Joanna Bourne

I’ve been thinking about “The Setting as Protagonist.” That is, when setting acts in the story. When it has its own narrative. Fr'ins...

  I've been reading up on Vikings. Nothing deep or scholarly on my part, just random bits about the social order of Vikings. (n.b. This ...

While this below is probably most interesting to those exploring the Medieval world, I think it has larger interest. This is how these folks...

Here's an old post of mine, pulled up from Word Wenches, because it's rainy and I am tired tired tired of the scene I'm working...

I was eating a kiwi fruit the other day. It showed up coyly snuggled next to a breakfast sandwich sold to me by the delightful ladies who r...

Joanna here, talking about that fashion accessory of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the shawl. Why shawls? We wea...

They call bread the staff of life, using staff in the sense of “a long stick used as a support when walking or climbing or as a weapon”, whi...

Bond Street and a passel of gentlemen Joanna here, back with another exciting dispatch from the universe of the past. Talking about ...

In 1787, this painting made a sensation. She's Showing her Teeth From time to time I've posted before with all my thoughts a...

Driving ... Left or Right  If you’ve ever been in a car, you’ve noticed there’s a certain widely practiced custom. Everybody sends their...

Joanna here, being topical over at Word Wenches. My seed catalogs have arrived. This is the first sign of spring for me — not a sigh...

Joanna here, talking about ... well ... money. ‘Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themse...

A careful, kind and intelligent reader asked me why, in Black Hawk, I used the word 'antiseptic' long before the germ theory and w...

From the first importation of tobacco into Europe, to Spain, round about 1528, folks tried various ways to get the n...

Yesterday was Twelfth Night, the last of the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas. It's gone and taken with it the Twelve Drummers Drum...

The Oldest White Horse on the Hill Joanna here, talking about a British hill figure, the White Horse of Uffington. This is Nicola’s ...

Joanna here:  The other day, we had a bit of a storm -- buckets of rain, impenetrable clouds walking up the hill and past ...

Most Excellent Reader Elizabeth asks: "Could you talk about how you come up with all the various capers and escapades for your sp...