I read fiction for a variety of reasons: compelling characters, fascinating settings, appealing hypotheses, historical information, a sense of community, spiritual nourishment, encouragement, distraction, insight, entertainment. Oh, yes, and the food. My favorite stories often feature teatime or mealtime conversations. It’s no wonder then that my Sinclair Sisters of Cripple Creek novels include dialogue centered around a supper table or a tray of goodies in a …
Bob’s Corner: Mine Elevators and Ore Cars
Bob here. Welcome back to my Corner. Today, I want to share a little about the workings of a hard-rock gold mine at the end of the 19th century. In the Cripple Creek District, the mines were mostly vertical shafts, blasted through solid granite. In a previous post, Headframes and Hoists, I explained that this had to do with the …
Books for Children: My I Can Read Books
My historical novels–The Sinclair Sisters of Cripple Creek–written for WaterBrook Press, weren’t my first published books. Actually, they are books 29, 30, 31, and 32. My first books were written for emergent readers–children’s books. And although my Desert Critter Friends series of 12 books for early readers is out of print, I’ve written six I Can Read books for Zonderkidz. With school underway for most students, …
Bob’s Corner: Headframes and Cable Hoist
The pursuit of riches drew tens of thousands of colorful characters to Cripple Creek in the 1890s. The boom town provided me a canvas on which to draw my stories in The Sinclair Sisters of Cripple Creek Series. Good news! My hubby Bob agreed to flesh out the workings of a gold mining camp in that era for us. Headframes and Cable Hoists …
Cripple Creek
Denver and Colorado Springs were popular towns in Colorado Territory, and have remained so since Colorado received statehood in 1876. Although Cripple Creek is often overlooked, the gold mining camp’s footprint is deep and widespread in Colorado’s historical soil. Cripple Creek, nestled in a saddle valley on the southwestern slopes of Pikes Peak, became a booming gold mining camp in …
Author Book Signings with a Twist
You may know you can find me on the worldwide web, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, GoodReads, the Book Club Network, and here on my Hindsight blog. You may even know you can connect with me through my quarterly e-newsletter update, but you may not have thought to look for me at a chuckwagon supper or at a carriage house. Last month, …
What About Bob?
When the idea of writing for publication first flitted through my mind, my hubby Bob began encouraging me. “Well, you do like to write letters and you’re good at it,” he said. When I approached Bob about my desire to attend a writers’ conference, he began a long haul of personal sacrifice and made a way for me to attend the …