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I started a blog on June 1 2006 on blogger.com, entitled Civil War Women. I'm writing biographies of women of the Civil War era, how they lived, what they did to survive. It occurred to me today that I am writing BLOGRAPHIES. Maybe I should rename my blog. The most popular blogs these days have topics that affect our daily lives, but I'm hoping that I might find readers, who will appreciate my own little niche in the blogosphere. I tend to write long pieces—I like to delve a bit into the woman's personal life, not just birth, death, and accomplishments. And I like writing about lesser-known women. Everybody knows about Clara Barton, Belle Boyd, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Fortunately for me, the Internet is a treasure trove of information, and research is my passion. I use many print sources, as well. Because I tend to write long posts, I ‘m not able to post as frequently as I would like to, but I think that will improve with time. I'm hoping to attract a broad range of readers to my blog, because I believe that there are lessons in history that we can apply to our lives today. And I think we owe our sisters of the nineteenth century a debt of gratitude. How frightening it must have been for them, at times, to change society's views of women, and to go where women had never been before, to occupy positions that were previously open only to men. They were true pioneers. I plan to write several BLOGRAPHIES about African-American women. It astounds me to learn how much they aided the Union war effort. In order to stay true to history, I am calling them Negroes. I truly hope that doesn't offend anybody. The adulteration of that word is the worst racial slur I can imagine, and I will never use that word in my blog. I used that word in a novel I wrote because that is what the character would have said, but writing it made my skin crawl. In the process of writing one novel and researching another, I've learned a lot about the Civil War. So I decided—why not share my knowledge? My first novel was published online as an ebook, but ebooks just aren't selling the way everyone thought they would. The price of most ebooks is very affordable, but the handheld readers are still too expensive. The great advantage that I see with ebooks is that you can download several at a time. If you finish reading a book at 2 a.m. and you still aren't sleepy, you can have another instantly available on your reader, or you can go online and buy another 24/7. The American publishing industry is in a sad state of affairs these days. If your name isn't instantly recognizable to a broad range of people, then you're just not going to be published, no matter how good your writing is. But for me, it seems that when I'm writing, I'm happy. Now, if I could just find a way to keep the bill collectors at bay. Maggie MacLean has written a Civil War novel, Tennessee Twilight, which she will serialize online in the near future. There is an excerpt at http://www.maggiemaclean.com. She also has a new blog at http://civilwarwomen.blogspot.com. Stop by and have a look.
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