I’ve been looking at lists of great first lines — in novels, poems, plays, essays. Most lists online include classics. I like the lists with a theme, such as Funniest First Lines. When I’m browsing books and looking inside, the first thing I notice is whether the first line is a hook or teaser style. Most lists of great first lines tend to emphasize that approach, summing up of the story ahead with a cliffhanger.…
I came across a poem today that speaks with the voice of my aching heart. I was delighted to find the author is Amanda Gorman, whose poetic voice often resonates with me. She’s a poet for this moment on earth. Young, truthful, gifted, she speaks plainly with vibrant images, simply but with rhythm, alliteration, and assonance. Amanda Gorman is the author of The Hill We Climb and Other Poems. She was the youngest inaugural poet…
“WELL, THAT WAS FUN!” – Editorial review from Readers’ Favorite. I can’t image a better book review than the one below. Reviews like this are what makes a writer keep on writing books. Reading the kind of pleasure someone had in my novel is my kind of fun! Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers’ Favorite. Here’s the whole book review: “In the novel Jane Austen, Time Traveler by Rachel Dacus, time traveler George St. James…
I exercised my way into a knee injury, and turned my writing life upside-down. That’s because I do a lot of dictating into my phone while walking. And now I’m not walking much. I also use stair-climbing as part of my thinking process. Doing chores in our house means stairs, and that’s some of my best thinking time. Though now I have more stair-thinking time, as I take it one step — good foot, bad…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…