Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Soundtrack for a Story: The Mountain of the Wolf

by 2 Comments

The soundtrack for this story is a bit shorter one. When I began plotting/writing The Mountain of the Wolf, I initially didn’t have any “inspiration music” at all. Then while working on the first draft, I gradually began recognizing some songs that fit, and rediscovered a classical work that suits the story’s atmosphere (and coincidentally, its setting/plot) perfectly. Perhaps I’ll find some more as I continue to edit, but here’s what I’ve got for now:

Selections from Billy The Kid by Aaron Copland:

As for the story itself, it has me a little bemused at the moment. Last week I finished typing the rough draft I wrote in April, and discovered it was about five thousand words longer than I had expected. And that’s with one scene (which I cravenly skipped during the first draft because I was dry of ideas) still to be added. Now, how in the world did that happen? I guess there must have been a lot more scrawled in the margins of my notebook pages than I realized. (You should have seen me as I tried to type certain pages, turning the notebook this way and that as I tried to decipher from the various margin notes and scribbled arrows and crossings-out exactly which sentence was supposed to come next.)

 
image: ‘Silhouette of a cowboy on horseback’ by Allan Grant, 1949

    Summer Reading 2016

    by 3 Comments

    A pattern has emerged over the last couple of years: I begin putting down titles for my summer reading list practically just after New Year’s, and by the time May rolls around I’m champing at the bit to dig into it…and to talk about it! A side-effect of making the list early, of course, is that I occasionally swipe a title off it if I’m really desperate for something to read anytime in the spring. This year I swiped Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope and The Brandons by Angela Thirkell (a double dose of Barsetshire!) and I remain unapologetic. Barchester Towers in particular was exactly what I needed in a dry reading season—and anyway, there are plenty of books left in both authors’ series if I want to read them in the summer!

    So without further ado, here’s this year’s list:

    Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
    Escape the Night by Mignon G. Eberhart
    The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart
    Storming by K.M. Weiland
    Where There’s a Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart
    Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
    Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
    Greenwillow by B.J. Chute
    Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
    Conagher by Louis L’Amour
    The Great K&A Train Robbery by Paul Leicester Ford
    When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning
    Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

    Seventeen by Booth Tarkington

    (Review links added later.)

    I admit, I have fun making my summer reading lists kind of like Irish stew—a little bit of everything on there. More Westerns this year, as I seem to have been slacking off on my Western reading for a while; and a couple of titles that have an oblique connection to the World War II research I’m doing (my research-reading list will carry on through the summer, too).

    What does your summer reading list look like? I’d love to see it!


    image: “Woman in a Boat” by John Singer Sargent

    Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books That Will Make You Laugh

    by 5 Comments

    Everybody needs a good laugh once in a while. And a good book that can make you really, seriously shriek with laughter is a treasure. Books that will make you laugh is the theme of this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, so here’s some that have done it for me.

    Now, I could easily have just written “P.G. Wodehouse” ten times and left it at that. Picking up a Wodehouse book is practically a guarantee of laughter. But I wanted to include a little variety on this list, so I’ve contented myself by bookending it with Wodehouse titles.


    Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
    This was my first taste of Wodehouse, and I still rank it as one of the funniest—if not the funniest—books I’ve ever read.


    Once On a Time by A.A. Milne


    Milne’s writing for adults is every bit as delightful as his writing for children, and this cheerful send-up of the classic fairytale is absolutely hilarious. Also in the running for funniest book I’ve ever read.


    High Rising by Angela Thirkell


     To get an idea of why I laughed so hard at this one, read the first quote in this post. A very-British comedy of manners and errors with a liberal dose of the woes of authors.


    The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde


    “You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel?”


    Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome


    Once you have read it, you will never forget the tin of pine-apple, or Uncle Podger hanging a picture. Trust me.


    Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock


    A thoroughly affectionate and hugely entertaining satire of small-town life, set in Canada around the turn of the 20th century. Read my review here.


    Gentle Julia by Booth Tarkington


    I tend to prefer Tarkington’s “serious” novels to his humor, but this one, concerning the misadventures of a young girl playing matchmaker for her lovely and much-courted aunt, honestly made me shriek with laughter. Read my review here.


    Bab: A Sub-Deb by Mary Roberts Rinehart


    Another non-mystery Rinehart book that’s a real hoot—told in first-person by an irrepressible teenage girl in the pre-WWI era, who wishes her family would treat her as a grown-up, is enamored by Romance with a capital R, and is firmly convinced she knows how to spell. End result: getting into the wildest scrapes and driving said family to distraction.


    Kathleen by Christopher Morley


    A charming short read, in which a group of Oxford students go in search of the author of a stray letter signed “Kathleen” which captivated them—a search ending in screwball comedy. Read my review here.


    Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse


    (Also published under the title Something New.) All I can say is that the scene on the staircase left me quite incapable of speech, or anything else besides laughter, for several minutes.