Darlene's Digest

“Judith has told us of your plans, Mrs. Stephenson,”Jacob Kahn said. “As a local businessman myself, I am pleased to see any venture that brings fresh products and dollars into the economy.” He shook his head. “Savannah has suffered greatly in recent years. The fire and the yellow fever epidemic left us reeling, but we are putting ourselves back on course.” “As a businessman, do you think I will have problems with local merchants? My being a woman on her own?” “There will always be those who have prejudices,” he said slowly as he stirred his tea. Pale blue eyes much like his daughter’s studied Amanda from behind his own spectacles. “I encounter it myself, even though I was born in this city. But Savannah is proud of its ‘merchant princes,’ as we call them, and also prides itself on promoting growth and industry. It was only a few years ago we cheered the launch of the Savannah , the first steam-powered vessel to cross the Atlantic all the way to Russia. Your money is good, Mrs. St...

I drove myself crazy this morning trying to remember a phrase I'd once heard for a useless officer aboard ship (insert joke from all NCO's here). All my naval dictionaries and sources produced nothing except a lot of rude phrases not suited to the scene I was writing. Finally, after lunch, the penny dropped and I remembered I'd heard it used in an episode of  Star Trek , the original series where Kirk gets replaced by a computer ("The Ultimate Computer". Thank you, Wikipedia). So I typed the search question and got back "Captain Dunsel, meaning 'doesn't sail'." Cool! But knowing better than to trust internet research on its own, I dug a little deeper and found this may have been a phrase invented for Starfleet Academy types, and not a real, historical phrase for a useless officer. So, I'm back to revising the scene so I'm not inserting a phrase that's not only anachronistic, but fake. By the way, back in the day I would have...

We've all heard of the "slow food movement", which advocates leisurely meals prepared from scratch. I'm a fan. I'm also a fan of the "slow writing movement". Not writing out my manuscripts with a quill pen, but taking notes by hand. I've found over the years that I retain information better if I write it out in longhand. Because I want to maximize my enjoyment of that notetaking, I use the finest "ingredients". Today I was researching 19th C. Key West, Florida. I set up my latest Circa  notebook from Levenger's , filling it with Rhodia paper, organizing new tabbed dividers. Then I got out my fountain pens--two Cross models, a Lamy Safari, a Sensa, all with different inks. Finally, I picked it all up and moved it to my back porch because it's a lovely day in North Florida. The research is going well (though I need to further research a question about sovereign territory), and I enjoyed the notetaking. The flow of ink, the smoothn...

I love doing the research for my novels because sometimes I run across gems like this: "The degree of commitment to Jacobitism has indeed become the Loch Ness Monster of eighteenth-century history.  The true believers are convinced not only that it existed but that it was huge...they relate the equivalent of alleged sightings, out-of-focus photographs and sonic soundings."   From A Conscise History of Britain 1707-1975 by W.A. Speck