Guest Blog with Pamela Griffin

I enjoy and write contemporaries and historicals both, but historicals are more my passion. There’s a lot more research involved in writing a book set in another time period, but I think such education can be fun and it keeps one’s mind sharp and young to learn new tidbits every day. Also, researching an earlier time period can make one feel both thankful for the amenities we have in our world today and nostalgic for “those better days”— even if we never lived them. But really, the grass is always greener, as they say (I wonder who “they” are? “They” sure say a lot) - and life may look more appealing when it seemed less complicated due to a lack of technology and when all or most of the gentlemen were indeed gentlemen. Especially when everything is going wrong, the computer is freezing, the kids are fighting, and the telemarketers just won’t give up and go away!

But in reality day-to-day living in the past was a lot harder then many people realize. It wasn’t all charm and elegance and etiquette. There was a very rough side too, one you don’t often find in genteel novels. Remembering that makes me thankful for what I do have when I start wondering “What if I had been born in an earlier time…” For you other writers out there—just think: Jane Austen and Emily Bronte had to write it all down with a pen, an inkwell, and on paper—and by candlelight at night! Aghh!

Ah, yes, I especially thank God for my computer and for electric lighting! Well, all electricity really. :) Sometimes when we mull over a past we can’t live it helps to be thankful for the present that God made us a part of.



Let’s just say that you quite suddenly found yourself living in an earlier time period. (Okay, so it can’t really happen, but pretend.) What is the one thing you don’t think you could live without? And if you could meet one of the famous Bronte sisters or Jane Austen, what one thing would you tell them they are missing out on that is only found in our world today?