I’m not typically a big fan of murder stories–probably to do with an overactive imagination that will easily project blood, gore, and evil intent on my own world with only slight provocation–but Jane Isaac is part of a small circle of authors who’ve been inordinately supportive of my own efforts, so it seemed only fair … Book Review: An Unfamiliar Murder
This was the first year I had heard about the A to Z blog challenge–and I heard about it serendipitously when I was pondering publicity options for my release of Dust to Blood. So it served a two-fold purpose: To see whether I could blog that frequently, and to gather some of my notes and … #AtoZChallenge – Reflection Post
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Despite all my intentions to the contrary, I did get to read at least a few books in between all the writing and editing of the past two months… Sneaking in other people’s words like the true bookaholic I know myself to be. And I always said… … Book Review: Incorporeal
OK. I know I’m cheating a little, taking out the “T” you normally see at the beginning of the Anglicized version of this word, but I really struggled with finding a word related to Dust to Blood that began with Z for this final installment of the A to Z blogging challenge. After all, this … #AtoZChallenge – Z is for Zar
My penultimate A to Z blog challenge post. What a month! Doing 26 posts in a month seems like a mini NaNoWriMo–but I’m pleased with the background bits I’ve been able to share about Dust to Blood. So today’s post reverts to language study, and another one of the very early phrases any beginning student … #AtoZChallenge – Y is for Ya ne ponimayu
I won’t claim I’m not cheating a little with today’s X entry for the A to Z blog challenge, but the Cyrillic spelling and pronunciation for the word of the day could easily be represented by an X (update: Here it is in Cyrillic, so you know I’m not lying: Хорошо). So I’m running with … #AtoZChallenge – X is for Xarasho
I struggled again, coming up with my 23rd entry in the A to Z blog challenge. There wasn’t anything obvious in Dust to Blood that would work for a W entry–until I took a step back with the help of my husband. He was right to point out that the backdrop for this story is … #AtoZChallenge – W is for Cold War
I’m grateful to the A to Z blog challenge for showing me the whole daily blogging thing isn’t as big of a grind as I had worried it might be–so long as you have a useful framework and a way to build your posts ahead of time for a more guaranteed timely release. The timing … #AtoZChallenge – V is for Vasily
I’m getting to the tail-end of the A to Z blogging challenge with this entry for U. This was another easy one: the final third of Dust to Blood takes place in Central Russia up and down the spine of the Ural mountains. When we lived in Moscow, I remember some colleague of my dad’s … #AtoZChallenge – U is for Urals
For my twentieth entry in the A to Z blog challenge, I’m returning to a Russian word: tovarishch. The word was appropriated during the Bolshevick uprising in 1917 to designate egalitarian standing within the Communist party. This one should be familiar to anyone with middling knowledge about the Cold War, as there was a great … #AtoZChallenge – T is for Tovarishch
