About the Author
A love of history, a love of the written word and a love of sharing a story; all of my writing begins with those three things.
History has fascinated me since I was a child. The library at my elementary school in Carrollton, Texas, had a section dedicated to biographies of historical figures written for young readers. I can still picture exactly where that shelf was located in the library because I read every book on it, from Isaac Newton to Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Edison (John Paul Jones was my favorite–what boy doesn’t love tales of sea adventures?).
At the University of North Carolina I discovered minor league baseball. Friends invited me to a Durham Bulls game and I was shown a new world I did not know existed. So far removed from the stories of Babe Ruth and the major leagues we have all heard but still so important to the social history of so many towns. And, I discovered, it was a history that was not documented, nor easy to uncover. This led to my first book.
As I researched, it was always easy to get sidetracked while spinning through rolls of microfilm in darkened corners of libraries. Interesting news stories in old papers became the “bright, shiny objects” that caught my attention. There are so many stories from history waiting to be told to a modern audience. These are stories from which we can learn something about the past but that are also relatable to today’s reader, and there is nothing more rewarding than to share them in the form of a book.