Blog

Every now and then, my research projects cross paths with each other. It’s kinda exciting when that happens. Currently, I am working on a piece for a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Mason City (the Stockman House). I lead tours at this charming house every other week, and have been doing research to fill in…

In mid-May, I had the opportunity to attend the ribbon-cutting and dedication of the new archives building of the Chicago & North Western Historical Society in Union, Illinois. What a wonderful day it was! This project has been in the works for some time, and to have it officially open for research was an exciting…

I’ve always enjoyed exploring the older sections of cemeteries, admiring the artistry and symbolism of old tombstones (the mossier the better) and calculating life spans. I’ve noticed in the gold towns of the Rockies, if you made it to age 35 you were likely to make it to your 80s. Making it to 35 was…

A week ago today, my new book hit the distribution warehouse in Minneapolis. Four+ years of research, writing, and the editing-and-publication work finally manifested in the final product. YAY!!! Except…. We’d planned our vacation around the original estimated date-of-arrival, so that I could take a copy to my friend who lives in Oklahoma. As schedules…

There are many steps between initial idea and final publication of a book. Most steps can be described in a few short words, but take from several hours to uncountable spans of time to complete. One of those steps is converting the designed book into an e-Book format (a professional via my publisher does that),…

A week and a half ago, I participated in a regional author fair at the Nobles County Library in Worthington Minnesota. My table was beside CK Van Dam, who writes historical fiction focused on women homesteaders. She was spurred to write her books after seeing an exhibit, learning about women homesteaders, and learning a statistic….

PastWe had such a lovely community of around 800 people. Many thousands of posts over four years. Great conversations. It was a valuable and interesting resource. Then Facebook ruined it all. As you know, Facebook has a rampant problem with bots and fake accounts. So, they keep adjusting their algorithms to “automatically” catch bad accounts,…

People often ask “how long did it take you to write this book?” The answer is never simple. The process of creating a book takes a long time. The research. The organizing. More research. The writing. The developmental editing. More research. Re-working the manuscript. Early readers and re-working things based on their feedback. The deep…

A few days ago, I went to the mailbox and pulled out the latest edition of South Dakota History, the quarterly journal of the South Dakota Historical Society. I’ve subscribed since the early 1980s, but the arrival of this issue was particularly exciting. The overall theme of Volume 53 Number 4 (Winter 2023) rotates around…

I’d never really given much thought to indexes until a friend (who ran a well-respected publishing organization) casually mentioned that she’d “never cared for” the index in their best-selling book. “Hmmm” I thought. I’d never considered that one could like or not like an index. They just … were. But no! It turns out there…