DM Denton

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About DM Denton
DM Denton's third novel, "Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit", about Anne Brontë, the youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily, was published November 2017 and contains her original illustrations. It is available in print and for Kindle. DM Denton's first and second novels, "A House Near Luccoli", about an unexpected intimacy with the legendary if now rather obscure 17th century Italian composer Alessandro Stradella, and its sequel, "To A Strange Somewhere Fled", set in late Restoration England, were also published by All Things That Matter Press, and are available in Paperback, for Kindle and as Audio Books. Her three Kindle short stories, "Escaping Ziegfeld", "The Library Next Door", and "The Snow White Gift", and an illustrated flower book, "A Friendship with Flowers", are also available.
DM Denton is a native of Western New York. She finds her voice in poetry and prose, in silence and retreat, in truth and imagination. Through observation and study, inspired by music, art, nature and the contradictions of the creative spirit, she loves to wander into the past to discover stories of interest and meaning for the present, writing from her love of language and the belief that what is left unsaid is the most affecting of all.
Her educational journey took her to a dream-fulfilling semester at Wroxton College, Oxfordshire, England, and she stayed in the UK for sixteen years--in a yellow-stoned village with thatched cottages, duck pond, and twelfth century church and abbey turned Jacobean manor house. She lived, for better or worse, right off the pages of Fielding, the Brontës, Austin, Hardy, DH Lawrence, and even Dickens, surrounded by the beautiful hills, woods and fields of the Oxfordshire countryside, and all kinds of colorful characters. This truly turned out to be a life-changing experience that resonates in her personal and professional endeavors to this day.
She returned to the US in 1990, to a rural area of Western New York State where she still resides in a cozy log cabin, caring for her mother and a multitude of cats.
DM Denton is currently writing a novel focusing on the Victorian poetess Christina Rossetti. Also an artist, DM Denton has done the illustrations for the covers of her own novels and others, as well as interior illustrations. Please visit her website: http://www.dmdenton-author-artist.com/ and blog: http://bardessdmdenton.wordpress.com/
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Author Updates
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Blog postMy apologies for not posting for a while. I have been working furiously to finish my novel, five plus years in the making, about the poet Christina Rossetti (youngest sister of Pre-Raphaelite founder, painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti), The Dove Upon Her Branch. Within the week the 1st draft should be done! Then another month for me to self-edit it before I send it to the publisher of my previous three novels, All Things That Matter Press, in hopes they will accept it. After that, I lo3 weeks ago Read more
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Blog postJohn Everett Millais
Ophelia (1851–52)
Model, Elizabeth Siddal On February 11, 1862, the model, muse, and wife of Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal, an artist and poet in her own right, died at the age of 32 from an overdose of laudanum the night before.
Regina Cordium
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s 1860 marriage portrait of Siddal With Valentine’s Day nearly here, I’ve decided to mark this sad anniversary with a poem3 months ago Read more -
Blog postAlready two years beyond her bicentennial, my novel portrait of Anne Brontë, which entailed years of research and writing, is the best way I have of proving my affection for her and devotion to bringing her out of the shadows …
… a portrait … that resonates in a way that suspends years and centuries and lets us feel the joys and sadness of a writer whose unflinching look at life, especially in her novels, rings with the authenticity of who, inside, she really was.
~4 months ago Read more -
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Blog postChristina Rossetti died December 29, 1894, from breast cancer, just three weeks after turning 64. My novel about her – The Dove Upon Her Branch – is nearing completion …
Remembering Christina through her words and mine.
Portrait of Christina Rossetti (1877), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Passing and Glassing
by Christina Rossetti
All things that pass
Are woman’s looking-glass;
They show her how her bloom must fade,
And she5 months ago Read more -
Blog postThe snow has come early, silently covering leaves never raked but left to nourish or suffocate the ground on which the future stands.
Deeper and deeper, it’s all hidden for now.
This season for gathering is not crowded here in the quiet company of snow.
Looking back to the place called home, candles are lit to welcome without letting in. Although the passing of possibilities might, at least, enter dreams in the night.
Photograph & Painting Copyrighted5 months ago Read more -
Blog postTo-day’s your natal day;
Sweet flowers I bring from To My Mother by Christina Rossetti
Today, December 5th, marks the 191st anniversary of the birth of Christina Rossetti, poet and subject of my upcoming novel, The Dove Upon Her Branch.
