Curious about how an idea for a short story becomes a short story?

I hope you read my guest post on today’s SleuthSayers blog, Miss Evelyn Nesbit Testifies “Me Too”.

BONUS: I also talk about how an idea for a short story doesn’t become a short story. ::sigh::

Thanks to fellow ME TOO short story author Eve Fisher for inviting me to guest post on SleuthSayers.

Yes, ME TOO SHORT STORIES: An Anthology–which includes my historic short story “Miss Evelyn Nesbit Presents”–is OUT and ABOUT!

Miss Evelyn Nesbit

And next week, in NYC, Mysterious Bookshop will be hosting a fabulous P-A-R-T-Y in the book’s honor.

If you’re interested in getting news of what’s happening in historic New Orleans, what books are looking good to me, where I’ve been (& why), and my latest publications (hint: in September it’s “Miss Evelyn Nesbit Presents”), then sign up on my website!

Sign up is Right. Over. There.

I’m so glad that you’re not tired of reading my posts about the soon-to-be-published ME TOO SHORT STORIES: An Anthology, which includes my historic short story “Miss Evelyn Nesbit Presents”.

You will have to wait until September 3rd for the book publication, but–good news!–the Book Club Discussion questions are already available on our METOOANTHOLOGY website.

If you’re searching for a ripe-for-discussion book for your 2019-2020 book club, please consider ME TOO SHORT STORIES: An Anthology!

AND…if you’re in the Bay Area and would like me to attend your book club event, or you’d like me to attend via Skype, contact me via my contact page.

If you’d like your copy of Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology–which includes my short story “Miss Evelyn Nesbit Presents”–ASAP upon publication on September 3rd, you’re in luck!

Here are your links–

Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology (paperback)

Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology (Kindle)

Miss Evelyn Nesbit looks forward to

your reading of her story.

As all y’all might know, I’m taking a break from writing about New Orleans (Hey Fanny! Hey Kate Chopin!) and I am writing a mystery set on the vaudeville stage in San Francisco 1919.

This NYT article about returning WWI soldiers is right in step with some of my on-going research.

Plus, the posters are so true to the times!

Thanks to Trisha Faye for featuring me in her Pages to the Past July 26 newsletter and for hosting a giveaway of FANNY NEWCOMB & THE IRISH CHANNEL RIPPER!

An interview with me and all of the guidelines for the giveaway are located HERE.

HINT: Drawing ends Wednesday, July 31st at midnight.

I’m researching San Francisco in 1919 and came across this great art!

The hats! The hair! The skirts! The tails!

Makes me want to cut a rug. How about you?

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 23 November 1919.

My June newsletter is coming out next Tuesday. If you would like to receive it in your very own email box, just sign up on my website.

My newsletter contains info about what I’ve written & what I’m writing and where I’m going to be & what I’m doing as Ana Brazil Author.

AND it usually includes some fun facts about Fanny Newcomb’s 1889 New Orleans, celebrations of some of America’s historic heroines, and some reading suggestions.

I downloaded IN FARLEIGH FIELD to my Kindle a while back and just started reading it today. I know, I know, it’s an award winner, it’s highly recommended, but still, there are so many great historical novels out there to read.

And I must admit that I try to read historicals “in my era”, that is the Civil War through WWI. And I try to read American historical fiction because it is so wondrous and original.

I was impressed with IN FARLEIGH FIELD from the very first screen, when it provided a CAST OF CHARACTERS. And the characters were identified much as a working writer would describe them.

And then there was the first chapter, set in an English cricket field, showing how life was lived outside and inside in England in 1939.

And then we get to WWII and the work at Bletchley Park.

So no, this isn’t a review, because I’m so very little into the story, but I wanted to share what I realized from these few pages: I always think of, rely upon British historical fiction to be VERY ORDERLY. In England, everything & everyone has a place and a purpose and very little ever seems random or jumbled. Even during wartime.

And in that, IN FARLEIGH FIELD does not disappoiint.

England, and historical fiction about England, seems very controlled and scripted and defined, with a CAST OF CHARACTERS and the same English cricket field in every village. I’m not saying the fiction or the setting is dull, I’m saying that I appreciate entering a world that has provides me with order and continuity.

Perhaps because there seems very little of that in contemporary life, English or otherwise.

And as a writer, it’s a fine thing to start a story with a controlled, orderly setting. Because when you blow up that setting, the story will be even more brilliant and the characters will need to be even more heroic to survive.