There’s a lot to see and read in this website section.
The TOC below is a handy way to find things you might not easily find otherwise. Enjoy!
A family trip and a tattered cardboard box
Trip to Gettysburg I was sixteen years old in 1970 when our family visited Gettysburg National Military Park in southeastern Pennsylvania. During the four-hour drive, my mother mentioned a relative fought and died at Gettysburg. …
So Many Questions
Hannibal Howell and his two younger brothers, Byron and Tappan, responded to President Lincoln’s plea in 1861 for volunteers to bolster the Union Army in the early days of the…
Page One
A story has to start somewhere. I wrote this scene for my blog before I began working on the manuscript. It, in effect, became the starting point for the novel.…
Who is Hattie?
Hattie’s War is a work of historical fiction loosely based on threads of known information. Once I decided the story should be told by Hattie I needed to figure out…
Hannibal Howell
Long before beginning work on Hattie’s War, I spent considerable time digging for information about Hannibal Howell, my great-great-great grandfather. There are tidbits of information about him, but not much. If Hannibal…
Bryon Howell
After Hattie, Bryon Howell is the second most important character in the story. To review… Byron is Hattie’s uncle, her father Hannibal’s brother. Byron enlisted in the Union Army in…
Who, When, Where
It’s said that no other topic has more written about it than the American Civil War. Every aspect of the war has been documented, dissected, debated, and written about…
Photos and Drawings… the gory details
The Civil War was the first war to be photo-documented, leaving us with a vast collection of graphic imagery of the horrors of warfare. The best-known photographer of the war…
Never Stop Digging!
One thing I’ve learned in writing Hattie’s War is never stop digging. Time and again, often when I least expected it, a new tidbit of information, a new resource, or…
Traditional publishing
Get ready because the real work is about to begin. These days getting published by a major publisher requires a literary agent. Few if any publishers accept submissions directly from…
The New York 76th Volunteer Regiment
The New York 76th Volunteer Regiment Hannibal’s regiment, the NY 76th, is well-documented. There is a website devoted to the NY 76th and a history of the regiment written shortly after…
Civil War Books for Young Readers
The American Civil War is the most studied and written about event in human history. It’s estimated that over 60,000 books have been written about the war. Dozens of books…
Anatomy Of The Cover
Cover is everything these days in book publishing. Think about it, when you’re browsing the bookshelves at the library, local bookstore, or on Amazon, it’s a book’s cover that draws…
How To Use This Website
Historical fiction for young readers (and old too!) Hattie’s War is a historical fiction novel. That means the book is a fictional story based on real historical events, in this…
Surprising things you can learn from a map
I recently decided to look online for old maps of the Finger Lakes region of New York, the area where Hattie’s War is set. To my surprise, I stumbled on…
The Elliot Burial Map
In Chapter #5, Crosses Marked The Graves; Uncle Byron sends Hattie a map of The Battle of Gettysburg. The map is attributed to SG Elliot, although there is some question…
True stuff from the book
My original concept for the book was to intersperse the story with non-fiction informational sections explaining some matter mentioned in the story. I purposefully inserted social and cultural practices into…
Who’s in your family tree?
As I mentioned elsewhere, Hattie’s War began with an exploration of my family genealogy. Genealogy is the study of one’s family history. The goal is to be able to construct…
New York 76th At Gettysburg
A number of New York State regiments fought during the war. Here is a list of them. For our purposes, we are focusing on the NY 76th Regiment. Below find…
The Census
The US Census has been conducted every ten years since 1790. Census data is subject to the “72-year rule.” Detailed census data can not be released until 72 years have…
A few suggestions for aspiring writers of all ages
Read – From Stephen King: “You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t…
Mental Health – Depression in the story
A major plot point is Hattie’s battle with melancholy. Nowadays, we call it depression. Hattie faces a number of challenges in the story, but this may be the most difficult…
Establishing time and place
Since the story is set in the late 1870s, I had to make a concerted effort to establish in the reader’s mind, particularly young readers, that Hattie’s world was very…
Draft #3 – The Hero’s Journey
Hattie’s War follows the Hero’s Journey narrative framework first described by mythologist Joesph Campbell. Never heard of it? Well, you sure you know it. It’s the story framework for…
Use all the senses
My copy editor, Becky, had an eye-opening suggestion. Use ALL the senses in describing a scene. What? Duh! I’d never thought much about that. From her notes: Smell Sound Taste…
Draft #1 – Show, don’t tell.
April 11, 2020 – 3:10 p.m. I began the Hattie’s War manuscript by writing a series of letters between Hattie and her uncle Bryon. That is how I got started.…
Becoming a writer
Hattie’s War is my first novel. I’m almost 70 years old. I have always wanted to be a writer but have never found a path to pursue that dream. Growing…
Research – Books
Books A treasure trove of written materials exists on the Civil War era ranging from memoirs to historical fiction to academic writings dating from the time of the conflict up…
Research – it’s more than Google and Wikipedia.
I love Google and Wikipedia as much as the next guy, but if you are going to write historical fiction, you better be prepared to understand the facts and details…
Library of Congress – Civil War Photographs
During the war, photographers followed the troops, making thousands of portraits of soldiers intended as keepsakes for family back home. A photographer’s wagon complete with a dark room was…
Library of Congress – Drawings and Sketches
Sketch artists such as Alfred Waud and Edwin Forbes followed the troops, often documenting their everyday lives and action on the battlefield in simple pencil drawings. These sketches are the only visual record…
Library of Congress – Liljenquist Family Collection (Portraits)
Galleries The Library of Congress collection of Civil War material is so big that it’s sometimes hard to navigate and find what you’re looking for. This page shows the search…
The Cover: See – Think – Wonder
See – Think – Wonder activity comes from the Harvard School of Education Project Zero. This strategy is a fun and non-threatening way to introduce the book. It is designed…
I Used to Think… Now I think…
What: Group activity to get students to reflect on new learning. The Hattie’s War website contains a lot of background information about the book and how it was created. In…