The iconic idiocy of horned helmets
Or: Why horns were real … weren’t they? As a writer of Viking historical fiction – sensual or not – I stumble regularly across the silly misconception of warriors wearing…
How writing buddies become fighting buddies
Or: Can wounds be sexy? – From being stuck to publication With the imminent release of the first short story in the Tales of Freya series came retrospective. How each…
Sex, Romance, and the Viking Woman | Gina Conkle’s Guest Blog for Dirty, Sexy History
Sex and romance have spiced up history. There’s the tragic tale of Marc Antony and Cleopatra and the Middle Ages pairing of intellectual souls, Heloise and Peter Abelard. There’s the…
Preparing National Novel Writing Month
… Outlines, anyone? I’m definitely using the motivational drive of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, again to get the first 50,000 words of my next WIP down. I can…
On mourning a failed story …
… and saving it again It happens to all of us. No matter where in our career we are, how long we’ve been doing this, professionally or not, no matter…
Hush, writer, you can’t write that …
Or: Why do I hold back? A painful observation. E.M. Cioran said: “Write books only if you say in them things you would not dare confide to anyone.” Or in…
The Female Gaze: that’s the revolution!
… Bring on the Vikings! In part 1 of this post I explained how the old-fashioned male gaze in stories (written or on-screen) is incomplete and stereotypical, but still wildly…
Holy Viking Hotness …
… or: How to write sex with style, Part 2: The complicated cooking of a tasteful Nordic feast As I said earlier, some recipes for yummy hotness are just proven…
What I could NOT write (about)
The bedside table discrepancy I talked about how I found my (present) writing genre (historical and often romance) and why I “specialise” in the Viking age here. And I often…
Publishing under pressure — Part 2: Research!
This post is about how to “do your homework” when the pressure is on, and you, let’s say, want to publish a book within, let’s say, one week (ahem), from…