A VERY BIG THANK YOU!!!!!

Update 6/07 - Because of bad editing by the publisher, I asked to have the contract dissolved (words like hassle just don't fit in an 1807 context).

I know there's a specific forum for this but I wanted to post my news here in the historical forum so I could share it first with all of you who helped me make it happen. I have a contract for my historical novel. It might have happened anyway, but it definitely happened a lot faster because of all of you who offered your help, comments, and criticisms in response to my posts about writing brogue, my prologue (and I'm not sure yet whether the publisher is going to use it), bee keeping, etc. Your insights and advice have been a tremendous help to me. My book should be published yet this year (more on title and by whom later after the contract is all official). A very BIG THANK YOU to all of you! Puma

Hi Everyone, Thank you for your congratulatory notes. I hope all of you are also successful in your ventures.

My novel, 16-3-3, is the actual story from many historic records of the settlement of a very small portion of land (1/4 of a township) in the US Military District in Ohio. The story starts in 1800 with the granting of the section by John Adams to John Cleve Symmes, the Legislator from New Jersey who was instrumental in helping Washington. Symmes sold the section and it was sold again but all buyers defaulted on the purchase and the section was finally sold at Sheriff's sale in Franklinton, Ohio (the precursor to Columbus) in June, 1807. The land was bought through a ruse by a man who then moved his family from Granville, Ohio into an Indian shanty in the section. The man's wife had a child there the following spring (by then they'd built a cabin). Over the next several years more families came, mostly from the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, but some also from Virginia and NewYork. Eight of the families were headed by Revolutionary War soldiers including one old Irishman who was said to be the drummer/piper for Washington and is in the rolls of those at Valley Forge. By 1812, the settlers had built a church, were building mills, marrying each other, and contributing men and supplies for the War of 1812. The story ends after the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. With only about five exceptions, everyone in the story was a real person. I filled in some of the gaps in the historic record (which also incorporates events of national interest like the Battle of Lake Erie, Tecumseh's prophecies, the burning of Washington, etc.) with events that would happen on the frontier (like capturing wild bee colonies). My book is fiction because, as someone on this historic forum said, I don't know what was actually said and exactly what happened.

So that's my story. Puma