Katherine Keenum

Blog tip: My new heroine, Mattie, would never be presented at the Court of Saint James, not in 1907 or any other year. Still I loved coming across an itemized account of how much the clothes, the massage and the manicure cost for a debutante to be presented. Read More 

In the first chapter of my work-in-progress, Mattie dresses for her job as a stenographer but daydreams about the coming evening with her lover as she puts on a sexy corset which she has bought from a fancy corsetiere.  Read More 

Web post boast: Joy! Where the Light Falls is one of 55 books selected by Prevention to make you happier! To see them all, click here.

As I tried to say last Thursday, I'll be writing more about my new work as well as Where the Light Falls. For instance, the stenographer shown here taking shorthand on her pad is younger than my new heroine, but I found the picture helpful in visualizing how Mattie might be dressed (shirt sleeves, no hat, pleated skirt)  Read More 

As my new novel opens, Mattie Palmer is at breakfast, skimming the morning newspapers. Her eye is caught by the story of a cross-country automobile trip  Read More 

I have just opened last Thursday's post and found that a coding typo made most of it disappear. Sorry. I've made the necessary correction. Please do go back and read it since it lays out how I'm going to be proceding with the blog!!!!

Is there an American woman novelist writing today who did not read at least one Nancy Drew mystery as a girl? For many women over a certain age, the Nancy Drew books were favorite reading, as compulsive as Harry Potter.

In my family, they were taken for granted as pleasurable junk, tolerated because my  Read More 

As the entry on this painting at the Musée d’Orsay says, Monet painted it at an event connected with the 1878 World’s Fair—in fact, the occasion of the first public singing of La Marseillaise since the fall of the Second Empire and rise of the Third Republic. Nevertheless, it is often associated with Bastille Day (July 14th), so why not show it today? Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

In Where the Light Falls, Jeanette, Effie, and Edward see the painting at the 4th Impressionist Show. It also interests me because it has so clearly influenced Childe Hassam’s views of flag-draped streets in New York, e.g., The Fourth of July, 1916, or indeed, Paris in his July Fourteenth, Rue Daunou of 1910.

Just for the fun of it, click here for the stirring rendition of La Marseillaise in the greatest B-movie of them all, Casablanca (the song begins at minute 1.08). Read More 

Writers of historical fiction are susceptible to what someone called “research rapture,” elation over trivia. It may be just as well that I did not know about Wallace water fountains when I wrote Where the Light Falls or I might have gleefully included one whether it was needed or not.

A recent BBC piece on impoverished Britons in France alerted me to the existence of these public drinking fountains.  Read More 

Blog tip: Greer Gilman’s new novella, Exit, Pursued by a Bear has just gone to press and today she posted a gorgeous video of fireworks to celebrate. Hooray! For her own photos and description of last week’s extraordinary fireworks in Boston, click here. And, writers, for the kinds of things the most remarkable fantasist of our day thinks about and discusses, click here.  Read More