Nancy Johnson is a retired school teacher and an active author. She envisioned a trilogy of books for children about the Civil War from different points of view: a Yankee drummer boy, an African-American soldier from Boston, and a VMI cadet and young people from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  As she explains on her website: “As a teacher I realized there was a need for historical fiction about the Civil War. I believe many of the issues which divided our country during the Civil War still touch us today.”

 To mark the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, My Brothers’ Keeper: A Civil War Story for middle grade readers, will be free on Amazon on July 2, 3, and 4.

When I was a little girl, my mother read letters to me which had been written by my great, great uncles, two brothers from Rochester, New York.  The brothers left home to fight in the Civil War when they were very young.

Mother kept their letters and pictures of the brothers and their little sister, Carrie, in a black box which was decorated with gold hearts and flowers.  I was heartbroken when I learned that the youngest brother, George Peacock, had been killed in an ambush in Virginia while he was still a teenager.

In my young mind, I made up stories about the brothers, based partly on their letters and partly on my imagination. I think I knew then that someday I would write a story about them.

I still have the letters. They are yellow now, the edges bent down and crinkled, and the ink has faded. The letters, and the stories my mother wove as she was reading them, were the inspiration for my book My Brother’s Keeper: A Civil War Story.  I used parts from the letters in the story. For example, in August 1861, my great, great uncle, Charlie Peacock, wrote:

As I passed through one of the back streets of Alexandria I saw a building 3 stories high built of brick with the sign Price Birch & Co Dealer in Slaves. It struck me as something different from anything I had ever seen before.

When you read My Brothers’ Keeper, you will find Price Birch & Co mentioned in Chapter 7, The Road to War. On my website, you can view  a photograph of Price Birch & Co.

In addition to the letters and stories from my family, I did many months of research in books and by traveling to the places I was writing about. My husband and I climbed the rocky hill of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. We stood in the peaceful Virginia woods where my great, great uncle had been killed in an ambush in 1863. We found that three-story brick building in Alexandria with the lettering, Price Birch & Co Dealer in Slaves, still visible. We followed the path of Lee’s Retreat which led General Lee to Appomattox.

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Today S. Woffington shares her journey from reluctant history student to avid author of historical fiction. Her new novel, Unveiling, is available as an ebook and in print on Amazon. Unveiling is the story of Sara—a spirited, young Saudi woman—who is passionate about preserving and expressing her ancient heritage through her art. But this seemingly simple goal puts her at odds with her prominent family and the traditions of her heritage, which demand she veil her artist’s eyes. Forced to choose between her two greatest passions, Sara escapes to America, only to find that unveiling entails far more than the removal of a black piece of cloth. This act of defiance thrusts Sara into a perilous triangle involving family, government, and a relentless suitor. Only by finding the courage to unveil her own heart can she paint her destiny. To learn more about this new novel, view the book trailer.

Writing Historical Fiction

Round about middle school, I realized that I hated history class.  That distaste lasted all through high school.  English included fun fictional stories, and I loved to write; science fascinated me; I even liked math.  But history required memorizing names and dates and learning about people long dead.  What was the point?

What changed that was a novel.  For my nineteenth birthday, a friend gave me Susan Howatch’s Cashelmara, a novel set in 19^th century England and New York, shortly after the Irish famine.  I nodded and said, “Thank you,” to my friend with a thought not to read it.  But I opened the book, and I finished it quickly.  Through a fictional setting and characters, history suddenly, emotionally, and forevermore came to life for me.  I couldn’t wait to pick up the next novel, and I turned to the classics, Madame Bovary and stories from 1001 Arabian Nights, the latter of which was fortuitous, since I moved to Saudi Arabia when I was twenty-two.

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Elisabeth Storrs is the author of The Wedding Shroud, the first book in a trilogy set in early Roman times. Elisabeth has long held a passion for the history, myths and legends of the ancient world. She graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Arts Law having studied Classics along the way. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two sons and over the years has worked as a solicitor, corporate lawyer, governance consultant and is now a corporate writer.

So you’ve been writing for years—slaving over one novel until a transfusion is needed to replenish the blood you’ve sweated.  Confused over varying opinions, you’ve murdered enough of your darlings that you’d be gaoled for life if your words were children. And after constant editing you find yourself murmuring each noun, verb, phrase and sentence of your manuscript by heart.

Rejection has strengthened your character (you hope). Perseverance has become your mantra. Above all, the need to escape into a world of imagination has become as vital to you as eating, sleeping and working at your ‘day job’. And then, if you are lucky, the impossible happens. The stars align and suddenly your novel is accepted, not only by an agent but by a publisher as well. You start upon a giddy ride, not quite believing that you are now moving through a process that you’ve only visualised: structural reports, copyediting and proofreading.  Suddenly your words are typeset, not just typed upon a screen. The heft of the paperback in your hand is a marvel. Seeing your name upon a cover is like a dream.

Expectations are high. Your publisher’s reps work hard to sell your title to bookshops, and a lot of money is expended to market it in magazines and newsprint. The launch is celebrated with laughter and bubbly. And then the publicity merry-go-round begins. . .

After ten years of researching and writing my novel, The Wedding Shroud: A Tale of Ancient Rome,  I was fortunate enough to have it traditionally published. The experience was wonderful and I was delighted to have commissioning and copy editors who helped me polish it to publishable standard. What I didn’t realise, though, were two basic facts: releasing a book is a gamble, and success needs to be immediate.

Publishing houses place a large bet when financing a book.  In the past, they were prepared to back debut authors in the belief that, over time, such writers could build up a following. Alas, no longer.  If a writer is unable to sell enough books in the first few months of publication, their novel is soon “spine” outwards, then no longer stocked at all, as the relentless release of new titles pressure the booksellers to make room on the shelves. Soon the only avenues left to sell a novel are online or as an ebook. Yet publishers tend to price digital books far too high due to a business model with a supply chain built on bricks and mortar. In effect, the author’s cheaper e-version is in competition with their higher priced paperback. Guess which one a publisher would prefer to promote?

I’m an Australian author. The paperback version of The Wedding Shroud was only published in Australia and New Zealand. This proved a problem because I soon discovered that my main readership is located in the USA and the UK. For an overseas reader to buy my novel involves prohibitive delivery costs. As a result, being able to publish an ebook is crucial in order to reach a world-wide audience.

Sales of The Wedding Shroud were respectable but far from meteoric.  After six months I found myself in the predicament of many other midlist authors—marooned! I was expected to generate my own publicity and market my book via a constant presence in social media. And yet I had no control over its high price as both an ebook and a paperback in online bookstores.

So what was I to do? (more…)