Dead People Rule

Dead People Rule I write about dead people. And get paid. But I didn’t set out to write about dead people. Mitty Ann Medlin captured my attention at a local historic cemetery. She arrived in Texas in 1848, at the age of 18, in a covered wagon train from Missouri. She married here and died in childbirth in 1850. I was intrigued. I wanted to write her story. I researched. And researched more. Yet, I didn’t feel ready to write the book. But, as with most writing, it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing venture. Mitty Ann, and a Texas full moon, was the inspiration for a blog hop a few years ago. That blog led to a request from the city of Trophy Club for an article. Medlin Memories: Winds of Change appeared in Discover Trophy Club. A few months later, Guardian Angel Kids published Sarah’s Journey in their ezine. I chose Mitty’s younger sister, Sarah, to tell the story to a younger audience. Another month, Guardian Angel Kids ‘Aviation’ theme stumped me. Story ideas were fleeting. But †¦ I had a list of remarkable Texas women from another project. Katherine and Mary Stinson, two sisters, had numerous flying records in aviation’s early days. Sisters with Wings was born. I got paid again for writing about dead people. A set of 1934 quilt squares I acquired at a yard sale ten years ago filled another niche. The blocks had names embroidered on them. I discovered their origins a small, now nonexistent, town in Iowa. Calico Connections appeared as another children’s story. With some supplemental quilting information, the story was reborn as Doris’s Christmas Legacy for Quilters World. (A follow up about delivering the quilt squares to Iowa will appear in the Summer 2015 issue.) Queries are out to other publications, such as Our Iowa, and Iowan. Short stories were also submitted to Ladies Home Journal and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Writing about people from the past is more than