Category: Series Progress

What’s Next for Hannah True?

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Hannah and the Civil War

Reputation, the fourth book in The Adventures of Hannah True, is set in January 1861, so as much as we would both like to, neither Hannah nor I can escape the Civil War. My problem with writing about the Civil War is how big it is in time and battles and geography. With all the possibilities, where will I find Hannah’s story?

Finding a Time

Research revealed that fraud was rampant in the Civil War, so much so that the False Claims Act of 1863 was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln on March 2, 1863. Corrupt contractors delivered shoddy merchandise in the form of uniforms and shoes that fell apart in rainy weather, sick horses and mules, grains infested with weevils, broken rifles, and more. The act provided rewards for information that led to bringing the fraudsters to justice. Upon the passing of the law, Vance Hollandar and his agency at once began investigating. Hannah, with two years of experience as a detective, is part of the team.

The novel will begin on July 10, 1863 at Aunt Gertrude’s house in New York City. Possible family members who will be part of the story are Cordelia, who is driving a photography wagon and taking battlefield photographs for Mathew Brady and Darcy Haynes, and Lucy, who has dressed as a man and joined Jake, the man she loves, on the front lines.

Finding a Place

Research is still needed to determine the place of the investigation. I am hoping for a Kansas/Missouri connection to bring the story closer to other members of the Pierce family.

Research

I found the following resource published in 1864. I couldn’t make a screenshot work, but the link will work. If you are interested, Click here

NURSE AND SPY

IN THE

UNION ARMY:

COMPRISING

The Adventures and Experiences of a Woman
in Hospitals, Camps, and Battle-Fields.

By S. EMMA E. EDMONDS.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

Published by Subscription only by
W. S. WILLIAMS & CO., HARTFORD, CONN.
JONES BROS. & CO., PHILADELPHIA AND CINCINNATI.
J. A. STODDARD & CO., CHICAGO, ILL.
1865.

Entered
According to Act of Congress in the year 1864,
By W. S. Williams & Company
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States,
For the District of Connecticut.

Book Launch Party, August 31

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Reputation book cover

Reputation is everything to a woman and her team of detectives in 1861 St. Louis.

Reputation has arrived!

I have learned a lesson: Get books before scheduling a launch party. Today is August 30, and the book launch party at Middle Ground Books in Emporia, Kansas, is tomorrow, August 31 at 2pm. The books arrived today at 10:41 a.m.

Needless to say, I have been a total wreck all week.

But the books are here in time to party!

Reputation Book Launch

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My First Book Launch

Reputation is my thirteenth published novel, and I am having my first book launch on August 31 at 2 pm at Middle Ground Books in Emporia, Kansas.

So how did I launch the first twelve novels?

Previous new book announcement process:

  • Research and write book.
  • Publish book.
  • Order copies.
  • Receive copies.
  • Put copies in car.
  • Tell friends, “Hey, I have a new book!”
  • Friends say, “I’d like a copy,” and pay me.
  • I sign the book, toss it to them, and the launch is complete.

With the help of friends

While I have attended several book launches in the past, I’m still not sure what I should do at mine. Fortunately, my Emporia Writers friends, Tracy Million Simmons, Deb Irsik, and Lindsey Bartlett, have volunteered to help. With their experience in launching, I am less anxious and looking forward to my first book launch ever.

What is Reputation about anyway?

Reputation is everything to a woman and her team of detectives in 1861 St. Louis.

From the top floor of the Gates Hotel to the caves beneath it, the search for a murderer takes Hannah True and her team into situations that compromise their reputations as women and as novice detectives. Meeting a man alone might be enough to ruin her reputation, meeting him in a saloon would definitely destroy it.

Reputation is the fourth book in the Hannah True series. If you happen to be in Emporia, Kansas, on August 31, I’d love to have you celebrate its publication with me. If you prefer eBooks, visit my Reputation book page on Amazon or visit my Amazon Author page to view the first twelve.

REPUTATION: Almost There

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Setting Up the Pre-order

Putting Reputation on pre-order on Amazon is more about giving myself a deadline I have to meet than it is about selling books. If I were not such a procrastinator, I could probably have written another dozen books by now.

The Final Cover

Notepad Contents

Deciding what items to list on the notepad and in what order of each Hannah True book is always a challenge. Now, as I look at what I have designated as “the final cover,” I’m wondering if it is. The current order is

  • poisoned pastry
  • hotel thefts
  • a dead owner
  • cave explosion
  • a missing detective

As I examine the list, I realize hotel thefts should come before poisoned pastry. The thefts come first in the novel and should on the notepad. Just when I think something is done, I find something else to fix. Make the above the next to final cover. Or maybe the next, next to final cover. The good news: I have until August 1 to upload the final book documents.

