Coal Dust Rivers

Revisionist History

Revision is where a finished draft reveals how unfinished it really is—and where perfectionism has to give way to sending the damned thing.

Newtown Battlefield, New York

A visit to Newtown Battlefield in New York prompts a meditation on war, memory, liberty, and the very human costs hidden beneath the abstractions of history.

How Deep Was the Water? History, Fiction, and Verisimilitude

How much water stood in Johnstown before the Great Flood of 1889—and how much does the precise answer matter? A novelist’s struggle with conflicting sources becomes a reflection on historical fiction, accuracy, and the deeper…

The Company Town: Fabric, Steel, and Beauty

Unfortunately, while in Milan on a business trip, I was unable to have much in the way of time to tour the city.  I had a brief side-quest to Maranello to visit Ferrari facilities, which…

On the Scent

A live update from inside the strange, gathering momentum of a new history project — the phase where research, notes, fragments, and instinct begin to pull the work forward.

Floods and grit.

Floods and grit. That’s what we have so far in looking over These Restless Hills. But what of it? What is the story? Beyond a catastrophically damaged lead character, what do we know of the…

On Grit

So the first thing one encounters, truly, when you enter the story of These Restless Hills is, at the beginning, middle, and end.  I wanted the reader to smell the coal, taste the coal dust and the…

Your Mileage May Vary

So over the past few entries, we explored the intertwinement of theme and setting, using the writing of an essay as a nuts-and-bolts exercise to see how those explorations might occur. It is not to…

The Language of Ghosts

The sign here at Wehrum reads: Notice of Wehrum’s closing was posted unexpectedly in May, 1929. The houses were sold for lumber and the mine buildings were sold for scrap. Mining supported many families, and…

What, then, can the ghosts tell us? Just a bit.

So with that last entry, we had a look at number of things. The primary aspect I attempted to imbue was the setting’s intertwinement with history itself. Of course, it would have been a far…

A Brief Digression to a Town Called Wehrum

Let’s continue just briefly with the ideas of the renaming of the blog, as it might be illustrative of the type of scene and context that creates the creative impulse. It imbues with imagery, empowers…

Coal Dust Rivers

Taking a break from the historiography of my own writing with this blog entry, to note my more formal titling of it from “blog” to Coal Dust Rivers. I may use that title elsewhere too,…