🇺🇸-born, 🇬🇧-based, novelist. Latest novel, "Tomorrow The Grace," out now.
Yes, yes, everyone knows France signed an alliance in 1778 with the new U.S. to aid (for a variety of reasons: from some there truly supporting the idea of "liberty" to others who merely saw a great opportunity to stick it to France's long-time adversary, Great Britain) the country in its war for independence. But much less known today...
I recall clicking between the BBC and CNN International and seeing the sickening images we now recall all too well. I also tried to call my parents in New York, but all I got repeatedly was a busy signal.
When some strongly criticize US "interventionism," such critics rarely condemn U.S. troops invading Sicily in 1943, or Normandy in 1944, or kicking in the gates to Nazi concentration camps, or even battling for South Korea from 1950-53...
Before jet planes made it possible to fly from London to New York in 8 hours, relatively few people traveled compared to today.
What I do want to do as a writer regardless is to seize and hold her reading imagination. Oh, and I write "her" there deliberately in particular because I know, based on my known readership, that some 9 out of 10 of my readers is "her," including even some 20-somethings like you.
The "Don't shop with Amazon, shop with small businesses" mantra is unsurprisingly all over the place on (amusingly usually controlled by other giant corporations, such as Facebook) social media. Amazon is now deemed its seems practically the fount of all evil. However, I am going to choose briefly to be something of a contrarian here on that subject in at least a narrow sense, and being one is not new to me...
Briefly considering the events of July 14, 1789 and those that immediately followed, only months after that day...
I refuse to assume readers cannot (or do not wish to) learn. If anyone learns anything from what they read of the writing, I feel I have accomplished something worthwhile...
The observance of US (self-declared) independence day on July 4 always feels like something of an odd day here in the United Kingdom...
A writer must NEVER publicly challenge a bad review. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER.
An Amazon search for the author quickly turned up the book. In more detail, I saw it is set starting in "1786" and features a well-to-do family in rural England. Immediately I thought I had to check this out.
Now, on to Buzzfeed's "report" detailing certain Redditers' observations on American tourists...
No posts here for a few days, I know. So what have I been up to?
Don't think we did not joke about this back then ourselves: Living as I did then in a New York City suburb, I recall my "friends" and I even then laughing about the absurd size of the characters' Manhattan apartments...
Marshall really liked Jane Austen's books...
