JoAnne's Latest Posts

Where can you find excellence in craftsmanship? Recently, my husband and I visited Hickory, NC to see the Bunker Hill bridge, one of the oldest covered bridges in the country. Since it was built in 1895, we expected to see a dilapidated, rickety old structure at the end of the…

Since the temperatures in North Carolina are in the nineties, I chose to write about the two times I got caught in a white-out snowstorm in upstate New York. Writing from these personal experiences recently helped me. Those times provided me with great details to include in my new Ella…

One carefully-planned trip took a sudden bad turn. Years ago, we decided to take our kids prospecting at the Herkimer Diamond Mine. The mine contained tons of quartz diamonds, and our children were eager to dig for them. Our vacation got off on the wrong foot. Traffic jams made our…

Proper names are important to consider. In my latest book, Ella Travels the Erie Canal, I needed to research good names for the Woodhams family. They came to America in the 1880s, so I wanted to use ones that are appropriate for that era. Also, the Woodhams were English, which…