Women Behaving Badly - The Edenton Tea Party as depicted by British cartoonists

The modern political “tea party” movement has inspired a resurgence of interest in the original tea party protests leading up to the American Revolution—at least in author Joseph Cummins and the publisher he convinced to release Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests that History Forgot. Despite the fact the somewhat ridiculous title, (we wouldn’t have a tea party movement if people didn’t remember at least the Boston Tea Party, which is the first described in the book) it’s a pretty good read, as far as popular histories go.

The tea parties were part of a protest movement against British “taxation without representation” that dated back to the imposition of the Stamp Act of 1765. In hindsight, the British probably should have simply given the colonies a representative in Parliament who would have been out-voted on everything. Then the Americans would not have been able to back their protests with such moral fervor. But the British government took a stubborn stance against their obnoxious teenage colonies, and like teenagers, the Americans reacted with a rebellious display of drama.

Many people do not realize that there was more than one tea party (the violent dump-the- tea kind, not the drinking-tea-with-pinky-upraised kind). The only one with which I was closely familiar, besides the iconic Boston event, was the “Peggy Stewart Affair” in which a crowd forced Annapolis ship owner Anthony Stewart to set fire to his own ship, the Peggy Stewart, in 1774. I researched the affair in great detail several years ago so that I could recreate parts of it in my historical novel, Restitution.

The Ten Tea Parties version of events matches pretty closely with what I found in contemporary or other accounts except with regard to the name of the vessel. Cummins reports that the ship Peggy Stewart was named for Stewart’s wife and that she was awaiting the birth of her first child. But all other accounts state that the ship was named for Stewart’s daughter. So I decided to check online to see if I could find out who Peggy really was. My search immediately revealed a portrait of Stewart’s children John and Isabella by famous painter Charles Wilson Peale dated between 1773-4, before the tea burning, so Cummins was clearly wrong about Stewart’s parental state at the time of the event. And then an archives source shows that Stewart’s wife was named Jean and he had a daughter, Margaret born in 1767, so she must be the one for whom the ship is named.

In The Ten Tea Parties, Cummins seems to enjoy debunking myths, which I one reason I really wish the book included footnotes to the sources. Since he was a little sloppy about the Peggy Stewart, he might have gotten a few other things wrong, too. Right or wrong, it’s essential to be able to trace the source of new information. However, if the book is treated as an introduction to the tea party protests and not the final definitive version of events, it’s very entertaining.

Some of the most interesting tea parties in the book, in my opinion, were the ones involving women. In his chapter on the Edenton and Wilmington Tea Parties, Cummins tells the story of Penelope Barker, the richest woman in North Carolina, who invited all the women of Edenton to join her in signing a public pledge to refrain from taking tea or wearing English cloth until the repeal of the “Acts which tend to enslave our Native Country.” She sent her statements to the London newspapers—a pretty bold (read “treasonous”) act for a woman whose husband was a government agent who spent most of his time in England. She was lampooned by cartoonists (in the cartoon at the top, Cummins describes her depiction as essentially King George in drag).

By contrast, the Wilmington Tea Party was much less known and rather than engaging the highest echelons of society, it involved the common women of a town described by one visitor as a “poor, Hungry, unprovided place.” In fact, if Scottish traveler Janet Schaw had not viewed the incident and written about it in her Journal of a Lady of Quality, the tea party might truly have been one “that history forgot.” Schaw describes seeing a procession of women in the winter of 1775 walking into the Wilmington town square, each carrying a little box. They dumped the contents—tea— into a pile and then set fire to it.

Schaw was not impressed. The streets were muddy, the ladies were not genteel and the amount of tea sacrificed was “not very considerable.” But the point, as Cummins notes, is that even in this secluded, unfashionable corner of the colonies, the protest movement appealed to the common people.

It is this notion that the modern Tea Party movement shares with its colonial forbearers, I think. People feel that the government has overstepped its bounds and they want to protest in a symbolic yet tangible way.

Of course, most of the modern protestors are leaving out key elements – the notions of sacrifice and risk. The original tea party protestors sacrificed one of their most beloved comforts as well as other imported goods with their boycott. And they risked censure and economic ruin, if not more serious harm.

Today’s tea party protestors, guaranteed the right to free speech, risk only ridicule from a liberal press that generally objects to government usurpation of rights only when the government is controlled by the Republican Party.

That’s a sign that the first tea parties succeeded in winning liberties we now take for granted.

