Barbara Bluestone is writing the romantic suspense novel "The Minotaur in Paris."
Looks like sunny spring Sundays are not for writing. This morning, on the middle of a sentence, I had a sudden irresistible urge to research New York in the 1930s, which is where my novel begins. And what better to immerse myself in than my latest find, the New York Public Library’s dog-earred copy of […]
Awestruck at the majestic sweep of the grand Paris boulevards, we tend to forget that the city was, until fairly recently, a cramped medieval labyrinth of twisting cobbled alleys and ancient crumbling buildings. When in the 1870s Haussmann commenced his massive modernization, photographer Charles Marville was there with his big unwieldy camera to document it. […]
By mid-afternoon, after hours of crafting and deleting sentences at the computer, my brain is stale and flat as yesterday’s club soda. Even my characters, struggling through the dramas of 1936 in Paris, are begging for a break. Time for a walk in nature. My Yosemite, my Niagra Falls, my Amazon River, is Central Park. […]
Myth, mist, and magic combine in a fairy tale for grown-up girls. Oh, will no one stop Sara Sonnenschein? Clouds sweep restlessly past the moon above the dragon-tailed tower as she stands shivering on a windy Copenhagen corner, wobbling on red high-heeled boots, on her way to meet yet […]
Chapter 1 Walpurgis Spring had come at last. High overhead, seagulls screeched and dove and floated on the wind, for the wind…the wind is always blowing in Denmark. Sometimes the lusty wind would billow her long coat behind her so fiercely that she felt it could carry her upward like a kite, up above the […]
A Weaver in Denmark from Barbara Bluestone on Vimeo.
In 1970, Barbara Bluestone went to Denmark, where after a weaving apprenticeship she became a professional textile artist. This video shows the evolution of her work.
In 1970, I arrived in Denmark for a study-abroad semester. I fell in love and decided to stay. I apprenticed myself to a tapestry weaver, Jette Gemzoe, and after a year spread my wings and set up my own studio. This marked the start of an incredible creative breakthrough, a period of freedom and expansion. […]
I wanted to share with you these quotes from 2 of my favorite writers. These quotes also form the epigraph of my work-in-progress, “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” …Is it not a sweet thing to think that, if only you have patience, all that has ever been will come back to you? […]
A good host always tidies up the house before the guests arrive. But some hosts have more to shove into the closet than others. For the 1936 Olympics, Hitler got busy sweeping the more blatant horrors of his regime under the rug. He even went so far as to remove official anti-Jewish signs from Berlin […]
Spies lurked everywhere in Paris 1936,crouching behind the croissants, whispering behind their whiskies, sneaking under the snails. Nazis spies, of course, but also Italian, British, Red Russians, White Russians, and equal-opportunity spies who would work for the highest bidder, no matter what their politics. Plenty of American spies, too, of course, posing behind respectable facades […]
In the 1930s refugees poured into France, fleeing Hitler’s reign of terror in Germany . Mainly Jews, but also gays, communists, radicals, intellectuals — all those persecuted by the Nazis found a home in France. At least, that is, until the Germans occupied France in 1940 and set up their puppet Vichy regime. Yet France, this […]
In 1989, I moved to Paris. I didn’t yet know the city, and in my imagination, it was the magical, mysterious black-and-white place portrayed by such great masters of photography as Brassai, Kertesz, and Cartier-Bresson. I quickly needed a furnished apartment to rent for 6 months, but was discouraged to find only dreary flats crammed […]