Plus Ça Change – July 4, 2026 …a flood rises to drown her soul, searching for its way to the sea. There is a pulse to writing. It has a beating heart. A story is a living thing. So it wakes up, gets shit done, goes to sleep for a… Continue reading
Plus Ça Change – June 21, 2026 I’m plotting out the series of chapters about the cholera epidemic in New Orleans in 1832. Lots of ideas… focusing on Marie as a healer. She has discovered empirically a way to treat this new disease. Marie has an uncle, Josias Kerr, an… Continue reading
Plus Ça Change – June 19, 2026 As noted yesterday in Antebellum Catholic Racism, I’ve returned to detailed plotting. This is my happy place. However, I have a tendency to fall deep into a rabbit hole of research and then bludgeon the reader with the results. Over time, I’ve learned… Continue reading
Plus Ça Change – June 18, 2026 I’ve returned to serious plotting, abandoning pantsing for the moment at least. The intricacies of family finances, property transfers, and inheritance (Gran Catherine dies) requires some serious thought on how to spin a fictional narrative that plausibly allows for all the details. Most… Continue reading
Plus Ça Change – June 7, 2026 If you read no further, this tells you what to expect. These are the racist waters in which our characters swim. Slaves are livestock. Art. 492 The children of slaves and the young of animals belong to the proprietor of the mother of … Continue reading
Plus Ça Change – May 31, 2026 Abraham Lincoln was flatboat crew in New Orleans twice as a young man, in 1828 and 1831. He really was a studious, serious young man. The author’s conceit is, he meets Marie in 1828. He’s puzzled by the strangeness that is New Orleans,… Continue reading
Plus Ça Change – May 28, 2026 It’s a tiny step, but it’s a step. The news distracts me from my writing. Not the horrors happening in the United States, that distraction is constant. This is a “smaller” thing, from history. In Laveaux: Dancer there is a scene where a… Continue reading
Plus Ça Change – May 27, 2026 In 1830 the Louisiana legislature passed a series of racist restrictions on both slaves and free people of color. Among these, a requirement that free people of color who had arrived after statehood (1812) and before Jan 1, 1825, must register their presence… Continue reading
Plus ça Change – May 21, 2026 An interesting thing happened on the way to the chapter ending. I struggled with this chapter. It took days, and every rewrite seemed to go in a different direction. There is a good word for this, thrashing. The third part was the most… Continue reading
Plus ça Change – May 17, 2026 This is what writing is like; for me anyway. Odds are really good “birl” is a new word for you. English is a fantastic language. (I know two, so I do have some basis for comparison. I love the other one, too.) Marie… Continue reading
