Fun Halloween Ideas from the Past
Hallowe’en. The night wind whispers — Ghosts ! They are waiting for their hosts; The waning moon is weary and will not be up till late ; Already there are shadows at the gate. A word, half heard, that is whispered in your ear, And a presence that is felt when no one else is near. Have you been along the corridors alone — all alone — And listened to the wind up yonder making moan? Have you thought about it all, The footfall in the hall That comes and goes — comes and goes — With the measure of a heartbeat of a life that ebbs and flows ? The poem above was the first item in a nearly 200 page book, Hallowe’en Festivities by Stanley Schell, put out in 1903, that was devoted to giving suggestions on how to Read more…
Bloody Lessons: Victorian San Francisco Teachers–Part One
From the start, my plan for the series of mysteries set in Victorian San Francisco has been that each book should feature a different occupation held by women of that period. In Maids of Misfortune, my protagonist, Annie Fuller, goes undercover as a domestic servant, in Uneasy Spirits, she investigates a fraudulent trance medium, and in my short story, The Misses Moffet Mend a Marriage, the elderly seamstresses who live in Annie Fuller’s boarding house are on center stage. In Dandy Detects, it is another boarder, Barbara Hewett, who is the main protagonist. And it was while I was developing her background story, including her work as a teacher at the city’s Girls’ High, that I decided that my next full-length book after Uneasy Spirits would be about the teaching profession. In less than two weeks, that book, Bloody Lessons, will Read more…
Victorian San Francisco: Woodward’s Gardens
In the countdown to the publication of Bloody Lessons, I am going to explore some of the places in I have let my characters visit in my Victorian San Francisco stories. For some of those places, you can still visit and experience what they would have been like in the late 19th century, for example, the famous Cliff House Inn, while others are so long gone that it is hard to imagine how important they had been to residents of San Francisco in the past. Woodward’s Gardens is one such place. In 1879-1880, when my novels are set, Woodward’s Gardens was the preeminent place for San Franciscans to go to recreate–even more popular than Golden Gate Park, which was just still a good deal of sand dunes, newly landscaped carriage drives and a single Flower Conservatory. However, today, if you Read more…
Bloody Lessons: One Month until Launch!
Bloody Lessons, the third book in my San Francisco Mystery Series will be available in print and in all major ebook stores September 15, 2013. The book is already available for pre-order in print on Amazon.com and for the Kindle. See Excerpt. ♣♣♣♣ In the next month I will be posting frequently about the steps I have been taking to make this a successful book launch and the historical context of this book and Victorian San Francisco.–M. Louisa Locke Book Description In Bloody Lessons, it’s the winter of 1880, and the teachers of San Francisco are under attack: their salaries slashed and their competency and morals questioned in a series of poison pen letters. Annie Fuller, the reluctant clairvoyant, has been called into investigate by Nate Dawson, her lawyer beau, and the case becomes personal when they discover that Laura, Read more…
A Victorian San Francisco Christmas
While I am off visiting daughter and family, watching two little tykes experience the fun of opening up presents, I wanted to leave you with a little piece of Christmas Past. Below is the description of San Francisco in December 25, 1879, written in the San Francisco Chronicle. M. Louisa Locke A MERRY CHRISTMAS HOW THE DAY WAS CELEBRATED THROUGHOUT THE CITY The Ways in Which Three Hundred Thousand People Sought and Found Holiday Amusements Amid a chime of bells that rang cheerily all over the city, and an echo of tin horns operated by adolescent enthusiasts fearless of cold weather, Christmas Day of 1879 was ushered in. As on all holidays the city was early astir, and despite hard times and collapsed stock market, young and old, rich and poor and high and low of San Francisco apparently determined Read more…
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