The Writing Path Blog

My Audacious Time Traveling heroine Is Recognized!

By Rachel Dacus | June 27, 2023June 27, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

Thrilled and delighted that my book JANE AUSTEN, TIME TRAVELER has placed as a Finalist in the 17th Annual National Indie Book Awards, in the women’s fiction category! My audacious time-traveling heroine Jane Austen is recognized. Take a bow, girl! The National Indie Excellence Awards These awards honor “self and independent publishing excellence. They give awards to books published by mid-size independent presses, university presses, and self-publishing authors. My book was honored in the Women’s…

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Return to Lerici – Sequel to The Invisibles

By Rachel Dacus | June 21, 2023June 21, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

I’m about a quarter of the way through drafting my next women’s fiction novel, RETURN TO LERICI. It’s a sequel to THE INVISIBLES, which is the story of a fractured sisterhood, a family guardian spirit, and the path to redemption. This new story involves the same characters, plus a lost family member who’s determined to be found, though not everyone wants to bring him in. My current writing process is messy and unruly. I’m outlining,…

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Art in My Life and Stories

By Rachel Dacus | June 9, 2023June 9, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

Why Art and Artists? My time travel novels often feature art and artists—you may wonder why. It’s because I grew up with an artist father who painted constantly and invited many artist friends to our home. He took us to working studios, local art exhibitions, and art museums in the Los Angeles area. The smell of oil paint and turpentine evokes childhood memories. Saturday afternoons, watching my father mix oil paints and dash paint onto…

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A poem on mortality & the heart

By Rachel Dacus | May 9, 2023June 24, 2024 by Rachel Dacus

I’ve been thinking about my heart condition and looking at poems I wrote shortly after having a heart attack. Contemplating my mortality is a new thing for me. I’ve had to adjust my thinking about time and the future. It’s a subtle shift but a profound one to consider that my time to be, to write, and to love is limited. It’s unsettling in the most interesting way to think of the body as having…

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Sculptor, Quaker, Spy – A Character Interview

By Rachel Dacus | May 4, 2023May 5, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

A character interview with Patience Lovell Wright This is a character Interview with Patience Lovell Wright, a Reviolutiuonary War era sculptor and featured character in the time travel novel UNDOING TIME. Women artists feature in my stories because they don’t feature enough in art history. It’s my way of bringing to our attention extraordinary painters, writers, sculptors, and musicians who didn’t make it into the canon of history — precisely because of their gender. Patience…

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A clover and a bee .. a Zen Revery?

By Rachel Dacus | April 3, 2023April 3, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

I’ve been re-reading Emily Dickinson’s poems lately, one or two a day. Although her early editors removed her original groupings — the “fsaciles” or small booklets in which she grouped them — I enjoy the section “Nature” that groups together a major focus of her writing. Emily doesn’t write about nature as pretty or ornamental, though she certainly finds beauty and delight in it. But she writes more like a Zen monk, or like my…

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A Poet in Spring

By Rachel Dacus | March 27, 2023April 3, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

I can’t help it. I’m a poet intoxicated in springtime, renewal and faith. Step aside, war and riot, prejudice run amok, mass shootings and atmospheric rivers, ignorance abroad and becoming endemic. Step aside, the ruin of the world — it’s like the ruin of winter. And I am a fervent believer in humanity and spring. Evrywhere, I find evidence to back up my faith. To celebrate (before the next bomb cyclone drops on our heads…

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Creating Characters in Springtime

By Rachel Dacus | March 20, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

Spring equinox I’ve forgotten to count the atmospheric rivers that have gushed across the San Francisco Bay Area, but the incredible deluge seems to have sparked a lot of literary ideas for me. When the 50 mph winds are bending trees sideways and sinkholes are appearing in the roads, it’s a subtle hint that you have nowhere better to go than your writing desk. I’ve cradled my laptop many of these dark, rainy mornings. I’m…

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Lunar New Year Poetry 2023

By Rachel Dacus | February 6, 2023February 8, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

New Poetry February 2023 I seem to be writing more poetry in this new year. Lunar new year feels more like a fresh start than did January 1. Flexing my February 2023 without regard to form, publishing opportunities, or any of that. A form of journaling with line breaks and compression, if you will. A new year calls for new tunes. And haiku is returning in my reading hours, so I’m thinking sometimes with a…

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How Jane Austen Began Time-Traveling

By Rachel Dacus | January 22, 2023January 27, 2023 by Rachel Dacus

People ask how I got the idea to send Jane Austen time traveling forward, rather than sending an Austen-adoring hero or heroine back to her era. Simple. I read a book called The Real Jane Austen, a Life in Small Things, and discovered a version of the author who would make an excellent main character. This Jane A. was not meek and sheltered, as history (and her family) liked to portray her. For one thing,…