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Happy January!  I love the holidays - I confess I still have a hard time getting to sleep on Christmas Eve and writing this post over a peppermint mocha with my baby on my lap I'm still in holiday mode. But I realized that when I think of January I don't think of post-holiday blues. I think of settling in with cozy fires and cups of tea and getting back to work. Those cool, often rainy January days are perfect for writing. I've been easing back into my WIP this past week and enjoying it, both writing and researching. Looking up some research details today I was thinking about different types of research. Travel - so amazing if often logistically and financially impossible. Websites filled with images, maps, and other fascinating information. History books that give us the benefit of historians' research and expertise. And then there's what is probably my favorite type of research of all. Letters and diaries written by people who lived through the events and visited ...

Where did time go? It seems like it was just Thanksgiving in the U.S. and suddenly the holidays are in full swing. My daughter Mélanie and I spent today at two very fun holiday parties, an (early) Solstice party and a Wassail party, a word which conjures up images of old English Christmases. Though our wassail party did not include a Wassail King and Queen or drinking the health of the trees, and our Wassail punch was not topped with slices of toast, which it was historically. The punch itself was delicious and very potent, with the nutmeg and cinnamon that are part of many historical recipes. Following my daughter - an eager explorer - around the party and slowly sipping my Wassail punch (a small cup went a long way!),  I couldn't help but think about Christmas for my characters. Of course an "old English Christmas" is not a static thing but a melange of customs that changed and grew through the years, with a number of things that seem part of a classic Bri...

Hope everyone celebrating U.S. Thanksgiving had a wonderful holiday weekend. Ours was made extra special by the fact that my daughter Mélanie waked three tiny steps from the hearth to me. She did so naturally, I almost didn't realize what she'd done until my uncle commented on it. She also had a great time playing with one cousin's golf balls, which made great toys, and another cousin's kitten [who beat a prudent retreat to high places]. I've always tended to avoid the chaos of shopping on Black Friday {the day after Thanksgiving that kicks off the U.S. holiday retail season). This year, thanks to a friend who babysat, I spent the afternoon at a matinee of Skyfall. But the day had an extra significance for me. It was the release date for His Spanish Bride , my e-novella about the wedding of Malcolm and Suzanne, the central couple in my series. Because Malcolm and Suzanne's marriage marks the start of their adventures not the culmination, this meant going back i...

As historical novelists, the Hoydens all spend a good portion of our writing time delving into the past and finding creative ways to bring it to life. I did that on my most recent project, but in a different way from my usual historical research. The project, His Spanish Bride , is a novella about how my characters, Suzanne and Malcolm Rannoch/Mélanie and Charles Fraser, became betrothed and married. At this point, I know Malcolm and Suzanne/Charles and Mel very well. One of the joys of writing about them is that their dialogue and interactions come very easily while at the same time I feel I'm always finding new aspects of them and their relationship to explore. Several of the books I've written about the Rannochs/Frasers have been out of chronological order, and I've always found it quite easy to pick up with them at different points in time. But in all the stories they've been married and the parents of at least one child. There are secrets between them, yet in man...