As of July 10, 2014, I will no longer be posting to this blog. I now post at my new website/blog at www.donnahechlerporterbooks.wordpress.com. The old posts can be found there as well.

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I Found It!

You know you’re a book nerd, or a writing nerd, when the most exciting thing that happens over the Fourth of July weekend is finding the old path your characters would take from Richmond, Virginia to Bedford, Virginia.

But that’s what happened Saturday night, and boy did I do a happy dance.

My husband ran through the house worried something was terribly wrong. My children hovered around me, concerned that I had received some sort of bad news. I assured them that nothing was wrong, but all was right in my “writing” world.

Writing historical fiction is fraught with one especially nasty difficulty – how true do you stay to the historical record?

Some things are easy to find. The kind of food people ate. The clothes they wore.  Not only are there books about just any time period you are interested in, but these days a lot of what you need can be found on the web.

But then, some things, like old roads, can be more difficult. That’s where the trouble started.

I don’t wish to give too much away, but Annie and David, in Breaking Promises, must go from Richmond to Bedford. I know the new roads oftentimes followed the old, but I didn’t want to just assume this was so. I have looked for the past four months in various books, websites, etc. Finally, in a webpage for the history of Powhatan County, the words popped from the page. Colonials going that direction would have taken the Old Hunting Path. And, even better, it closely mirrors US 60.

Honestly, I thought I had struck gold.

I can’t wait for Labor Day!