Did they have a telephone? Was there running water? What kind of buggy did they use? What did they wear? The questions I face every time I sit down to write are never ending. Finding the answers is one of the joys of writing historical fiction.

What women wore at the turn of the 20th Century is at the top of my list since one of my characters is a seamstress. I got help on this topic from a trip to the Living History Farms 1900 Farm and to the Iowa State Historical Society.  Another resource came to me recently in the form of a new social media friend.

I’m delighted to be guest blogging today at J.P. Lane’s blog All Dressed Up. I share some of my thoughts about ‘stepping back in time’ through my writing. I hope you’ll come on over and take a look.

While you’re there, look at some of her other posts. Joan delves into the intricacies of fashion going back hundreds of years. Her discoveries are fascinating. No doubt I’ll be asking her to take a look at what I write about fashion in the WWI era.

Author J.P. Lane is a former fashion designer who also has 20 years of writing under her belt. She was an Addy award-winning copywriter for the Miami Herald’s marketing division and has been published in other leading Florida publications. In her thriller, The Tangled Web, (due to be republished in May) she takes you behind the postcard facade of the Caribbean to reveal a horrifyingly corrupt underworld visitors never see.

If you’d like to know more about Joan:
Follow her on twitter http://twitter.com/jpLANEauthor
Follow her blog http://jplanewrites.blogspot.com