The Lighter Side of German Music
When most of us outside Germany think of German music — especially the kind that was popular in the 1930s — we tend to go stereotypical: Wagner, “Horst-Wessel-Lied,” “Deutschland Über Alles,” and so on. But German Jazz-Age pop could be just a fluffy and fizzy as its American or French cousins. As it turns out, […]
The End of the Beginning
In the end, it would always come down to this…I finished the first full draft of Bluejay Rises this morning. That doesn’t mean the book’s finished. (See this post’s title.) What it does mean is that it exists as a completed work. What happens now? I let it marinate for a couple of weeks while […]
Kate’s Songbook: Chapter 4
In Chapter 4, Kate has escaped from Oran after doing something unwise and ends up at Oran’s civilian airport, where she’s taken into custody by the local gendarmes and turned over to Inspecteur Principal Agassiz of the Sûreté Nationale. Luckily for Kate, this isn’t the first time Agassiz has handcuffed her and they’ve played bad […]
Dauntsey House, Kate’s ancestral home
Kate DeWitt was born Catherine Gorham in 1903 in Dauntsey House. At least, that’s the story. There really is a Dauntsey House. It’s the manor house for the Dauntsey Park estate in northern Wiltshire, and it’s been around for a very long time in one form or another. Real History According to British History Online, […]
Kate’s Songbook: Chapter 1
Like most well-born girls at the beginning of the 20th century, Kate DeWitt (Our Heroine) had an education in music. She learned to sing “appropriate” songs and to play an instrument (she chose piano because there was one in her house already). The piano-playing didn’t go so well — Kate couldn’t read music. (Actually, she […]
Why historical fiction is hard: Part 1
(First in a series of occasional rants about how confounding this genre can be.) …wherein our author discovers that even what should be easy is not easy. Our heroine Kate, an aviatrix, lands in the Barcelona of 1936. (Yes, there’s a war on.) I figured this would be easy — it’s called Barcelona Airport, she […]
Why we’re here
This site is where you can follow my chronicling of the adventures of the late Dame Catherine Victoria Gorham DeWitt OBE, a.k.a. Kate. The Kate DeWitt Adventures start in late 1930s Europe and will — depending on your interest, gentle reader — eventually stretch into the early 1950s. Sometimes Kate will solve a mystery; sometimes […]