Writer for Young Adults
Gold is in the air this fall, and not just in the turning leaves. Two new YA westerns, Erin Bowman's Vengeance Road and Rae Carson's Walk on Earth a Stranger, send strong young women on the trail for gold in the 19th century. Vengeance Road is a straight-up western, chockfull of strong characters and fast-paced action. When… Continue reading Golden Girls
Just as I was starting school at the end of August, Libba Bray's long-awaited Lair of Dreams hit shelves. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of pretty much anything she writes, and The Diviners, a sprawling historical thriller set in the 1920s, set my expectations high for her new series. Luckily, Lair of Dreams delivers, delving into fascinating… Continue reading Lair of Dreams and the American Dream (Spoilers)
I love Newport. It's one of my favorite things about living in Rhode Island: drive 45 minutes and you're in the middle of a gorgeous port city, filled with historic houses and fun restaurants and bracing sea air. When my sister visits in the spring or summer, we often try to fit in a trip to… Continue reading Afternoon Adventure: Newport, RI
Thank you for all your kind thoughts and wishes about my previous post. I'm thrilled to be moving on to the next stage in my writing adventure. After I finalized things with Laura, I took one last swing through revision-land with my project. This time it was solely to focus on historical accuracy: checking the… Continue reading The Kindness of Strangers
What would it be like to live in two eras at once? Last week I read a beautiful and thought-provoking piece about working at a living history museum, by the blogger and historic gastronomist Sarah Lohman. "Living My Best 1848 Life," posted at Lapham's Quarterly blog, recounts Lohman's experience working as a first-person interpreter at an Ohio… Continue reading Both Past and Present
Happy December! I've just returned from a whirlwind trip home to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, and it was wonderful to see family and take long walks and eat lots of delicious (modern) food. Around the holidays we often reflect on the past--not only our recent past and childhoods, but the "family past," stories about my grandfather's… Continue reading Afternoon Adventure: The Tavern Club
Meet Mrs. Hannah Glasse. By day, she is a plain English housewife, struggling to scrape by in the mid-1700s. By night, however, she works on her revolutionary new idea: a cookbook designed for the masses of untrained servants working in fine English homes.source: WikipediaBy 1746, when Glasse began to write The Art of Cookery Made Plain… Continue reading Colonial Cookbook: The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy
About a month ago I met up with my parents in Hyde Park, New York, for a weekend of sight-seeing and poking around historic places (this is the order of the day with my family). After touring two painters' homes on the first day, we headed to the Vanderbilt Mansion bright and early on Saturday.… Continue reading Afternoon Adventure: Vanderbilt Mansion, Hyde Park
Most of the time this blog is all about history and homesteading. But today you'll get to hear about another interest that takes up a big chunk of my days: creative writing. (And of course, there's a lot of history involved in that, too!)For the past few years I've been working on a YA historical… Continue reading The Next Big Thing Blog Tour!
A month ago my family met up in Philadelphia to celebrate my sister's graduation. We had some free time before the festivities began, so we drove about an hour outside of the city to the Brandywine Valley, former home of painter Andrew Wyeth and current location of some absolutely beautiful estates and gardens.We spent the… Continue reading Afternoon Adventure: Longwood Gardens
Abby Murphy 