This is the third jail built in Halifax - the first two were set on fire by inmates to facilitate their escape. Finally the town fathers learned their lesson and used brick

The jail was still in the process of restoration when we toured it years ago, so the displays were limited and my kids found the most interesting feature to be the trap door in the floor. Since it wasn’t set on hinges, they couldn’t get it closed properly after they opened it, and I think they were desperately afraid the history site police would swoop in on them and lock them up in a 21st Century jail. Lest readers be kept in suspense unnecessarily, I will hasten to add that the children did accompany me the rest of the way home on I-95 and are not moldering away in a rural prison dedicated to the incarceration of those who tamper with historical exhibits.

But I did learn some interesting facts about incarceration in the 18th Century, at least. Inmates had to supply not only their own clothes, but also their own linens and bedclothes. That doesn’t sound too bad, but if they were placed in irons, they had to pay for the metal, they had to pay for the blacksmith’s labor to make the manacles, and they had to pay for his labor each time the irons were put on and removed. If a prisoner was hanged, he paid for the rope, coffin and the effort to dig a hole for it. Prisoners’ goods would be sold to meet these expenses, and if that didn’t raise enough money, only then would the state step in to pick up the tab. As a rule, long-term incarceration was not a common penalty in the 18th Century. Instead of spending years in jail, a horse thief might have his ears nails to a pillory and cut off, have both his cheeks branded, and then his back whipped with 39 lashes. It all sounded a little medieval to me, but the museum curators assured me that these penalties were on the books in the late 18th or early 19th Centuries.

Te food and drink for prisoners often came from the local tavern keeper. Taverns were much more multifunctional than they are today. A tavern was not simply a place to sample the local ale. Patrons could pick up mail, spend the night, care for their horses, buy jewelry or visit the doctor. Merchants and professionals such as doctors, dentists and lawyers frequently set up shop in the corner of a tavern. But despite all this activity, taverns typically looked just like a residential house. A 1767 law required tavern keepers to erect a sizeable sign so that passers by could distinguish between public establishments and private houses. It also enabled the government to more readily spot taverns selling liquor without a license.

In some counties, up to 20% of the tavern licenses were held by women, so it was not uncommon for your host to in fact be a hostess. About half of the license holders were widows who kept the license after their husbands passed away, and many of these women only held the licenses for a few years. But the extent of the practice shows that tavern keeping was not a disreputable trade for a woman.

The Eagle Tavern in Halifax is a confusing restoration. As near as I could tell, the building that is now restored and filled with interesting and informative (and air-conditioned) displays was a late 18th Century addition to a tavern that stood on another site down the street. Local tradition holds that George Washington dined in the tavern when he visited the town in 1791, but I’m not sure whether he dined in this addition or the earlier building or one of the eleven other tavern sites in town, all of which seemed to change names every few years. While Washington left no specific comments on the quality of the food to be found at the Halifax tavern(s), the site quotes some other patrons, who are hopefully talking about different taverns. “[A] worse meal we thought impossible to find,” writes Capt. Basil Hall “till dinner time came around and showed us the extent of our miscalculations.” Another traveler complained of provisions so bad that “even the horse would have been a fool to eat.”

So if they didn’t come for the food, or the deluxe accommodations (we’ve all heard the stories about tavern patrons forced to share a bed with four strangers and countless lice), why did they come? Well, some taverns advertised “a show of cocks.” But it was not the colonial red light district. These were gamecocks, because “sports of the pit” were quite popular. In addition to betting on fighting poultry, patrons bet on dice games such as hazard, billiards, draughts (checkers), backgammon, chess and skittles (I don’t know what these are, but presumably they are not fruit-flavored little candies). Playing cards of the time look much like they do today, except that there were no little numbers printed at the corners and the cards were printed o a thinner paper than the laminated stock used now. The Eagle Tavern had a card press on display, used to flatten cards after use. I thought that was pretty neat, and it looked portable and yet heavy enough to be considered a possible murder weapon in a game of Clue.

Can you tell what my daughter’s favorite game has been this summer? (I guess Captain Hall, in the billiard room, with the card press. And the victim? Well I guess it would have most likely been the chef.)

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Most of the above information was first published on my website in 2006, but after we made a brief stop at Halifax last weekend, I decided to re-run the article because the site deserves more attention than it’s getting. Even if you stop by after the museum has closed for the day, you can still pick up a detailed map at the Visitors Center and stroll around the grounds reading about life in the old town. It’s a quick detour from the interstate, yet untold miles away in atmosphere. We strolled through fields of wildflowers where the only sounds were the hum of crickets and the chirp of birds.

And we played “Clue” on this last trip, too. Halifax isn’t the only place where things haven’t changed much in the last six years. Happy Halifax Day!