In 1853, just before Christina’s 23rd birthday, beloved Nonno, her 89 year old maternal grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, suffered a stroke at his home in London. At the time, Christina was living in Frome, Somerset with her parents, helpin6 months ago Read more -
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Blog postIn November 2020, a friend of mine, Cherie Messore, currently Sr. Manager of Public Relations at Spectrum Health and Human Services located in Western New York, read the desperation in a question I had asked on my personal Facebook page.
It inspired her to write a post for the company’s blog:
November is National Family Caregiver Month A former co-worker recently posted this on her social media:
Feeling trapped, caged. Is this a normal reaction to caregiving? (Asking f6 months ago Read more -
Blog postMarch 10, 1929 – October 14, 2021 It has been a while since I posted. I am here again after the loss of my mother last Thursday afternoon, October 14th. She was 92 and passed peacefully in the home I shared with her for the past 31 years. After being her sole caretaker for many years, the last two plus with her bedbound and blind, a slight stroke took what strength she had left. It was just me and our five beloved kitties with her, an intimate and very private experience witnessing her last7 months ago Read more
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Blog postJuly 30th marks the anniversary in 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire of the birth of Emily Brontë, one of the most uniquely fearless, impassioned, enigmatic, and elusive poets and novelists of all time.
My novel Without the Veil Between, published in November 2017, focuses on Anne Bronte, but Emily is very present in it. Long after all the Brontë sisters had died, Charlotte’s friend Ellen Nussey wrote in Reminisces of Charlotte Brontë that “[Emily] and Anne were like twins –10 months ago Read more -
Blog postElizabeth Siddall
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Today I share another excerpt from my work-in-progress novel portrait of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, The Dove Upon Her Branch to mark the birthday – July 25, 1829 – of Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddall, muse and wife of Christina’s brother and Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Elizabeth Siddall
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti We found her hidden just behind those screens, that mirror gave back all her lovel10 months ago Read more -
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Titles By DM Denton
This book gives us Anne. Not Anne, the 'less gifted' sister of Charlotte and Emily, nor the Anne who 'also wrote two novels', but Anne herself, courageous, committed, daring and fiercely individual: a writer of remarkable insight, prescience and moral courage whose work can still astonish us today.
~Deborah Bennison, Bennison Books
What Denton has achieved is a portrait placed in a time very different from the jangling present, but that resonates in a way that suspends years and centuries ....
~Thomas Davis, author of The Weirding Storm
... meticulous, poetic, luminous, and powerful ... I can't think of anyone better suited to bring us into the world of the sensitive, creative, and quietly courageous Anne.
~Mary Clark, Author of Tally, an Intuitive Life, Miami Morning, and Racing the Sun
Donatella moves from Genoa to join her parents in a small village in Oxfordshire, England.
The gift of a sonnet, 'stolen' music, inexpressible secrets, and an irrepressible
spirit have stowed away on her journey.
Haunted by whispers and visions, angels and demons, will she rise out of grief and
aimlessness? Her father's friendship with the residents of Wroxton Abbey, who are
important figures in the court of Charles II, offers new possibilities, especially as
music and its masters ~ including the 'divine' Henry Purcell ~ have not finished with her yet.
The fingering and pedaling of the Mozart piece required her absolute attention. What could be more important than effecting the appoggiaturas, the upper half of her torso leaning and lifting like a dancer, her elbows slightly bent, her wrists almost imperceptibly rolling side to side, her fingers always in touch with the keys and lightly en pointe?
Irene had been a little unnerved by the Italian’s ice-blue eyes, but how could he compete with the possibility of her following in the footsteps of Lillian Lorraine, the Dolly sisters, Marilyn Miller and Fanny Brice?
Donatella, still unmarried in her mid-thirties, is plainly irrelevant. Yet, like the city she lives in, there are hidden longings in her, propriety the rule, not cure, for what ails her. She cares more for her bedridden grandmother and cats than overbearing aunt, keeping house and tending to a small terraced garden, painting flowers and waxing poetic in her journal.
At first, she is in awe of and certain she will have little to do with Stradella. Slowly, his ego, playfulness, need of a copyist and camouflage involve her in an inspired and insidious world, exciting and heartbreaking as she is enlarged by his magnanimity and reduced by his missteps, forging a friendship that challenges how far she will go.