The Two Nerdy History Girls Chat Is Now Online. Also, Other Matters.

So there are these long stretches of time when you don’t hear from me . . . and then I inundate you. This ought to be the last one for a while at least.

Our most recent Two Nerdy History Girls chat is now online. You can watch it on YouTube here.

Susan Holloway Scott and I had a wonderful time—again—chatting with Meena Jain and readers about nerdy historical matters. We talked about 18th and 19th century travel quite a bit, and the dangers and discomforts thereof. I also mentioned a couple of nerdy history resources I’ve made frequent use of.

The Epicure’s Almanack: Eating and Drinking in Regency London, ed. Janet Ing Freeman. This is one of the books I might never have found on my own, so I’m grateful to author Candice Hern for calling my attention to it. If you don’t follow Candice on Facebook, you might want to start. She offers all kinds of fascinating historical material, including items from her amazing collection.

Paterson’s Roads (yes, that’s the correct spelling). Though I managed to get my hands on a crumbling 1830s edition, you will find many editions online. You can read an interesting blog post about it here at the Public Domain website.

save the date image with flowers

Detail adapted from a kimono design in Yachigusa by Ueno, Seikō, 1901, Smithsonian Libraries colection

Coming Attractions

Meena Jain has very kindly invited the Two Nerdy History Girls for a return engagement on 17 June at 7pm.

She’s also invited me to join—this time in person—another cast of stellar authors for a RomCon in the spring.

Romancing New England RomCon 2024 - Romance Authors Festival at the Ashland Public Library, Ashland Massachusetts, on Saturday 18 May from 10-4pm

If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll attend. We have fewer opportunities to talk to readers in person these days, and Meena Jain and her team organize an especially enjoyable event.

More official posts will appear as we draw closer to the dates.

P.S. And for all the kind readers who signed up for this blog after the 2NHG chat: Due to deadline and then a flurry of catchup activity, combined with my own technological incompetence, I wasn’t able to update the subscribers list until today. Some of you may want to check out the blog post just before this one, wherein the fate of the third Difficult Dukes book is revealed.

The Two Nerdy History Girls Return. Again.

Once more, Meena Jain, of the Ashland Public Library here in Massachusetts, has invited Susan Holloway Scott and me for a session of nerdy history. Susan and I retired from writing Two Nerdy History Girls blog posts a few years ago, but the blog is still there. Every so often, I pay a visit, to look up this or that.

Our Zoom event, though, offers us time to take questions from our readers. It’s fun for a number of reasons. We never know what subject will come up. Sometimes we get to debunk myths. Sometimes we find ourselves in that grey area of “it depends.” But being nerdy history girls, we love the challenge. In my case, it can get my brain out of the Work-in-Slow-Progress* and onto Something Completely Different. I hope you’ll join us. Here is some useful information:

Virtual - The Two Nerdy History Girls Ride Again!

Wednesday 10 January 2024 at 7pm ET

You’ll find event details here.

You can register here.

You can get in touch with Ashland Public Library via this email address.

One other Ashland Public Library note: Saturday 18 May 2024 brings Spring RomCon from 10-4pm. I will be there, along with a stellar cast of authors. If you think you’ll be in the area, you might want to mark your calendar. More info to come.

* Very nearly done!

Talking to Jenny in New Zealand

A short time ago, I spent a most enjoyable time talking to Jenny, for a Joys of Binge Reading Podcast. She was in New Zealand. I was in the U.S., in Massachusetts. As an ancient relic of the 20th century, I continue to marvel at how easy it is now to have chats like these with readers, bloggers, and podcasters around the world. Just push a couple of buttons et voilà!

In a short time, we covered quite a bit of ground, from my early career to current work, inspiration sources, research, and more. (Jenny had clearly done quite a bit of her own research—into my books and career—in advance.) We also talked about how much I choose to include or exclude in the smoochies department.

The podcast is now live at the Joys of Binge Reading site, where Jenny has also very thoughtfully provided links to the people and topics we covered. You can access it here.

Or, you can watch here on YouTube.

And here’s a two minute clip to sample.

Tecomanthe speciosa, a native plant of New Zealand

Jenny, thank you for being such a gracious host and excellent interviewer!