“I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.”
- Laurence Sterne -I’m Elisabeth—spelled with an S, you will note—and I write historical fiction fueled by my love of the American West, Golden Age mystery fiction, and classic literature. I once described my typical style as “vintage-style mystery with witty banter and cowboys.” I’m impossible to pin down to a specific subgenre (I’ve written everything from cozy mystery to screwball comedy) or to a single decade between the 1860s and the 1940s. To see a complete list of my books, click here.
Here’s what you can expect to find on The Second Sentence:
Posts about the literature, history, film and music that inspire my stories
Occasional short fiction and flash fiction
Periodic snippets of works in progress
My annual book lists - summer reading and “top ten books of the year.”
A review of a book or film now and then
It’s a blog with a relaxed pace: look for an average of three posts a month.
Some sample posts:
Two Men Named Hal Taliaferro: how a real Montana cowboy may have inspired the screen name of a prolific onscreen badman.
The Secret of Blandings…er, Chimneys: tracing the (perhaps not coincidental!) likeness between Agatha Christie's Chimneys and P.G. Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle.
In the Footsteps of Molly Wood: a trip to find the New England locations mentioned in Owen Wister’s The Virginian.
The Interrupted Party: Lord Byron, John Ford, and a plot device that I learned to use without even knowing it.
All About Subscriptions
Here’s what free and paid subscribers, respectively, currently receive from The Second Sentence:
Free Subscribers receive
nonfiction posts/essays
a monthly Round-Up of interesting and amusing links
flash fiction posts
Paid Subscribers receive
everything included in a free subscription, plus…
occasional longer fiction posts (i.e. short stories and anything upwards)
access to the archive of paywalled fiction
quarterly Snippets posts featuring excerpts from my works-in-progress/upcoming books
As a thank-you gift, paid subscribers also get to download free ePub copies of three of my books.
If you enjoy The Second Sentence and you’d like to show appreciation without committing to a paid subscription, you could always buy me a coffee or buy a book.
About the Author
Elisabeth Grace Foley is the author of numerous works of historical fiction and historical mystery set mostly in the American West, including the Mrs. Meade Mysteries, short cozy mysteries featuring a lady detective in Edwardian-era Colorado, and the Western comedy A Sidekick’s Tale. Her most recent release, The Smoking Iron and Other Stories, is the latest of several collections of Western short stories.
She was a Peacemaker Award finalist in 2015 with her novella Left-Hand Kelly, in 2021 with her short story “Dakota Clothesline,” and won the Peacemaker for short fiction in 2025 with her short story “Valiant-For-Truth.” Her historical mystery novel Land of Hills and Valleys was voted one of Readfree.ly’s 50 Best Indie Books of 2021.
When not reading or writing, she enjoys gardening, crocheting, digging further into her family tree, cheering for underdog European football teams, and watching old movies. She lives in upstate New York.
