The second most exciting thing in life for me has always been learning something new. The first? Getting to share what I’ve learned with others. My life has given me so many opportunities to do both—as a professor (retired), as a historical novelist, and as a cruise lecturer.
My goal as a historical novelist is to provide you, the reader, with high-quality fiction about women and the forgotten and undervalued roles they played in their societies. Whether it’s the real-life physicist Emilie du Chatelet, the literary heroine Penelope, or women who have sprung entirely from my imagination, I offer you stories true to the facts of a time and place, to bring history alive for you and make you feel as much a part of other cultures as you do your own.
As a world-wide lecturer for several cruise lines, I use my career as a college professor of humanities to find the stories that make travel more exciting and memorable.
If you have either met me recently or been in my life since I was a teenager (or younger), you may know me by my birth name, Laurel Weeks. I have been using this name in my private life for several years.
Please check back from time to time for updates on my new projects and schedule, and drop me a line at lacauthor@gmail.com to let me know you’re out there reading and traveling!
From my diary
- Perpetual VacationA few days ago I left the place I was staying and settled in for one week on Vancouver island’s west coast, about ninety minutes north of Victoria, so I could explore this area without the need to make the trip back and forth from the city. As I settled in on yet another sofa in yet another living room, my mind flashed on the years before I retired, when such an experience would mean I was at the start of a vacation. Then, just as suddenly I realized, “I am on a perpetual vacation!” Indeed I am. I go from one…
- A Month of SunrisesMy blog has been produced in spurts over the years— long silences followed by a flurry of posts. For the last month I have been in a silent stretch, not because nothing is happening, but because so much is. I am an extremely private person, and though I share my thoughts freely in this blog, there’s a lot I keep secret about what is going on in my life. Usually this is because I am just not ready to talk about something, or because it involves others who might prefer not to be discussed. Whatever the reason—and both of the…
- SnowfeathersEven the snow seems different here. Today, as I walked back from coffee with a friend, the flakes clumped and drifted down like small feathers. I am hardly the first to make this comparison, as i remember Robert Frost noticing the “easy wind and downy flake” as he stopped by woods on that famous snowy evening. Now, helped along by my astigmatism, they look like little whirligigs or dandelion fluff drifting down on a windless afternoon. It’s the kind of snow that comes when it’s not really all that cold outside, barely above freezing, but it gives the snow a…