Author name: Carol Ervin

I have been lucky to have three highly engaging and interesting careers--first as a teacher, then the owner of a small business, and finally as a writer. I have been blessed by great friends, family, teachers, colleagues, and students, and I have lived in interesting places. My life has also been enriched by books, music, and art. I believe in the greatness and fallibility of the human race and our need to responsibility take care of our planet.

Cleaning a Slop Jar in 1883

1 Comment / Research /

One day, thinking a character in my books might have to clean a slop jar (chamber pot), I googled “clean a slop jar” and found a wonderful publication scanned by Google Books.  The name of the publication is Wide Awake by Charles Trowbridge Pratt and the (or “of the”) Chautauqua Young Folks’ Reading Union, published […]

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A Character’s Name

2 Comments / Writing /

I hung a heavy name on my main character in Wacky Road–  Sara-Lapis Hughes.  Early readers of the story, which was submitted a chapter a week on Critiquecircle.com, forgot her last name (Hughes) and thought it was “Lapis.”  Later, one critiquer suggested I hyphenate her name, which I did.  Then somebody else thought it was a

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Desperately Seeking a Good Book

2 Comments / Reading /

Publishers!  Give me something good to read, please!  Take me where I’ve never been before–let me see a new way, think a different thought, find something completely unexpected, even disturbing, so I can come back to my life and be glad I was there and maybe glad I didn’t have to stay.  Make it fiction, because

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