The Book Description

Reputation is everything to a woman and her team of detectives
in 1861 St. Louis.

From the top floor of the Gates Hotel to the caves beneath it, the search to find a murderer takes Hannah True and her team into situations that compromise their reputations as women and as novice detectives. Meeting a man alone might be enough to ruin a reputation and meeting him in a saloon would definitely destroy it. Besides, Hannah has the reputation of her employer, the Hollandar Detective Agency, to think about.

When the owner of the Gates Hotel hires the Agency to find the person who has been stealing from guests, it appears to be a low danger job suitable for training three new female investigators. But upon discovering the man who hired them has been murdered, the stakes rise.

When the widow of the hotel owner hires a Pinkerton to crack the case, Hannah and her team have to rise to the challenge and show they can outshine the Pinkerton. They must reveal the murderer first, as well avoid becoming targets themselves.

The Formatted Novel

Here is the biggest challenge, and I am still tearing my hair out over getting both the eBook and paperback pages to conform with publishing requirements. However, I am determined to meet the deadline for the eBook pre-order. The paperback will be available on August 16.

The eBook preorder page is live now, and the publication date is August 5. Check it out here.

Titles, Covers, and Book Descriptions

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A Yearlong Journey

I started Book 4 of the Hannah True Series in January 2024. As a pantser (seat of the pants writer), I have done a lot of revising and checking to make sure I haven’t changed a crucial detail, or even a minor one, about Hannah and her band of detectives. That is an ongoing process.

Titles

I have changed is the title. I went from False Fronts to Buried Truths to Reputation. I settled on Reputation because previous books in the series have one-word titles and my main character, Hannah True, is concerned about hers

The Cover: A Work in Progress

Now I need a cover. When I was playing with Buried Truths as a title, I had a cover image in a cave. I’m not sure about that image for Reputation, but I’m hoping the book description will make it work.

Reputation Book Description

Reputation is everything to a woman and her team of detectives in 1861 St. Louis.

From the top floor of the Gates Hotel to the caves beneath it, the search to find a murderer takes Hannah True and her team into situations that compromise their reputations as women and as novice detectives. Meeting a man alone might be enough to ruin a reputation and meeting him in a saloon would definitely destroy it. Besides, they have the reputation of their employer, the Hollandar Detective Agency, to think about.

When Frank Gates, the owner of the Gates Hotel, hires the Agency to find the person who has been stealing from guests, it appears to be a low danger job suitable for training three new female investigators. But upon discovering the man who hired them has been murdered, the stakes rise.

When the widow of the hotel owner reveals her lack of faith in the Hollandar Agency and hires a Pinkerton to crack the case, Hannah and her team rise to the challenge, vowing to outshine the Pinkerton and solve the murder. Can Hannah and her team prove their skills, outwit the Pinkerton investigator and reveal the truth behind the murder of Frank Gates?

Publication Date

Publication of the eBook version of Reputation is scheduled for August 1, 2025. The paperback version will follow shortly after. At least, that’s the plan.

In the Meantime:

Overcoming: The Adventures of Hannah True, Book 3 is on a free promo from June 26-30, 2025.

Check out Hannah’s stay in a lunatic asylum.

Researching St. Louis: Following the Book Trail

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In my last post, I wrote about visiting St. Louis and the museums at the Arch and Forest Park to learn more about its history for my upcoming novel, the fourth book in the Adventures of Hannah True series. I learned enough to realize I needed a new name for the novel: That buildings with false fronts were not really a thing in 1861 St. Louis. Also, while there, I purchased a book of essays, Historic Tales of St. Louis, which was the first step on a journey to the city’s past.

Mining Bibliographies

Many of the articles in Historic Tales of St. Louis were relevant to the 1861 time period, others were not. I skimmed article titles, such as “Army Secretly Sprays St. Louis in Chemical Weapons Program,” “Cary Grant Starts a Trend: Chocolates on a Hotel Pillow,” and “Gaslight Square: See Barbara Streisand for Two Bucks,” and focused on the articles dealing with the 1840s through the 1860s. These included “Brewers and Their Caves,” “Cholera Outbreak of 1849 Kills 10 Percent of Population,” “From Horses to Streetcars,” and “The Great Fire of 1849.” The bibliography in this book led me to an interesting online article, “St. Louis Beer History: Underground Beginnings.” You might have guessed from two of the titles that my novel has scenes in caves where beer is brewed. Until I read these articles, I had no knowledge of underground beer brewing.

