First off, Happy New Year! I’m excited to be here, excited to have a new website, excited about my upcoming book…I’m just excited! I’m so glad it’s 2009, too. 2008 was a wild ride, and I need to rest for a while, I think.

I hope to jam pack this blog with all sorts of…um…interesting things. You see, in the course of my research for A Hint of Wicked, I visited Google Books quite a lot. Google Books is this massive archive of all kinds of books, from way back when to the here and now. I usually looked for books in the 1800-1825 range to search for information for A Hint of Wicked. The kinds of things I looked up were along the lines of “bigamy divorce annulment 1800-1825″ or “arm arteries stopping bleeding” or “opium overdose cure” (thus in A Hint of Wicked, you’ll find the solution of drenching an opium addict in ice water!).

As I slogged through countless works written in that time period, I came across some extraordinary opinions, writings, and facts. Things that were a very strong reminder that times have changed and that people aren’t the same now as they were in the early 19th century. Things that if I suggested I write about to my editor, she’d probably dismiss me as the biggest lunatic of a writer she’d ever worked with.

I’d like to share some of those things here, because I think they are not only interesting, but funny, enlightening, and sometimes frightening. I hope you agree, and I hope you’ll come back to visit me again!