Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Elizabeth Camden! Writes: I write gilded age romance novels featuring smart characters and deeply romantic, emotionally turbulent love stories. I make my characters earn their happy ending, like in Written on the Wind where they must travel to the ends of the earth before accomplishing their goal. The novel features a Russian count whose long-distance friendship with an American heiress is the only lifeline he has left after the czar strips him of his lands, title, and fortune. He escapes into the Siberian wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back and his determination to reach New York and Natalia …. where the real battle will begin.   About: I was a college professor and research librarian before making the shift to becoming a full-time writer. My time period is gilded-age America, and the backdrop for each novel is a real-life historical advancement like water purification and how it allowed for the development of modern cities, or the development of steel and its…

Hi, I’m Ann H. Gabhart. So fun to be here to share about my new book WHEN THE MEADOW BLOOMS. Doesn’t that title make you think of how flowers bring new hope each spring? The people in my story need that new hope. This title challenge turned out to be a true challenge, but a fun one as I came up with words to share about my characters and more about my story. So here goes. W – Ways. WHEN THE MEADOW BLOOMS is a story of ways to keep believing when hard things happen. As the story begins, Calla, fourteen, and her sister, Sienna, nine, are in an orphanage while their mother, Rose, is being treated for tuberculosis at a sanatorium. Calla never stops praying for a way for their family to be together again.  H – Home. Is there a word that brings more warm thoughts and memories to mind? When their mother became ill, Calla and Sienna had to go to the Home for Girls, a place that never felt like home at all. Will Meadowland be their dreamed for home? E – Efforts. Every time Sienna gets in trouble at the orphanage, Calla wants to find…

After the Great Fire of 1871 destroyed Chicago’s business district and rendered 100,000 people homeless, the city lost no time in rebuilding. Within two years, the downtown area was completely reconstructed, and better than ever. But if you visit Chicago today, you’ll still be able to find glimpses of the Chicago my characters in Veiled in Smoke knew well. The Chicago Fire Academy The site of the blaze’s first sparks can be found at the Chicago Fire Academy, at the corner of DeKoven and Jefferson. Visitors are allowed inside to see the spot, and to see antique fire engines as well. Courthouse finial, Lincoln Park My characters, the Townsend family, lived across from Courthouse Square. The night of the fire, the bell in the Courthouse Cupola rang for five hours before it collapsed. Today, an urn-shaped finial from the courthouse’s roof can be seen in front of Lincoln Park Zoo. Thousands of Chicagoans fled north from the flames in October 8-9, 1871, many of them finally finding refuge in Lincoln Park. St. James Cathedral The Great Fire gutted St. James Cathedral at the corner of Wabash and Huron. All that was left were the stone walls, the bell tower, and…