Eighteenth-century Philadelphia smelt bad. That’s one tidbit I discovered when researching my latest book, The Shenandoah Road: A Novel of the Great Awakening. And there were waves of disease: smallpox, malaria, and yellow fever. New Englanders and Quakers had decent standards of personal hygiene, but horses pooped everywhere, and there were no toilets, only “necessaries” […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Zoe M. McCarthy Imagines Love on a Golf Course
Ask any member of my golfer-laden family if they think I’d write a story where love happens on a golf course, and they’d laugh. In my early golf encounters, I resorted to observing everything except the golf to keep my interest in the game. While watching golf on TV with my husband, my thoughts drifted […]
Behind the Scenes: Trip to an Island by Tiffany Amber Stockton
Ever since childhood when I first saw the film Somewhere in Time, starring Jane Seymour (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) and Christopher Reeve (Superman), I dreamed of visiting Mackinac Island (pronounced Mak-i-naw). Once the writing bug bit me, I searched for a good story to set on Mackinac. Two years after sending the story to my […]