Posts Tagged "San Francisco"

• How to Live Like a Romance Heroine: Drink Tea

  On this week’s installment of “How to Live Like a Romance Heroine,” we have a topic very near and dear to my heart – tea!

  

  A proper English tea in the tearoom at Brighton Pavilion - May 2008

  I love many types of tea, but my go-to drink while writing is strong, hot black tea with milk and sugar. My obsession started young, when I reread The Secret Garden every week for months. In my Iowa youth, the only tea I had was Lipton in a bag, and I compensated by having a sugar:liquid ratio that should have given me far more cavities than I actually suffered. Now, though, I am much more refined (read ‘snobbish’) in my tastes – only loose-leaf will do, and only in a proper mug. Tea is delicate enough that I swear I can taste the paper if it is served in a to-go cup. But where can you find these teas, and how can you make them yourself?

  Pray, tell me more! →

  
  Posted on 12 January 2011 * Add a Comment
  Tags: Delicious * Edibles * My Favorite Things * San Francisco *

• Happy Fourth of July!

  Blog

  It is a gorgeous day in San Francisco, and while it’s never clear whether the weather will hold, I’ve got my fingers crossed that there will be no fog to mar the fireworks tonight. I’m dragging myself down to the wharf in a few hours to go out on a boat with my visiting uncle, aunt, and cousin; barring any major weather-related problems, we should have a great view of the fireworks over the San Francisco Bay.

  I’m a confirmed Anglophile whose romance novels celebrate all things British, but on the Fourth I always take a moment to celebrate that we pulled one over on our mother country and won our independence. We may not have the fabulous traditions, the ancient castles, or the delicious accents, but I like to think that our dreams and our remarkably fluid society make up for our relative youth and brassiness. There are few countries in the world where a girl (shudder) from a rural farming community (double shudder) could escape a life of drudgery to attend an elite university and make a good living for herself. My path was eased by fantastic parents, but there were no real obstacles other than the limits of my own ambition, and for that I’m very grateful.

  So, despite these “troubled economic times” and the various stresses and problems of the past few years, I still consider myself remarkably fortunate to have been born in America. I consider myself even more remarkably fortunate that my family and friends are so supportive of my dream of becoming a romance novelist, despite the challenges that I face along the way. And there’s no better time to celebrate all of this than Independence Day.

  Happy Fourth of July, everyone! What are you doing to celebrate?

  
  Posted on 4 July 2009 * Add a Comment
  Tags: Inspirations * San Francisco * Writing Life *