Pre-Order New Book from History Press or Amazon!

This mock-up copy of a book used to be called "the galleys" in the publishing business. 

Now it is called the "PDF version."

Even if you love to write. Even if you are good at writing and it gives you pleasure. Even if every aspect of writing is a positive experience for you. Writing is still hard work. 

So when a book is completed you have to take a little time out to say: "Hooray!"

Robert Louis Stevenson And His Journey to Monterey

There are lots of opinions about Fanny Osbourne, with whom Robert Louis Stevenson fell in love in France in 1876. But Stevenson didn't equivocate. He traveled 6,000 miles to propose marriage to her. Both images are from Historic Bay Area Visionaries, set to be published by History Press in October.

Last week I began the true tale of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson's romance with a woman from California, Fanny Osbourne, whom he met in France in 1876. It was a complicated liaison: she was eleven years older than he and had been married for twenty years to someone else. Adding to the difficulties: he lived in Scotland and she lived 6,000 miles away in California.