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What Did It Take to Become America’s First Female Cabinet Member? The only woman in the room, and the only individual to serve in FDR’s cabinet for his entire term, arrived for her job interview on February 22, 1933 with a very ambitious list.

On This Day 90 Years Ago, the Biggest, Baddest, Blackest Dust Storm of Them All Struck the Texas Panhandle — and set the stage for the opening of my historical novel, Unspoken (A Dust Novel) ... on Black Sunday: April 14, 1935.

Nearly a century ago, the unthinkable happened: The U.S. was five years into the biggest ecological disaster we'd ever known.

When the fire broke out in a trash can on March 25, 1911, only one garment worker noticed. But soon the flames and smoke were inescapable.

UNSPOKEN shines a light on women driven apart by disaster who persevere, with themes of estrangement and upheaval that still resonate today.

In the 1930s, these women captured Texas on film—the good, the bad, and the truly ugly.

When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt met a Texas dust storm in 1939, her encounter gave me an idea for my historical novel, Unspoken

For Women's History Month, we're reading the stories of women once marginalized or totally overlooked in historical fiction

All it took in 1885 to build Houston a city library was a book club, begun by women with a desire for "intellectual culture."

There's a Magic to Celebrating Milestones...and It Begins With Champagne (and Books About It)

It’s ironic many extra words writers have to cut once they hit the magic length historical novels are: 100,000 - 120,000. Cue the angst.

When you’re researching historical fiction, it would be so much easier to rev up the Time Machine. Here's how I did without time travel.

Whether you’re a Scrivener power user or a beginner, here are a few things Scrivener can do that you probably can’t do without.

The popularity of historical fiction with book clubs has soared. Read why in my conversation with historical author Janis Robinson Daly

Let's say you're not from Texas. (Cue Lyle Lovett) But you got here quick as you could. Now you want to learn how to be a Texan. Here's how.

Kay Smith-Blum's debut, TANGLES, spans two timelines and two star-crossed narrators in the dark shadow of radiation contamination, during th

Crowded out by more robust tools, typewriters have vanished from our desks. But not our back yards.

Inspiration strikes in strange and unexpected ways. But when it doesn’t strike, there are three tricks to juice it along.

There’s a saying in real estate, that it’s all about location. Location. Location. Location. It’s just as true in writing historical novels.

Road trips have an appeal that goes way back in time, and roadside oddities abound for time travelers willing to take a fork in the road.