Category: History
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The F Words: The Freedom of Silence
For many writers, possibly most, the second chapter of a book is a big problem. One of the main reasons for this problem is that writers spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting their first chapters, this in order to grab an editor’s attention and make a sale. After all that energy and rewriting, one…
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My Writing Life: 10
The 2010s were a new and very different time for me as a writer, in three important ways. First, I dipped my toes into the world of self-publishing . . . and then I jumped into the enterprise head-first. Because I’ve blogged about most of my self-published books before, I won’t dwell on them. But…
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My Writing Life: 7
When I was a student at Kent State University I carried a double major: English and History. Anybody perusing my life in writing would think that I have employed only my knowledge of English and have disregarded my knowledge of History. But when it came to researching the hidden history of women in baseball and…
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The F Words: The Power Of F
On November 5, 2022, I will be one of several presenters at the Plainfield (Illinois) Public Library’s day-long event for writers, running from 10:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. You can read about the individual events, and register for them, by clicking here. As you can see, my presentation is titled The Power of F Words.…
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Women at Play: A Square Book
My first novel, She’s on First, was a baseball novel, published in 1987. After I spent 1987 promoting She’s on First, I decided I would write a true account of women in baseball. I started researching this subject in January of 1988 and figured I would finish by December. Wrong! It took me four years,…
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Mountain Passes: Glorieta Pass
Somewhere back in time, probably when I was in college, I remember learning about La Glorieta, the mountain pass in which one of the few western battles of the US Civil War was fought. I used to think that the name Glorieta meant something like glory, and that’s one of the reasons I always remembered…
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Mountain Passes: Chilkoot Pass
A long line struggles up a jagged ice-covered pass — men, women, horses, oxen, dogs, carts, and sleds. The year is 1898 and the people are called stampeders because that’s what they’re doing — stampeding into Canada’s Yukon Territory to join the Klondike Gold Rush. (The Klondike, spread out alongside the Klondike River, is a…
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Mountain Passes: Mosquito Pass
In 1860, just a few years after gold was discovered in California, a miner named Abe Lee sank his pick deep into a pile of rock, looked at what he’d unearthed, and cried out: “I’ve got all of California right here in my pan!” Lee’s discovery started a gold rush to what became the town…
Barbara Gregorich 