You can now purchase my new novel, The Lincoln League, in e-book formats--Kindle, iBook, and Nook. The Lincoln League is inspired by the true story of John Scobell, one of the first African American spies for the U.S. intelligence service. The novel also follows the...
When I did a presentation at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati last fall, one of the people at the museum said jokingly, "The women here were wondering if the man on the cover of my novel, The Disappearing Man, was going to come along...
Bay Forest Books released a new book trailer for The Vanishing Woman, produced by Stan Severance. Check it out:Â http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uai2yECAxCc The opening lines of the trailer say, "Eliza called her father 'Papa'. Her half-sister, Ellen, called him...
Jennifer Goran, a Champaign actress, did her first presentation this past week as Ellen Craft, the slave who escaped in 1848 by posing as a white man. Jennifer did a marvelous job bringing Ellen and her story to life for seventh and eighth grade students in Champaign,...
Take a good look at the two women pictured here. They were half-sisters, but they lived in two entirely different worlds. One was the other's slave. Ellen and Eliza had the same father, Major James P. Smith of Clinton, Georgia, but they had different mothers, and this...
In a little over a week, I will be returning to the museum that altered my writing career and led to my passion--writing historical novels. On Saturday, November 17, at 1 p.m., I will be speaking about Henry "Box" Brown and Ellen Craft at the National Underground...
My new novel, The Vanishing Woman, has just come off the press--although I haven't received my copies just yet. The Vanishing Woman is based on the incredible true story of Ellen Craft, a light-skinned slave who escaped in 1848 by posing as a white man. She couldn't...
Ted Johnson, a wonderful actor I got to visit with at this year's Gideon Media Arts Conference, plays a small but very important role in the upcoming Stephen Spielberg movie, Lincoln. He has pointed out an excellent Entertainment Weekly article that goes through the...
Elijah Lovejoy's Last Stand Mobs had already destroyed Elijah Lovejoy's printing press three times, and they were aiming for a fourth time in November of 1837. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister, had riled up people in St. Louis for his abolitionist views in his...
Caldecott Honor Book Joins The Disappearing Man in Canton Festivities I first came across Henry Brown's incredible story while visiting Cincinnati for the premiere of the VeggieTales movie, The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. At the time, I was a VeggieTales writer,...