My guest author today is M.J. Rose! Her brand new novel The Collector of Dying Breaths crisscrosses between 16th Century Italy and France and present-day France. Fiery and lush, set against deep, wild forests and dimly lit chateaus, The Collector of Dying Breaths illuminates the true path to immortality: the legacies we leave behind. A lush and imaginative novel about a perfumer and a mythologist searching for the fine line between potion and...

ASTOR PLACE VINTAGE was my fifth novel, but my first with a historical setting. I like to joke that when starting out, I figured the research would just involve Googling a few details and I’d be good to go. Okay, I wasn’t really that naïve, but still, I never would’ve imagined how much research would be involved. And I never would’ve guessed how much I’d enjoy doing it. Gathering information is nice and passive...

10 Great Authors, 10 Unforgettable Adventures. With every Today’s Adventure post between August 1 and August 13, you can register to win the featured book and the grand prize of all 10 books. We’ll announce winners on August 14. You may enter today’s contest by going to the Astor Place Vintage Facebook page and liking it. Find links to all the authors below–follow any of them to keep up with the latest adventures....

I was so happy when my editor told me I’d get to include some photographs in ASTOR PLACE VINTAGE. I immediately began to go through months and months of images I’d accumulated on my computer hard drive from the Library of Congress and other sources. These photos had been a huge source of inspiration throughout the writing of my novel. They’d also been a huge distraction that undoubtedly slowed down my progress. I was...

The Last Camellia, by Sarah Jio 10 Great Authors, 10 Unforgettable Adventures With every Today’s Adventure post between August 1 and August 13, you can register to win the featured book and the grand prize of all 10 books. We’ll announce winners on August 14. You may enter today’s contest at Sarah’s Facebook page. Find links to all the authors below–follow any of them to keep up with the latest adventures....

Today I’m hosting an interview with Joanne Lewis, who will be a speaker at the upcoming (soon!) Historical Novel Society Conference in Florida. She’ll be on the panel Publishing Models: Indie Presses and Self-Publishing Pathways. The Lantern, her novel that won first place in the Royal Palm Literary Award for Historical Fiction, is about a modern-day woman in Miami and a girl from 15th century Florence, Italy who dared to enter the...

Guest of Honor at 2013 Historical Novel Society Conference Today I have a Q & A with Steve Berry, the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of eight Cotton Malone adventures, four stand-alone thrillers, and four short-story originals. His books have been translated into 40 languages with more than 15 million printed copies in 51 countries. And, by the way, he’s going to be speaking at this year’s Historical...

Q & A with Maryka Biaggio, author of PARLOR GAMES. Maryka Biaggio will be at the Historical Novel Conference this June speaking on the panel Writing About Women in History: Animating Their Times and Voices. Her novel PARLOR GAMES, based on the true story of a gilded-age baroness who tangled with the Pinkertons, was published by Doubleday in January 2013. How do you find the people and topics of your books? I stumbled across the subject of...

Interview with author Michelle Cameron I’m looking forward to going to my first Historical Novel Society conference. It’s being held June 21-23 down in St. Petersburg, Florida. Meanwhile, I’ll be hosting some interviews here on my blog with authors who are featured speakers at this year’s conference. I’m posting the first of these today, and my guest is author Michelle Cameron. Her historical novel THE FRUIT OF HER...

When I was poking around The New York Public Library doing research for my novel…

In my novel, ASTOR PLACE VINTAGE, the story hinges on a journal that is found sewn inside the lining of a fur muff. So it seems only right to present some background about fur muff fashion. Muffs were mentioned in text from the 1400s, and one of the earliest images of one is in an engraving from 1588. In the 1600s both men and women used muffs. Since fur was not as easily attainable, they were more typically made out of silk or satin and might...

The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo My rating: 4 of 5 stars A novel about an Italian immigrant family living in Hell’s Kitchen New York during the 30s. Puzo based the main character of the mother on his own mother. I loved how Puzo said in the introduction that he also modeled the Godfather character after his mother. Was Marlon Brando aware of this? There seem to be surprisingly few novels about the Italian immigrant experience. This is...