An online search led me to another excellent source, A Most Unsettled State: First-Person Accounts of St. Louis During the Civil War. I ordered the book through Emporia’s bookstore, Middle Ground Books, and the excerpts from diaries and letters in the first two sections put me emotionally in the city at the time of my novel. Instead of a bibliography at the back of the book, the source information is given at the end of each excerpt. I was captivated by Galusha Anderson’s description of St. Louis as a city built with red brick, which included homes, businesses, warehouses, and even sidewalks. Wanting to learn more, I searched for his book written in 1908 and found it online: The Story of a Border City During the Civil War.

Another source that helped me understand the tensions between neighbors was Julius Rombauer’s The Union Cause in St. Louis in 1861: An Historical Sketch. Both Galusha Anderson and Julius Rombauer lived in St. Louis during the time of Hannah True’s next adventure, and their books are adding to my knowledge of the people and their world.

Now that I have such excellent historical sources, I am using them to set the scene for Hannah’s first case, a murder mystery set in January 1861 in St. Louis. My goal is to finish the novel and publish by August 2025.

Researching St. Louis

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St. Louis has been a stopover on the journeys of many members of the Pierce family and of Hannah True. They caught steamboats going west or trains going east, but St. Louis was never their destination, the place where the story happened, until Book 4 of Hannah’s adventures.

In Book 4, now a rough draft in progress, Hannah joins the Hollandar Detective Agency and goes on her first official case. She is joined by agency owners, Vance Hollandar and his mother Victoria Nelson. Additional new investigators are Benita Walton and Aaron Jackson. The owner of an upscale St. Louis hotel has hired Vance to investigate a series of thefts that have been carried out over several weeks. Because Vance and his team arrive undercover, and because I had read and seen so many buildings with so-called false fronts in old western towns, I decided a perfect name for the novel would be False Fronts. I even envisioned a book cover with that image.

One Big Problem

Buildings with false fronts were a few hundred miles west and half a dozen or more years later than the St. Louis setting of my story. So now I am working on a new title and cover and researching to find out what more I need to know before I make a decision. A recent Emporia Rec Center tour allowed me to visit the city and its museums. The trip gave me a start toward building the crime scenes and the backstory of the characters involved in committing those crimes while also searching for a fitting title.

1849 Was a Bad Year for St. Louis

In 1849, the population of St. Louis was about 63,000. On May 17, fire destroyed the waterfront business district. In the summer of 1849, a cholera outbreak killed approximately 4,500 St. Louis residents. Main characters in my novel lost family members in these two events, and those losses shaped their lives.

Within a year of the fire, new buildings made of brick, some five stories high, were built to replace what was destroyed. By January 1861, the year my novel takes place, St. Louis had a population of nearly 161,000. Brick buildings, not the false fronts of frontier towns that I had imagined, lined the streets.

What’s Next?

As I explore the setting for my now unnamed novel, I’ll be researching the caves beneath St. Louis and the nefarious things that might happen in them. Maybe I’ll find a title buried there.

Overcoming Update

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Finished at last! After much nail biting and nine uploads of eBook content files trying to get the appearance just right, I finally said, “Okay, this is the best I can do.” Overcoming, the third book in the Hannah True series, is now up for preorder on Amazon. It will go live on March 20. The paperback will be out by April 15.

To Celebrate: Free Uprooted promo

From March 17-March 21, 2024 the eBook version of Uprooted, the first book in the Adventures of Hannah True, will be free on Amazon.

The Series Prequel: Free on Book Funnel

If you haven’t yet downloaded your free eBook copy of The Courtship of Hannah True, get yours now and learn about the man Hannah almost married. It is on Book Funnel, and it has been a while since I have promoted the book. Let me know if you have any problems.

Opinions of Hannah True: Aunt Gertrude Speaks

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Author: I am here today with Mrs. Gertrude Oaks, Hannah’s aunt, who has opened her heart and home to Hannah since her displacement by her brothers-in-law. Good morning, Mrs. Oaks, and thank you for joining me today. I know that since your sister, Hannah’s mother, passed away in November of 1859, you have been concerned about Hannah’s future. Can you tell me in one word how you see Hannah handling this change in her life?

Gertrude: Recklessly.

Author: Why do you say that?

