Today seems like a good day to remember the passion and eloquence of one of my heroes. Fifty-four years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was sitting in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, writing a letter. He’d read criticism by fellow clergymen of his work for civil rights and was penning his own response. He scribbled…
When I was researching the history that forms the background of my Civil War WIP, I found all kinds of treasures at the Maryland Historical Society’s H. Furlong Baldwin Library. But one little document brought new life to my story. I wrote the first draft during National Novel Writing Month a year ago. Writing furiously…
It’s 9 a.m. any day of the work week. And weekends, too, if the family doesn’t already have something for me to do. Where am I? It had better be right here with my laptop open and Scrivener humming away. Trouble is, often I’m not. Sometimes, I have an appointment, an interview, a meeting. Then it’s…
I knew the Hemingway App was big when my brother, a non-writer, mentioned how much he uses it. Although I’ve been writing for more than half of my life, for the most part, I have relied on old fashioned tools. I own a dictionary in book form. I do admit I gave up my fountain pen…
Doors were left ajar. Porch chairs were tipped over. Shutters were pulled tightly across shop windows. There were bullet holes in Johnson’s store and an artillery shell had left a crater next to Delaney’s tavern. The pale yellow steeple at St. Paul’s was pockmarked and cracked. A few Confederate soldiers, exhausted and dirty, lounged on…
When the email with my writing contest score sheets came recently, I closed it, put my phone down and sat perfectly still. This was the first time I had entered a writing contest. So, I worried: How bad was it? I waited half a day to read what the three judges had to say. I fortified myself…
Writers create their own little worlds when they envision their stories. This is especially true for fantasies, fairy tales and those wonderful small town stories we have always loved. My Civil War novel takes place in and around a real town. With serious liberties that would probably drive a Civil War historian insane. But I kept…
I’ve joined a prestigious group of authors. I’ve been rejected. I got my first rejection letter for my first novel. It’s far from my first rejection letter. I’ve been turned down for magazine and newspaper articles plenty of times. I wrote a children’s book back in the 1990s and got that rejection letter on paper…
My first historical novel is finished. With tears and sniffles, I closed the book and said good-bye to my first heroine, Maureen. She is a feisty one, an 18 year old Irish immigrant, who goes on a quest to find her brother in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in any…
Mary K. Tilghman, writer 