Comedian Harmonists

Music

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… Continue Reading…

Pages of open books

Writing & Publishing

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… Continue Reading…

Columbia record label for "Pack Up Your Troubles"

Music

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… Continue Reading…

Aerial shot of Los Marinos aerodrome outside Barcelona, 1929

Kate's Places

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… Continue Reading…