Gertrude: Many things, some little, some not so small, that have added up over time. You mentioned my sister’s, Hannah’s mother, passing almost a year ago now. When the new owners took over the hotel Hannah had managed, she was supposed to come immediately to stay with me, but was delayed in Chicago for some weeks. I didn’t think anything of that since she was staying with a friend.

Author: So what was the first thing that caused you concern?

Gertrude: Her taking that position at the Spirit Seekers colony. Something didn’t seem quite right from the very beginning, but when I met Josiah, the founder of the colony, he was such a nice man that I put my doubts aside. At least, I did until Josiah became alarmed at what was happening. His investigation led to his murder, and then we learned…Well, you know what we learned. Thankfully, Hannah escaped with her life. But this latest escapade is beyond what anyone with a shred of common sense would become involved in. I think it is all related to the losses she has suffered because of her sisters’ horrible husbands.

Author: I spoke with her brothers-in-law in a previous interview, so I know something of their attitudes toward Hannah. How have their opinions negatively affected her?

Gertrude: They learned of her connection to the Spirit Seekers and took that as evidence that she was somehow in league with demons and unfit to see her nieces. She had been raising those girls since their mother died five years ago. They were her life. When she received Graham Russell’s letter forbidding her to ever see or contact them again, Hannah lost all concern for herself and became reckless.

Author: Reckless, how?

Gertrude: She got herself arrested for interfering with the police when they were arresting that girl who tried to vote fraudulently. Luckily, we were able to get the charges against her dismissed. But then, she decided she must ensure the girl’s safety by being admitted to the Brookdale Lunatic Asylum where the girl’s father admitted her to avoid a prison sentence.

Author: That does seem extreme.

Gertrude: That’s just the beginning. Once I had her admitted, Hannah learned that the girl had been moved to the violent ward for fighting with another inmate, so Hannah took it upon herself to also act in such a manner as to be moved there. That seems truly insane to me. I don’t know what will become of her. Do you?

Author: I’m working on it.

The projected publication date for Overcoming, book 3 in The Adventures of Hannah True is December 2023

In the meantime, if you haven’t read the first two books, check them out on Amazon.

Opinions of Hannah True: the Brothers-in-law

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What they really think

Author: Today I am at a meeting room in the Compton Hotel in Westport, Missouri, which was once owned by my guests: Banker Edmund Garr, Minister Graham Russell, and Blacksmith Hiram Pierce. Gentlemen, I have asked you here in order to hear your opinions of your sister-in-law, Hannah True. You may have heard that she recently has been committed to Brookdale Lunatic Asylum. I wonder if you believe that is an appropriate place for her. Also, would each of you please give me one word that sums up your view of her?

Graham Russell: Possessed. She is where she should be.

Author: Possessed? What causes you to hold that opinion?

Graham Russell: Her morals have always been questionable. She rarely attended church services. Her recent involvement with spiritualists revealed the reason she behaved in that way. She is possessed by at least one demon, maybe more. I believe that possession started years ago, but has only recently come to light. I have informed her in a letter that she may no longer communicate with her nieces. Hiram agrees that she should have no contact with his daughters.

Author: Is that so Hiram, and do you agree that Hannah is possessed?

Hiram Pierce: I don’t know about being possessed, but I agree she should never have contact with my girls again. I call her a busybody. She had her nose in my family’s business from the moment I married her sister Minerva. When Minerva died, she stole my girls and brought them here to work in this hotel. And then she caused my only son to break with me. She destroyed my family with her busybody ways.

Author: That’s not what I remember.

Hiram Pierce: You asked my opinion, and I gave it. The witch destroyed my family.

Graham Russell: Yes, witch would be an accurate description.

Author: Mr. Garr, what have you to add? What is your one word description?

Edmund Garr: Capable.

Hiram Pierce: Capable all right. Capable of ripping my family apart.

Edmund Garr: That was not what I meant, so I offer competent instead. For ten years, she ran this hotel. The service was always excellent according to all who stayed here. She kept accurate records and retained employees. Certainly, she did a better job of running it than the current owners. And that was in addition to caring for her invalid mother and your girls, Hiram.

Hiram Pierce: What you call caring for them, I call putting them to work.

Graham Russell: Really, Edmund, she could easily do all you say because she had Satan on her side.

Edmund Garr: I saw no signs of that.

Graham Russell: You wouldn’t with your worship of money and society.

Author: Gentlemen, I see we are veering toward a heated discussion that is off the point. Thank you for coming today and giving your opinion.

For what really happened between Hiram and Ambrose, his son, see Hiram’s Boy on Amazon. To check out the complete five-book saga and all my other books, go to my Amazon author page.