My New Blog

Please visit my new blog, The Muskoka Novels, where I will be posting weekly photos, historical tidbits, and musings about writing.

Lake Rosseau, Muskoka

Stepping Back in Time

Edwardian summer life in the legendary lake district of Muskoka - photo by Frank Micklethwaite

For those new to this blog, please look at my 2014 postings for historical tidbits and photos about the Age of Elegance and various aspects of the Great War. We start with  “Diamonds in the Wilderness”, one of many posts illustrating the genteel life of lakeside summers for affluent Edwardians, move on to “From Parlour to War”, “The Glamorous Birdmen”, “Sex andthe Soldier”, and others.

Britain's top WW1 Ace, Canadian Billy Bishop

My “Muskoka Novels” The Summer Before the Storm and Elusive Dawn immerse readers in that era.  You can read some of the reviews in this sidebar and see more online at  The Muskoka Novels, where books can also be purchased.

Book 3, Under the Moon, deals with the aftermath - people rebuilding their lives within a drastically changed society. I'm currently working on Book 4, which continues to follow the families through WW2, mostly through the eyes of women.

So I will now be posting occasionally on my new Muskoka Novels blog  - coming soon!

Testament of Youth

Vera Brittain's moving and powerful memoir about the Great War  - Testament of Youth - was an important part of my research for the first two Muskoka Novels.  A movie based on that book is being released in Britain this week. I can hardly wait to see it!

It seems that the director took the same approach as I did in The Summer Before the Storm – beginning with  the genteel age of elegance and innocence, and then plunging the characters into the brutal war that decimated a generation of young people and forever changed those who survived.

Here is an interesting clip about the movie. Notice at about 2:50 minutes in that the director actually talks about “the summer before the storm”.