Welcome to my blog!

My first novel, The Lincoln Moon, is about to be published, so I thought I’d use this space to muse about the historical backdrop of the time period in which in which which is its setting. My hope is to help readers better understand the relevant politics of the time period, 1857, which informs the events of the book. I’d also like to share with you my insights into the people of the period (people like my little farm family, the Armstrongs) and about Lincoln as he appears in my book.

For good measure, I may eventually blog about my next novel, tentatively titled George and Army.

For those of you who might be writers, I also promise to post my a few of my celebrity interviews, starting with writer Anita Loos. Anita had written for silent movies, the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and was a screenwriter for MGM in its golden days. I met her in the mid 70’s when I was a young journalist writing for an entertainment magazine in Birmingham, Alabama. Through mutual connections, I managed to meet her and charmed her into sitting down with me for an interview.

And there may be some other tidbits along the way.

I’ll make two promises going into this. To keep it brief and and to keep interesting. You after all, have books to read, and I have one to write.

-mpn