Tag: Flight of Virtue
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War and Werther: Napoleon the Novelist
Like all men, he desired happiness, but he had found only glory.” – Clisson and Eugénie “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” – (probably) misattributed to Cicero Did you know that Napoleon Bonaparte wrote a book? Well, “book” is a bit of an oversell—more of a…
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More Non-Standard Tips and Tricks for Writing Memorable Characters
Since it’s been nearly ten months since my last writing craft-focused entry, I thought we’d do another little dive into that arena—specifically looking at how to write deep, fully-formed characters that your readers can connect with. I know I tend to focus a lot on character when I talk about writing, but I find, in…
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Something Serious, Something Fun
I was going to make this week’s post a writing-focused one, mainly about creating worlds with magic/fantasy elements as a non-fantasy writer, but it’s been kind of draining week here in the US, and since I’m already late getting any kind of update out on schedule, I figured we’d shelve that for the next time.…
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Women Down: Fact, Fiction, and the Feminist Novellas of the Marys Wollstonecraft
“In an artless tale, without episodes, the mind of a woman, who has thinking powers is displayed. The female organs have been thought too weak for this arduous employment; and experience seems to justify the assertion. Without arguing physically about possibilities—in a fiction, such a being may be allowed to exist; whose grandeur is derived…
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The Anarchist Aristocrat: The Chimerical Career of Joseph Fouché
“And first, let me not be considered responsible either for the Revolution, its consequences, or even its direction. I was a cipher.” – Joseph Fouché, Memoirs (1824) “Turning later to the duke of Otranto, he [Napoleon] said: ‘The man is merely a schemer. He is prodigiously clever and facile with a pen. He is a…
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Day Tripping at the Met, Part 3: A Little Bit of Everything Else
Okay, folks we’ve made it to the third and final entry in my Met roundup, where I try to wrap up everything else that I saw after I escaped the first floor of the museum (and try not to think about all of the stuff I didn’t have time to see). A truly impossible task,…
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America’s Eternal Sweetheart: The Transatlantic Love Affair with Lafayette
“Lafayette, we are here.” – Col. Charles E. Stanton, visiting Lafayette’s tomb after the arrival of American forces in Paris during WWI “As I admired this noble countenance of stone, a wry smile crept across the [French] curator’s face. Suddenly the silence was broken. ‘Why,’ asked the curator, ‘should we have a bust of Lafayette?’”…
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Revolutionary Women: The Ladies of The Flight of Virtue
We’re back this week with more Flight of Virtue content, and I thought I’d make good on my threat to delve into some background information on the women who make up the core supporting cast of my novel behind Theo Burr. Because while I had a blast writing a lot of the men, this was…
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France’s Big Brother: The Committee of Public Safety
I wanted to get back this week into some more Flight of Virtue entries, in part because I’m happy to announce that my editor is going to start work next week on my next book: a story that started out as a medieval Crusades romance about the fall of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and…
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America’s Polymath Pirate Queen: The Brief Wondrous Life of Theodosia Burr Alston
“If I could foresee that Theo would become a mere fashionable woman, with all the attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned with whatever grace and allurement, I would earnestly pray God to take her forewith hence. But I yet hope by, her, to convince the world what neither sex appears to believe—that women have…
Sarah Holz 