The Ancestral Pen

  Oh my goodness! There are never enough hours in the day. Spring is in the air, which means gardening begins — even this weekend I will be starting my seedlings that need to begin their journey indoors. There is something so hopeful about that: tiny seeds, full of potential, just waiting for the right conditions to bloom. Sound familiar? That’s exactly how I feel about The Fading Light right now. The Fading Light — Now Available for Pre-Order! I am thrilled to share that The Fading Light is now available on Amazon for digital pre-order, with a release date of May 25, 2026. This timeline gives me the space to polish a few remaining details and make sure the story is everything I want it to be before it lands in your hands. Button A Few Requests While I Tend My Garden… You are the heart of this little writing community, and I have a handful of small asks that would genuinely make a big difference: 1.  Spread the Word  If you know readers who love historical fiction, please...

  I sat down at my desk this week to write the final chapter of my Patriot book, and I had to stop. Not because the words wouldn’t come, but because they poured out of me, literally. The kind that make your hands hover over the keyboard while you wait to see the words on the screen clearly again. Just as a reminder, Ann and Edward — the two central figures in this book — are not fictional creations. They are, in fact, my fourth great-grandparents. I won’t share the passage here because it belongs to the ending, and the ending belongs to the book. But I will tell you this: writing the final words of Ann’s story, I felt the full weight of who she was. A woman who carried burdens quietly, who loved fiercely, who gave thanks even when she had every reason not to. And Edward, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, faithful to the last. That faithfulness, that quiet love — it did not disappear when they left this earth. In some way I don’t fully understand, it found its way down through...

  Hello friends, I need to talk about something that's been weighing on me lately. My search history. You know that moment when you're deep in research mode, frantically Googling things for your book, and suddenly you stop and think, "If anyone saw my browser history right now, I'd have some explaining to do"? Yeah. That's been my entire week. Exhibit A: Medical Emergencies of the 1780s "How long does it take to die from a musket wound" "Can you survive a musket ball to the shoulder" "Revolutionary War field medicine" "Amputation without anesthesia survival rate" "What does gangrene smell like" Look, I need to know these things! Edward Beeson got shot at multiple times. People died around him. I can't just write "and then he was injured" without understanding what that actually MEANT in 1781. There were no ambulances. No antibiotics. No "let's just pop down to urgent care." Exhibit B...

  The Man Behind the Story And I want to hear about your Patriot ancestor. Hello friends, I've been eyeballs deep in the research on my Patriot ancestor, so I'd like to take a moment and share the backstory behind the book I'm currently writing. This ancestor is the very one I entered into the Daughters of the American Revolution with. I'll be spending a significant amount of time now feverishly writing to get the book done before our Idaho DAR annual meeting in April—I want to feature it there. I've already donated some of my other books to raise funds for the DAR, but I want to feature this one specifically. Anyway, I got a little sidetracked there. Let me introduce you to the man behind the story. Meet Captain Edward Beeson Edward Beeson was born on January 1, 1757, in Guilford County, North Carolina, to Benjamin and Elizabeth Hunter Beeson. He was 21 years old when the Revolution began, living in what would become Randolph County—a young man in a region that wou...