Get the 20th anniversary edition of Canawlers!
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since Canawlers was released. Not only was it my first foray into historical fiction, it was my first indie published novel. Up to that point, I had had two books published by two different publishers. One was a young adult novel, and the other was a horror novel. (I have the rights back to both, and I will republish them at some point.) A biking trip down the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal inspired me, and it also turned out to challenge me to take my career in a new direction. For the next 15 years, I wrote exclusively in the history and historical fiction. It’s only been in the last few years, I’ve branched out to do horror, fantasy, and YA again. For the 20th anniversary edition, I had new e-book Read more…
Rethinking the C&O Canal
The old saying goes, “You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole.” Yet for more than 90 years, historians have said that somehow 92-foot-long canal boats on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal fit into locks that could hold boats no larger than 90 feet and probably less. It’s just one of the many questions that modern researchers are finding need to be answered about the C&O Canal. Some have easy answers that go against the accepted history of the canal. Others, like the question of canal-boat length, are still being researched. Both have historians and National Park Service staff rethinking how the C&O Canal operated. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal ended business operations in 1924. Since then, books have been written about the canal, historians have researched the lives of canallers and lock tenders, and the National Park Read more…
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