Behind the Scenes

This is an ongoing post about how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about.

It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in anyway.

The book of how to write a book says to begin...........you need to create chapters!!!
Oh my, how am I going to create chapters from these letters????


Again the letters themselves provided the answer. The first batch of letters were written from Red Lodge, Montana and in fact the very first letter dated 1907 still had dried lilac flowers tucked inside and the envelope had all the statistics of the little town of Red Lodge. Later I learned that she was with her Dad at this time and thus, the first chapter became........"Immigrants' Daughter". How exciting it was to find the picture of her skiing as a little girl in the old photo albums and those of her and her Dad in the corn fields and so the chapter grew.......her niece provided the picture of her parents, ancestry.com provided the family tree and etc.

It is true that creating the chapters begins to give you the focus of how you are going to layout your book. I knew that I wanted the readers to be able to read the letters themselves and see the unusual envelopes from all over the world, just as I had, but I also wanted to fill in the gaps with the info I had found along the way and of course, the pictures were a must.
The treasure hunt began................I would search for pictures and info about anything that was mentioned in the letters or on the envelopes....... like for example in Red Lodge, Montana the Northern Pacific Depot has been restored so I was able to give that info and also a picture of it thanks to Google:)...why was that interesting??? Bessie traveled by train and in fact when I visited there, I just stood and thought about the fact that over 90 years ago, she had walked in this very place to catch a train to?????????????