Genesis of a Historical Novel

It's been some time since I've posted to this blog, but I've not been idle. For the past few months I've been working to publish another novel of mine, and I'm happy to announce that now it's don...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2011/05/python-is-born.html

Friends, I seem to be on hiatus for the time being. Now in the mornings I find myself often wanting just to press on with my research notes rather than pausing to write a blog-post. With a proje...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-hiatus.html

Autumn descends on us, with the mornings turning chilly and damp. Roofers have been at work on our building over the past two weeks, and in the past three days have been right over our unit, ripp...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/10/disaster-again.html

Where have I been, you ask? Well, Kimmie and I have been working our way through a headcold, caught we know not where. I got it first, and probably passed it on to her. I'm very much better, but...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/10/darkness-ahead.html

> Just as the truth about the future would be attained only if man > were in touch with a knowledge wiser than his own, so the truth > about the past could be pres...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/epic-musings.html

Writing, studying, thinking--these three converge for me. I keep a separate folder on the computer labeled Thinking, in which I have documents devoted to different topics that interest me. For ex...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/epics-holograms-and-hell.html

Just about all of my reading is done for a purpose. Only occasionally do I read a book for "general knowledge", and almost never do I read a book "for fun". Sound dreary? It isn't. For one thing...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/reading-hevvy.html

Again I find myself sitting here for long minutes staring at the screen. What do I write about? What do I say? Over the years I've said quite a bit in this blog, weighing in on various topics, t...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-and-why.html

In my thinking about various things, I arrive again and again at a basic conundrum of human experience: the Same and the Different. Even in ancient times this question exercised philosophers. Ho...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/same-and-different.html

Thank heavens! I dug into the Kaspersky User Forum and discovered how to unlock access to the site stats for my blog. I can see them again. I discovered how much I rely on being able to get a se...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/vision-returned.html

My research has me ranging over ideas far and wide. I'm still searching for the core ideas that are most relevant to my work. I can't really afford to pass over any that I discover along the way....

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/before-fall.html

I still can't view the stats page for my blog, which creates a curious feeling of being cut off. Sort of like a performer who can no longer see the audience. I continue to research my work. If I...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/zeitgeist.html

Our word genius has an interesting background. In Latin it means "that which is just born". To the ancient Romans it meant the collection of traits and potentials that came into being or manifest...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/genius.html

I'll quickly check in here. Again I got up in the night to do some reading. This is becoming a pattern. Part of the pattern is that when I return to bed (this morning at about 3:50) I lie awake, ...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/awake.html

I'll take a quick pause from my morning research to write a post. Labor Day has just passed, and today is the universal day of "back to school"--a stronger feeling of New Year for me and many ot...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/back-to-school.html

The rain plops heavily outside again. A series of sirens has screamed by in the dark of morning. I prepared for sleeplessness again last night, setting out my sweatpants and fleece top for easy ...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/late-night-reading.html

It's dark and rainy outside. Except for all the leaves on the shrubs and trees, it could be a November day. I like this kind of variety in the weather. Yesterday I felt underslept after a semi-s...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/sleeping-reading.html

When I was a teenager I was enthusiastic about chess. I'd always been fascinated by the game, and felt frustrated at age 6 or 7 when my father refused to teach it to me. "You should learn checke...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/turtle-speak.html

In the 1970s or perhaps the early 1980s there was a British documentary TV series called The Infinite Search, in which the presenter (forget who he was) visited practitioners and authorities of t...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/welcome-stranger.html

Rain falls through the cool air. In the night, when I removed one of my earplugs, I heard the drumbeat of drops falling on a plastic fitting of the downspout system outside. It was another wakef...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/free-classless-urbane.html

I woke at 2:15 and never did go back to sleep. Too much to think about. I've commented before about the difference in mentality, in emotionality, between day and night. I notice very strongly ho...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/restless-mind.html

It was a hot night. This morning it is gray and cooler; a mild rain started to fall as I took out the recycling just now. Kimmie's garden around the patio out my window is as lush and green as it...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-do-i-provide.html

My effort at this long and difficult project has fallen naturally into stages. I refer not to stages of completion, but stages of kinds of effort, or stages of emotional attitude--something like ...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/long-stages-of-completion.html

Back (or still) at my post. Ah, yes, my post: here at this computer, at this desk. I call it "desk", but in fact it is a white melamine Scandinavian-style kitchen-table that Kimmie bought in 198...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/at-my-post.html

Yesterday I had my weekly lunch at my mother's house--a lovely quiet place in Cove Cliff. As usual, we talked about writing afterwards. Since she's working on a memoir, we looked at the opening s...

http://awriterscosmos.blogspot.com/2008/08/write-unto-others.html