Do you need a website? Yes, you do!

            To website or not to website—that is the question. According to a recent BookBub article, 85-90% of authors selected for featured deals have a website for their books. If you’ve written a book you’re trying to publish or market, a website is essential. But why? BookBub gives you some solid reasons. A website is a…

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Plan a visit to Sabin Howard’s WWI Memorial

If you have not heard of master sculptor Sabin Howard, it’s time you take a look at his powerful work. Art, Howard believes, “speaks to the divine nature of how the Universe is assembled.” Art comes from the human experience, he says, but through his work he also projects a “sacred element elevating other human beings.”…

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Swimming for your life with a book in your hands

How gratifying it was to read a recent review of my novel Sheltering Angel from a reader who recognized the work that went into writing the narrative. “Having read books about the sinking of Titanic,” she writes, “and gone so far as to visit the final resting places of some of the ship’s victims in…

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A heartbreaking visit to Lynnewood Hall

A while back I wrote about Lynnewood Hall, a mansion outside Philadelphia designed and built for Peter Widener, American businessman, art collector, and patriarch of the Widener family. Planned after Prior Park in Bath, England, the mansion was said to have cost eight million dollars to build. Widener was the father of George Widener who died…

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Two heads are not always better than one

On the release of the 2nd edition of my nonfiction book, While In Darkness There Is Light, I’m thinking about Charlie Dean, the young New Yorker who wandered from the Australian farm his American friends started in 1970 to Southeast Asia. Ravenously political, Charlie wanted to see for himself where the U.S. had been involved.…

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Cobh, the saddest city in Ireland

As I’m writing this entry on the morning of March 17, I can’t help thinking about the two weeks I spent in Ireland earlier this month. The purpose of the trip was to learn more about HMS Titanic, the subject of my latest novel, Sheltering Angel, based on the true story of my husband’s great-grandparents who were…

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Sheltering Angel Outtake ~ The Tattoo Parlor

When I draft a book manuscript, inevitably I omit sections that don’t serve the plot. But I never completely delete them. Below is a short omitted section of Sheltering Angel telling of stewards Sid Siebert and Andrew Cunningham in New York around 1907.    By autumn Emily was in the final weeks before the new…

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The Wideners, the Titanic, and Lynnewood Hall

Sheltering Angel, my Titanic story, introduces a cast of people who actually endured or succumbed to the tragedy of April 15, 1912. Among the multimillionaires aboard the ill-fated ship’s maiden voyage were George Widener, his wife Eleanor, and their 27-year-old son Harry. One might consider the Wideners fortunate because of their extreme wealth, but a…

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ChatGBT is out to get you

If you aren’t familiar with ChatGBT, you’d better pay attention. According to the website WIRED, “If you’ve ever uploaded photos or art, written a review, ‘liked’ content, answered a question on Reddit, contributed to open source code, or done any number of other activities online, you’ve done free work for tech companies, because downloading all this…

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Writers being humbled…with humor

In my final semester in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts (Fiction 2000), I was chosen to speak at graduation with a fellow in creative nonfiction. I suggested instead of coming up with a speech, we ask grads to give us their best lines from their mentors over the four…

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