An Old Familiar Place

Game On! First signing at Atlanta Bread Cherrydale Point in Greenville, SC was awesome! Thank you, Jeff and Amber Massey for hosting us! It was great to see old friends from the past, new ones I had never met in person, and those that have kept in touch through the years. From as far away as Waynesville and Hendersonville, NC they came! And locals from Simpsonville, Easley, Piedmont, Travelers Rest, Greenville, Taylors—I couldn't believe it. I started signing at a little past 5:00 and hubs and I didn't leave until 9:00. I was able to get a few pictures, but if you were there and you have some to send me, please email to janegaddywrites@gmail.com . I will love you for that!   Thanks to Claudia Burns for assisting me with this first signing. She is an incredible friend and stuck right with me till the end. She used her power and influence to get us in the TR electronic paper. They ran a great ad with a photo of the book cover. Travelers Rest is such a grand place to b...

is only half easy— The easy part is what you know about your own personal characters. What was going on around them at the time is quite another story. Rachel, After the Darkness covers a relatively condensed timeframe, beginning in late fall of 1872 and ending in late September 1873. Research that covers a little less than a year may not seem significant, but the year 1873 was not one of those insignificant years. In fact, the drama was amazingly intense, and I wanted to cover as much as I possibly could. That year combined with Rachel's memories covering the greater part of the first decade after the War, Reconstruction, and the continuing aftermath that droned on and on makes for an incredible story. If we are smart, we will never exhaust the War years and beyond from a literary perspective. Those years were rich with important information. I'm sorry to say, I didn't know a lot about the North before I started writing historical fiction. Learni...