Join us for this tour from June 21 to July 2, 2021!

BUY THE BOOK
Amazon ~ Audible
Apple ~ Indiebound
Add to Goodreads
Add to BookBub 

Guest Post
The hardest (or best) part of researching historical fiction.
The part I enjoy the most about doing the research is discovering fascinating, obscure events where you get tiny hints and whiffs of something interesting, and you have to go searching for clues like Nicholas Cage in National Treasure. My favorite example is one I am currently working on for book 6 of my Road to the Breaking series.

I needed some kind of battle for my main characters to be involved in at a particular time in a specific area of western Virginia. And all I could find was a one-sentence reference to a “non-battle”, that read something like, “at the end of May, 1862, Stonewall Jackson came to within several hundred yards of Union lines at Harpers Ferry, and then called off the attack.” 

I thought, okay … maybe I can make something out of that … maybe my guys can help organize the defense enough to dissuade Jackson or something … But to be honest I wasn’t very excited about it. And then, a little while later while researching something else, I saw a reference that said, “Brigadier General Rufus Saxton was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the defense of Harpers Ferry, late May 1862.”

Wait! What?! They don’t give out the CMOH for a “non-battle!” I immediately knew there had to be more to this story, so I started digging. And the more I dug the more I discovered this really was a BIG DEAL at the time, so much so that the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was personally sending telegrams to General Saxton at Harpers Ferry. 

It turns out Stonewall Jackson had unexpectedly routed a larger Union force leaving only a small 500-man garrison at Harpers Ferry between his 20,000-man army, and the capital of the United States! What happens next is truly the stuff of Hollywood. Suffice to say, if Jackson had not decided to call off the attack when he did (after taking casualties), this would likely have been one of the most famous and important battles of the war, rather than an obscure event almost lost to history. Be sure to read Road to the Breaking Book 6 (Invasion) when it comes out fall of 2021, to find out what happened!    

Enter the Giveaway:

 REDLINED (A Novel of Boston) Book Tour Giveaway