Calling all Avon FanLit Authors

I'm adding links to the blogs/websites of fellow AFL authors to my site and wanted to send out a general invitation to anyone who would like to be listed.

Simply reply to this post and I will slot you right in!

On another note, some time this next week I'll be posting on a variety of marketing tools that might be of use to aspiring authors. Links to them are to be found in the sidebar. Check back later for further information!

Bluestocking Alert

My freshman year at university I took a seminar taught by a professor from Nuffield College, Oxford.

His preference, much to his American students' consternation, was to set essays (papers) for us which we submitted on a weekly basis. Then, to continue our immersion in the Oxbridge style of teaching, we would meet with him one-on-one for a tutorial in his office during which we would discuss the relative merits and demerits of our essays.

To my great shock and surprise (as I am a confirmed pantster -- I never began a paper more than four hours before it was due), I was his star pupil; he gave only one 'A' the entire term and it was, astonishingly, to me.

During the tutorial which followed his awarding this coveted 'A', he dubbed me 'something of a bluestocking'. Bluestocking? This was not a term with which I was familiar, and it took some sleuthing to discover its meaning.

Of course, in subsequent years I have come to appreciate his observation for I am, indeed, a bluestocking. A proud one, even. When I eventually went to Cambridge to pursue my graduate work, I found myself living and working amongst a slew of fellow bluestockings, (some more socially adept than others as you might imagine).

I thought again about how apt this term was yesterday as I perused the British history section of my local Half Price Books. There I found two books recommended by fellow writers on the Avon FanLit boards: What Jane Austen Ate and What Charles Dickens Knew and Dr. Johnson's London. I also found Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History and Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge, both of which will doubtless come in useful if I ever get back to my NaNoWriMo piece.

Ultimately, however, I will read these books for the pleasure of learning. They will enrich my life and, hopefully, if and when I get my act together, my stories.