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I have a guest post up at Liz McMullen's blog, talking about my story "Where My Heart Goes" in the lesbian historic romance anthology Through the Hourglass. Visit that site and comment for a chance to win an e-book of the anthology.

My post incorporates a poem I wrote many years ago about the experience of doing historic re-enactment (another way of creating historic fiction) involving people whose lives were rarely recorded in formal histories. You'll have to go over there to get the full context, but here's the poem:

Punto in Aria

The history book lies open, webs of lives
Lie stretched before the seamster’s waiting hand,
She snips a space to work in, strand by strand.
Behind her needle, soon the pattern thrives.

And if her work is featly done, or not,
Or if her lace is true to ages past,
The strands of time weave through it; hold it fast
As any fly caught by a spider’s plot.

But you and I couch threads to barren ground,
Straining to see the pattern left behind
By those who may–or not–have come before.

Like those who hear strains of unearthly sound,
And spend their lives in hope that they will find
The point in empty air from which they pour.