Bella Fromm’s Berlin Social Diary

Over the last four years, I’ve read a lot of memoirs and diaries written by people who lived in Berlin in the period between the two world wars. They are a wonderful source to use to enrich a story. They not only allow you to look at incidents from different perspectives but, depending on the…

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In which I abandon my main story and fall down a rabbit hole

I have spent far too much time over the last week working on a blog post about the Siberian Intervention: a minor American military expedition at the end of the First World War that has been crossing my path for more than a year. It just isn’t working. Even though I regularly reduce complicated stories…

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Back to the Basics

Every time I start writing a new book, I intend to read or re-read books about the craft of writing as I work. (The practice evaporates about two weeks into each project.) For the current book, I actually pulled all the books I wanted to read off the shelf and stacked them on the floor…

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