Your moment of Zen.

image via Beautiful Pictures on Twitter

A scene in You May Kiss the Bride that was very fun to write has my heroine, Livia, going to the Upper Assembly Rooms in Bath, where she meets a mysterious — but very affable — stranger. (More about that another time.) I wanted to get a strong sense of what the setting would be like and was glad to find a wealth of information about it. I particularly liked a post on the Jane Austen’s World blog, which included the photograph below. It really sparked my imagination; I loved imagining my characters here.

via Jane Austen’s World

You can read the post here.

For those of us short on time.

via John Atkinson, Wrong Hands

This photo seems implausible. How could you get five cats to pose this way? (Which is why I included the tag “wow.”) But isn’t it wonderful?

via the Cult Cat on Twitter

This is a kind of manifesto, isn’t it — for writers and readers of romance?

Theresa Romain, a fellow author of historical romance, made a tree out of books! I’m picturing it with a few strands of colored lights, a little tinsel draped here and there . . . and some more books (wrapped, of course) around the base. Because books make great gifts, don’t they? ;)

More about Theresa here.

This is an excellent word for a romance writer to deploy. One of my characters, for example, is feeling this right now. But not to worry — all will end well. :)

Yesterday we drove through a hailstorm, which gave way to sleet and then lightly falling snow, to a planetarium to watch “Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity,” a mind-bending program narrated by Liam Neeson.

One of the creators, Andrew J. S. Hamilton, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado, has said about the program: “What if you could take people through a wormhole the way Einstein’s equations said it would be? And what if you could bring art and science together in a way that compromised neither?”

It was indeed an awe-inspiring — and giddy! — thrill ride. Yet we were glad when the lights went up and there we were, still in our seats, still in Spokane, still safe and sound on beautiful planet Earth.

Image via Slate.com

More about “Black Holes” here.

Words to live by — from one of my heroes, Abraham Lincoln.

Here’s something to get us Jane Austen fans in the holiday spirit . . . the Twelve Days of Pride and Prejudice! Isn’t this a hoot? The Jane Austen Centre posted it on Twitter, and I had to share!