If you must see what a Roman shield looked like, a Victorian kitchen, a 1940s nurse, or 1800s Chinese furniture, an image search helps. Also, I...
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Top 5 PLW Blogs about Writing
Early in 2021, I woke up with a tingling sensation under my skin. The series of scenes that I kept seeing in my head over the last few months came...
Summer Reading: Best All-Time Historical Novels
Summer implies languorous days reading “take me away” books: under an umbrella at the beach, on a blanket next to a lake, in a lounge chair in your...
Eighty Excellent Online Historical Collections
Happy International Archives Day! In the spirit of Fifty Fabulous Online Library Historical Collections, Sixty Sensational Online Historical Archive...
8 Links to Food and Eating in Literature
Food and adequate nutrition are not only essential to all life, but make for excellent world building in historical fiction, and lots of tension....
Small Presses & Hybrid Publishing
From the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) website In December, I posted Author Wonk 1: “Writing a Query, Finding an Agent.” You need an agent...
Historically Accurate Movies
Master and Commander During the worst of Covid, when vaccines were new and many of us were nervously venturing out, I organized a family...
Writing a Query, Finding an Agent
Getting to the top of the slush pile… December is the month for holidays. It’s also the month to fill in your Excel sheet with the agents...
Homes for the Holidays
Before December arrives, the people who preserve historic homes go into high gear. Lights and more lights, Christmas trees to fit any room,...
Books & Coffee: a Love Story
Find a book that calls to you, purchase, then sit down with coffee and a pastry or light lunch and lose yourself in reading. A bookstore café: pure...
How We Traveled
PEOPLE SAY “now that we have global markets…” We’ve always had global markets. People have been trading since prehistoric times, even earlier....
Where to Find Your #HistoricalFiction Peeps Online
Every now and then, a writer of historical fiction looks up from their screen (or sheaf of paper) and cries out “Enough with Marie Antoinette’s...
American History: Libraries Light the Way
It’s National Library Week, and I’m a librarian. Considering what’s going on in the world and the fact that my father and his family came here from...
Celebrating Women’s History Month
ARTISTS, LEADERS, MUSICIANS, SCIENTISTS, AND WRITERS Hi, I’m Michal Strutin, one of the newest Paper Lantern Writers, but not new to...
PLW YouTube Gems
Did you know…Paper Lantern Writers has a YouTube Channel! Over the past two years our YouTube Guru C.V. Lee has encouraged all of us writers to...
Happy Holiday Postcards
I’m always thrilled to learn that I’m not the only one in the world who loves historic postcards, and I’ve met so many postcard lovers that I’m...
Genealogy Links, Anyone?
We’re blogging about family this month, so I thought a few free genealogy links—including how-to tips and resources for researching—would be in...
Everyday Life in….
No matter what century or what locale we’re writing about, every historical fiction author strives to show exactly what “life was like back then”....
74 Superlative Online Historical College Collections
To Americans of a certain age — ahem! — September will always mean “back to school”. In celebration of this momentous month, I’m pleased to continue...
Writers on Writing: From the Profound to the Hilarious
Whether you’re a reader or a writer, it’s always interesting to hear what writers have to say about their craft. What does it mean to them? How do...
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