Civil War Horses

Civil War Horses

War horses. It is a great, and tragic, fact that nearly as long as men have warred, they have done so with animals by their sides. For thousands of years, horses have carried men and women who loved them to war. Alexander the Great had his Bucephalus. The Lippizaners started out as war horses. Their…

Spies and Habits

South Carolina has seceded as well as Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. War has not been declared, but on March 11, 1861 the Confederate Constitution replaced the provisional Confederated States Constitution. Lorena, my main character in The Rain Crow starts out the book on a ride into the forest to meet a man…

The Vampire Freyja

I hesitate to post this because it’s purposely written in a rather disjointed fashion. However, we were discussing Viking settlements in America on the Books and Writers Literary Forum and I mentioned the saga of Freydís Eiríksdóttir, whom this is loosely based on. Someone there asked to see the story I’d written about her. This…

Flashbacks Vs. Backstory

At Books and Writers, this month’s writing exercises was flashbacks and backstory. I had a bit from The Rain Crow, my new novel under construction, that was backstory and I decided to make it more immediate by switching to a flashback. This is first draft stuff, so there are still places that need to be…