosa), to the great delight of the raccoons, rabbits, possums, coyotes, and deer. (I’ve read […]
The second Pecan Springs novella trilogy is coming out this week! Available right now on Kindle, it will shortly be available on Nook and iBooks. Here’s the scoop, via my author’s note at the beginning of the book. If you’re looking for an entertaining (and, I hope, thought-provoking) read, this might suit you. Enjoy, with […]
Deadlines are the story of Jessica’s life. But this one may be murder.
Who’s at fault? Jessica uncovers the ending of the cold-case story of Ruby’s long-missing best friend.
Life in the MeadowKnoll chicken yard is usually serene and uneventful, a welcome relief to the chaos of Covid-time. Our five Girls lead a tranquil life, punctuated only by frequent visits from Mom (me), their regular egg-laying visits to the nest box, and the irregular visits of the bull snakes that like to snack on […]
Our corner of the country is about 25 round-trip miles from the nearest pizzeria and home delivery is out of the question. So for 30+ years, it’s been make-your-own or do without. I thought I’d share my recipe, in case you’re facing a pizza shortage in this Covid-era Our pizza starts with a very old […]
I’m about six weeks into “European Bistro” (a Dimensions chart), the current cross stitch project. I’m enjoying the complexity of it. This part (lower left corner of the finished piece) has a great deal of depth, achieved […]
Last week was the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, the day when Nazi Germany formally surrendered to the Allies. It reminded me of a telling pair of photographs that I dug up when I was doing the research for one of my favorite writing projects: a biographical novel called […]
It’s not just a day for moms on our human calendars. It’s a big week–a month, actually, for moms all over our Hill Country homestead. This whitetail doe brought her fawn for us to see, while the two of them enjoy a morning browse […]
We’ve lived here at Meadow Knoll for over thirty years, and this has been the most beautiful spring I can remember. The New Dawn rose on the trellis beside the deck is heaped with fragrant rosy-pink blossoms. To the delight of the hummingbirds on their northward migration, the crossvine climbing the east wall of the […]
The fiber crafts have been my lifelong passion. I learned to crochet when I was a child and became a doily and potholder entrepreneur, peddling them to the neighbors. I learned to knit in my twenties, and my kids got socks. At midlife and beyond, it was quilting, spinning, weaving, felting–all of which are lovely […]
It’s a cliche to say that life is a journey. But it is. Sometimes the way ahead is straight and clear and well-traveled–plenty of mile markers and traffic signs. Sometimes we reach an intersection and we don’t know which road to take. And sometimes (like right now, for instance) the road just seems to disappear. […]
The Covid-19 news of the past few weeks is having an effect on all of us. The sun may be shining, the daffodils may be blooming (or not, yet, depending on where you live), and you may be going about your business pretty much as usual. But things are changing–or rather, this thing, this virus, […]
The other day (on Valentine’s Day, actually), a reader wrote to me. Mary is someone I hear from often enough to recognize her name and appreciate her comments. She writes: “I’m so sorry to learn there won’t be a 2020 China Bayles. Is there anything we, China’s readers, can do to persuade a 2020 book?” […]
Some things in nature aren’t beautiful. They just are as they are, like ball moss growing on a branch: a plant that is not a parasite (as people often think) but an epiphyte, getting a living by perching on a convenient limb, minding its own business and making its own food. Its roots only cling, […]
I’m about to send a just-completed trilogy of Pecan Springs novellas (DeadLINES, Fault LINES, FireLINES) to my copy editor. This is the second of these trilogies (the first was The Crystal Cave, and a third is already beginning to take shape at the back of my mind. So maybe it’s time to think out […]
I recently celebrated my eightieth birthday, which—in an unexpected way—has given me permission to publicly claim my age and document this part of the journey. (Funny how that works, isn’t it?) In my reflection on times present and past, I began reading through the two memoirs and the many blog posts I’ve written over the […]
This enchanting 1957 cat-memoir by May Sarton may be the grandmother of the current litter of cat-cozies, a fact that may or may not endear it to you, depending on how you feel about cats and cozies. I ran across it on my shelf last week and sat down with it immediately, remembering the great […]
Contest update, Sat. 1/11: Thanks to all the great readers who helped Eleanor come in close to the top of the pack. But not quite close enough. She was overtaken by projects about an Aussie rollerskating champion and an auto racer. That’s Hollywood for you. 🙂 But over 17,000 people visited the site, so Eleanor was seen […]
The thing is, I’ve always loved research even more than writing. Which is a curse, really. Plenty of writers simply simply sit down at their computers and spill out stories, their imaginations fired by nothing more than . . . their imaginations. I have a problem with that. It’s my problem, of course. There is absolutely nothing […]
Lives change, as I said in Part One and Part Two of my previous posts on this continuing thread. If you haven’t read these, you might want to skip over there first. “The tools we write with change the way we think.” Friedrich Nietzsche typed this sentence–or something like it, on the first commercially-produced typewriter […]
A natural meanes to preserve your house in safety from thunder and lightening: If the herb housleek or syngreen do grow on the house top, the same house is never stricken with lightening or thunder. —Didymus Mountain, 1572 Since Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, most of us feel pretty safe. But before then, people […]
When In Cold Blood was published in 1965, Truman Capote’s book was a landmark, widely promoted as a factually true account of the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in a small town in Kansas, and of the investigation, the trial and appeals, and the execution of the two convicted killers. Capote (with his longtime friend […]
Lives change, as I said in my previous post on this continuing thread. (If you haven’t read this, you might want to skip over there and see where this blog series begins.) Yes. Lives change. I was a stay-at-home mom and a freelance kids’ fiction writer from the late 1950s into the early ’60s, living […]
Back in Civil War days in the South, coffee was impossible to get. But that didn’t mean that Southerners had to give up caffeine for the duration. All they had to do was go out to the yard or the nearest woods and pick a bucket of yaupon leaves, dry them, and brew. Voilà! A […]
My experience of Shirley Jackson began with her two memoirs, Life Among the Savages (1952) and Raising Demons (1957), both genuinely funny, crisp, and captivating. I discovered them in the early 1960s, when I was a young mom with small children, learning how to write and wanting a career as a writer. In those books, […]
