colonial kiss

Is there anything harder to write than a love scene? I doubt it - but they are so delightful when done:) There's a romantic scene in The Frontiersman's Daughter (one of many) that took a very long time to get just right. I think it's my favorite scene in the book! Lael has three romantic entanglements which rarely happens in fiction, so I'm told. But it seems to have worked. Sure makes life interesting for her, not to mention her admirers. And, I hope, any readers!

I like this photograph because the woman is wearing quintessential 18th-century clothing. Check out her beautiful hat! Did you know corsets or stays weren't uncomfortable as we've been told? Even little girls wore them. (Actually, my source for this is a man and contradicts everything I've read thus far). Shoes were often excruciating, even life-threatening, on the other hand.

When he was just a young man, my great-grandfather in Kentucky rubbed a blister on his heel with a too-tight boot and had to have his leg amputated due to blood poisoning. His sisters went out to the barn and put pillows over their ears while the surgery, sans anaesthesia, was in progress. I don't think there was much for pain back then in rural areas except liquor. By the way, he went on to marry the belle of Berea, Louise Duncan, who chose my one-legged great-grandpa over the handsome, young mayor of that tiny town a hundred years ago. Truth really is stranger than fiction!

Why is romance so appealing? Do you have any favorite romantic movies or books?

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. -Emily Bronte

Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots. -The Hoosier Farmer

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. -Tolstoy

Forget love - I'd rather fall in chocolate! -Sandra J. Dykes