Why historical? Why Civil War? Why Texas? Why Survivors?
I wrote the Texian Trilogy for several reasons. I have always loved history. I love a story that makes me feel I am in a previous place and time. That’s one of the reason I read. When I read, I’m gone. Don’t talk to me. Knock me on the head if you want my attention.
I have been a Civil War buff since junior high or middle school.
What a grand tragedy was the American Civil War. A fairly new country ripped apart. Families split, brother against brother. Romantic South versus industrial North. The slave question and so much more. Ripe for all kinds of drama and character development. Much has been written about the eastern states, less about the western theater, and little about Texas’s involvement. While researching the web I discovered the (now deleted) diaries and journals of Terry’s Texas Rangers. After reading those journals, my main character practically leapt from the page.
In researching Texas, I discovered Stephen Austin’s Old Three Hundred.
Southern families, with the permission of Mexico, began settling along the Brazos River in 1822. A copy of Austin’s Old Three Hundred, The First Anglo Colony in Texas, as written by their descendants, and edited by Wolfram M. Von-Maszewski has been tremendous help. I’ll add a few of the more fascinating gems from this later, citing the book, of course. The two plantation families in my novel, one growing cotton, the other tobacco, are members of this group.
With my husband at the time I traveled by RV to Texas and Louisiana where At What Cost, Silence takes place—beautiful country.
Recalling my childhood friend Billy, who was bullied for wearing his mom’s dresses and heels, along with my own personal experience combined with the former to motivate me to write this particular story.
Last, but definitely not least, perhaps I should have written my memoir first, in order to understand why I write at all.
But Mary and I survived our childhood abuse throughout all those years by escaping into our stories and, darn, if here with Mary’s help isn’t a story that is actually making it to publication!
Years of research, writing, and editing later, She Writes Press will publish At What Cost, Silence?in October 2023.
A draft of the following novel, War and Preservation, is on my computer, and I have begun scenes of the third and final novel of The Texian Trilogy.
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