Intersecting Themes

Friend and author Kathryn Haueisen invited me to take a stint as a guest blogger on HowWiseThen at the end of January. Kathy and I first connected as alumni of a writing program at the When Words Count Retreat and happen to share the same publisher, Green Place Books, an imprint of Green Writers Press. I wasn’t sure how to approach a guest blog entry. I didn’t want my contribution to be just another ad for my own book. So I do what I do, I looked for commonalities and intersecting themes.

After researching her Mayflower ancestors, the Brewsters, Kathy wrote Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures. She knew she’d have to write a novel to wrap the human story around the extensive research she conducted. This provided her a way to give the people in the story dimension and make the book read as more than just another history book about a story we all think we know so well.

So what does a book about the Pilgrims and the native peoples they met here have in common with a memoir—the story about a daughter and father who come to live together again in late life? I thought our approaches to making sure we were getting the stories right fit my goal. Find out if I was right here.