Meira Penterman asked me about participating in this weekly blog-hop focusing on young adult or children’s books, even though the book of mine which most nearly meets that description was not intended as a young adult book. Still, To Truckee’s Trail does have a teenager and a small boy – Moses Schallenberger and Eddie Patterson — as secondary characters in a wagon train heading west to California. The book is totally G-rated, in the movie sense, and I have been told that some home-schooling families use it as part of their history curriculum as I was very thorough in writing about the emigrant wagon-train experience.
Part of the blog-hop involves answers to four questions, and posting links to three other writers who have or are working on books for children, teenagers or young adults. Follow and enjoy!
What are you working on right now? I’ve just started on my next book, which will be a YA western adventure. I haven’t worked out a title for it yet, but I was struck a month or so ago with an idea for revamping the Lone Ranger by making it a straight historical; a young Ranger sole survivor and his buddy the Indian scout in pre-Civil War Texas. Lose the mask and the silver bullets (and other identifying details) but keep the sense of honor, the quest for justice, and the friendship, and use real characters and historical events.
How does To Truckee’s Trail differ from other works in its genre? As historical novels go, it’s more of a recreation of events and an explanation of how a group of people very similar to the Donner party in background and equipment, in the same situation and at the very same place still have such a radically different outcome. .
Why do you write what you do? I started writing historical fiction with an eye towards teaching people history by making it into a ripping good read. Most of the notions which people have about history are gleaned from pop-culture, from books and movies and television shows, so why not enlarge that body of knowledge? Write about fascinating people and interesting events that no one but history wonks have ever heard of? Or explain and make human events that people may have heard about, but perhaps not the whole picture. The motto of the Armed Forces
Radio and Television Service was “Inform and Entertain” – and that is mine, in writing historicals.
How does your writing process work? I’m pretty focused as a writer. I usually have the general plot mapped out in my head, and sometimes characters as well, so it’s just a matter of sitting down and filling in the descriptions and the conversation. But every once in a while, usually when the story is about three-fourths completed, I have a scathingly brilliant inspiration which means I have to go back and rewrite ….
Now look for these authors next week, as they continue the blog tour and answer the same questions. Enjoy!
Recent Comments