Promoting Your Novel

“I didn’t know that. I had no idea.” I always loved hearing comments like these when I spoke at libraries and book clubs about the history behind my novels. I can’t say that I sold a lot of books at these talks, but I have enjoyed stepping in front of adults and telling them stories about the past that I find fascinating, and realizing that they do too!

History is not chiseled in stone. It’s always changing, even things that happened 300 years ago, the period I write about. Why? Because we keep finding new information that some historian writes about for a college textbook or a graduate-school paper. Sooner or later, this information bubbles up into a mass-market textbook that I find in a used bookstore, and bingo, I learn some new and fascinating fact and, for me, history is changed. It’s not chiseled in stone. Ever.

I hope that after this pandemic subsidies, I can resume my presentations, and that people will continue to find history as fascinating as I do. I worry that all the present-day tumult and turmoil may distract people from pursuing their interest in history. But I’d like to think that since these stories are always changing, and since our history has created so much of the world we live in today, that people’s interest will never diminish.

When you’re into history, there is always something to learn and to love.