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The Man Behind the Story

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  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...
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Life Updates from the Trenches

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  Life Updates from the Trenches Hello friends, It's been a week. And what a week it's been. Writing Update: The Patriot Book Saga One week of drafting outlines only to throw them out and start over again. It wasn't going well. I think—fingers crossed—that I have the start of something finally. We'll see. This new outline still has issues, number one being lack of sleep on my part. Sometimes I just stare at the screen and nothing makes sense. The words rearrange themselves. The plot points laugh at me. It's going great. Life in the 2 AM Club My daughter-in-law and I are finally finding a rhythm with the baby, but we are both still sleep deprived. I'm not sure how I did this with my own children because I did not have my mother or mother-in-law there helping me. Though my husband helped where he could, he also needed sleep to keep working and paying the bills. It's a humbling reminder that this parenting thing—and grandparenting thing—is no joke. We're ma...
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When the Muse Goes AWOL (And Takes Your Sanity With Her)

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  You know those Instagram posts where writers are perfectly framed in a sunbeam, cradling a latte in an aesthetically pleasing mug, hair cascading in beach waves, gazing pensefully at their laptop like they're about to birth the next Great American Novel? Yeah. Today is not that day. It's 5 AM. I've been up since 2:30, doing the grandbaby shuffle so mom can get a few precious hours of sleep. You know the shuffle, right? That squat-bounce-sway combo that would make a CrossFit instructor weep with pride? My quads are screaming . I'm basically doing lunges every forty-seven seconds because the binky has become a tiny rubber projectile with a personal vendetta against my sanity. Spit. Fuss. Squat. Retrieve. Insert. Stand. Repeat. I'm pretty sure I've done more reps this morning than I did in all of 2024. And my hair? My hair has achieved what can only be described as "sentient cotton candy that lost a fight with an electrical socket at 2:30 in the morning....
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So Much To Do, So Little Time

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  With the new year, there is so much that I need to get done. I've been at this for a year now, and though I'm not rolling in the dough, the future is looking promising. I've been working on my advertising on Facebook, so if some of you are in my Facebook group, you've seen some of the beautiful black and white ads I've been working on. If you are not a part of  The Ancestral Pen  Facebook group, please come join us.  I'm in the process of making this journey official by setting up an LLC today. I've been more invested in the advertising, which is exhausting. I need to grow my newsletter readership, so I've joined two other platforms. I'm working on the outline of my patriot book right now, and I'll share more about that book as I progress further into the writing process. I had to set aside the book I was writing for my husband's family about his grandmother to make sure I have plenty of time to finish up my patriot book before the Idaho DA...
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From Amy's Pen

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From Amy's Pen I can't believe that this week marks one year since I published my first book. I spent about six months seriously writing  The Last Wagon , though it was built on many years of compiling information that contributed to it. I've been researching my ancestry and my husband's ancestry for more than 20 years, and the one thing I noticed about genealogists is we are hoarders of information, but few share that information outside other genealogy hoarding circles. I set out to change that. I wanted to find a way to share all those stories I've been hoarding for 20 years with the rest of the world and make them interesting enough that others will enjoy reading them. From Genealogy to Storytelling I've done that with  The Last Wagon , which is non-fiction (though parts are creatively written), and then my novels based on ancestors:  A Mother's Last Gift ,  His Greatest Regret , and  Where the Compass Points . These are all my Woolsey ancestors' sto...
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