Katherine Keenum

On New Year’s Eve, temperatures are going to drop 12° F where I live; I’m staying indoors! But for those of you who attend First Night celebrations or go night-clubbing, just think what a difference artificial light in cities makes in our lives. While I was researching Where the Light Falls,  Read More 

Whoops! I forgot to hit "Publish" on Dec. 23rd—a bonus from Canadian-born Elizabeth Adela Forbes Stanhope (Jeanette’s contemporary). Happy Boxing Day.

The true meaning of Christmas may be the opposite of worldly vanity, but I can’t resist posting this image from the period of my present research for ANONYMITY.

San Francisco-based Grant Gordon (best known as a marine painter) provided illustrations to Puck and other periodicals.

I have to assume that my heroine, Mattie,  Read More 

Christmas Eve seems to me the loveliest, quietist day of the holiday season. I've always loved the story of the shepherds in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. It has also pleased me in recent years to find shepherdesses as well as shepherds present in medieval imagery of the angel's announcement.  Read More 

This Christmas shopping street scene is the sort that might have met my new heroine Mattie when she arrived in New York City at the turn of the 20th C. It was painted by Alice Barber Stephens,  Read More 

The heroine of ANONYMITY, Mattie Palmer, works in an office near Madison Square, so imagine her witnessing crowds like this. I’ve set the novel in warm weather for various reasons, but winter settings have advantages. Cold, snow, and sleet give urgency to action, and respite from misery in cozy havens are among my  Read More 

Pauline Marie Charlotte Croizette was an artist and the sister of actress Sophie Croizette. In 1868, Pauline met Carolus-Duran in the Louvre, where she was copying old masters, and married him that year. I love  Read More 

One of the pleasures of researching an historical novel is discovering themes (I didn’t know how infatuated with Asian art and objects artists and collectors were in the 19th C until I started reading up for Where the Light Falls) and new artists. Gustave de Jonghe (1829–1893) was a Belgian painter, Read More 

Website tip: Click here to be astonished by photographically constructed night views of cities as they would appear if the stars over them were fully visible. Surely these should inspire wonderful s.f. stories or remind us to imagine fantasy worlds more vividly.

Website tip: Running through some bookmarks, I ran across an on-line test for color acuity. Take it, it's fun! (And so weirdly ego-satisfying if you do well.)