Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
The Classical Girl, as you longtime readers might know, was a concept I’d created on the eve of 2013. A New Year’s resolution of sorts. My ballet novels were long completed, out being shopped, and I missed researching and living inside the dance world terribly. I knew, as a writer, that it was good to enforce … Read more
Acoustic neuromas seem to want to feature into my extended family. If you’re one of my regular readers, you’ve likely heard the story of my sister and her acoustic neuroma, but a different sister found herself with an extra chapter to the story. Two years ago, she and her husband had an appointment with an ENT specialist following up on his own symptoms … Read more
In putting the final touches on my novel, OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT, back in 2016, I decided to include a glossary of ballet terms in the back of the book. Which made me pause and consider just how one constructed one’s own glossary of ballet terms. Do you borrow from a dictionary, or a Wiki page, or a … Read more
Announcing the imminent arrival of OTHER STAGES, Book 4 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles! Click HERE to preorder! New to the series? Check out Off Balance, Outside the Limelight, Ballet Orphans by clicking on their titles! For a long time, “ballet fiction” meant the books that catered to young girls, slim tomes with pink, appealing covers. … Read more
It’s complex, gripping, devilishly complicated, and sounds like no other concerto in the violin repertoire. Listening to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ violin concerto, you hear dark, wintry night; pure, crystalline melody above a cushion of pianissimo strings (starlight has a sound!); brooding motifs; a violin that laments but never stops singing. In the second movement, … Read more