Here’s some information on the day’s events at Halifax:

Instead, it was more or less empty when we first visited eight years ago and a brief stop last weekend indicated that things hadn’t changed much, if at all. So I’m going to repost the two articles I wrote in 2006–the first one today (obviously) and the second on Thursday, April 12 when the site holds its annual Halifax Day celebration. It is a great site and deserves more attention.

Halifax Day Celebration in 2003, men in colonial garb marching a few blocks away from the actual colonial buildings of the town

On our first visit, we arrived just after the Visitor’s Center had shut for the day, but some very thoughtful person had placed detailed maps in a box on the gate so we could take our own walking tour. (They still do this) When we paid a return visit two years later, we were able to view a presentation about the site, tour a small museum and visit some of the outbuildings.

The museum was just the right size to visit with two children who were tempted to use the 18th Century dugout canoe as a skateboard ramp for a stuffed bunny, even though they are old enough to know better. Although the town advertises its political history as the home of the Revolution, most of the exhibits in the museum and other buildings focus on social history — everyday life in the 18th and early 19th centuries. One facet that I found refreshing was the site’s frank acknowledgment of slavery and the treatment of free blacks. The subject is discussed openly but without sensationalism or the attempt to vilify the upper classes that is prevalent at so many other sites these days. Visitors are left to draw their own conclusions.

Halifax is subtly memorialized on the North Carolina flag, which bears the date of April 12, 1776. That is the date of the Halifax Resolution, when the North Carolina Provincial Congress voted to empower their delegates who would be attending the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to concur with the other colonies’ delegates if they voted for independence. This is taken to mean that North Carolinians, at Halifax, were the first colonists to officially recommend independence from Great Britain. But it actually sounds more like they agreed to second the motion if someone else brought it up first.

Anyway, they’re pretty proud of that resolution, as evidenced by the state flag. And for that reason, I give the museum curators at Halifax a lot of credit for not making the site an overblown rehashing of that historic document. Instead, it is much more interesting, giving information on basic life of local citizens of the period, from what they wore and ate to the situations they faced during the Revolutionary War. In 1781, the British took revenge of sorts against the “birthplace of the Revolution.” Part of Cornwallis’s army occupied the town under the command of the infamous Col. Banastre Tarleton, and the soldiers behaved so badly that Cornwallis had two of them court-martialed and hanged.

I liked Halifax so much that I decided it deserved two articles, so next month I will share pearls of wisdom about 18th Century law and order (the jail) and the high life (the Eagle Tavern). For this month, I will close with a poem that I copied down by George Moses Horton, a slave who lived from 1797 to 1883 and who wrote and published three books of poetry.

“Is it because my skin is so black

That thou shouldst be so dull and slack

And scorn to set me free?

Then let me hasten to the grave,

The only refuge for the slave

Who mourns for liberty.”

A reminder that not every North Carolina resident was able to declare independence in 1776.

Often the books are being thrown away. Not sold. Not given away. Not even recycled. Libraries in the state of Maryland are throwing away books in good condition and leaving empty shelves behind.

I noticed the emptier shelves when I was trying to help my daughter find research material for a report last week. A friend who works at the library but must remain anonymous for fear of job retaliation told me that I was not imagining things—there are fewer books in stock.

And the missing books have been dumped in the trash or recycling bins. Employees have been told that they are not allowed to take any of the discarded books.

Does this make any sense? Not to me but then, I don’t work for the government.

In any case, piles of good, nearly new books have been sighted in the trash at library branches throughout Baltimore County. One local TV station even broadcast a story on the subject (WBFF Fox 45), but book and library lovers who have been waiting for a public outcry are waiting in vain. Either no one knows, or no one cares.

There are many organizations that accept donations of books. There are organizations that will help libraries sell their surplus. Our libraries here used to routinely sell their own surplus books. But since the shelves have plenty of space, the books that are being trashed do not even appear to be surplus.

So why are they being thrown out? Are books just too much trouble to deal with? Is it easier to manage a computer database with fewer entries? Does the cleaning contractor charge by the book when it comes to dusting? Is library construction so shoddy that libraries have to discard books to lighten the shelves to keep them from falling through the floors? Is there a vast conspiracy to destroy all print books to force us to buy Kindles? Who knows?

If anyone has a theory about this, I’d love to hear it. If anyone who works for the library would like the opportunity to explain, please do.

In the meantime, I’m certainly not donating any more books to the libraries around here, that’s for sure.

Fortunately, the only one who needed to worry about the Ides of March was Julius Caesar. Legend, made famous by Shakespeare’s play, tells that a soothsayer warned Caesar that he would suffer great harm sometime before the Ides of March. The Roman biographer Plutarch says that Caesar gloated when he saw the soothsayer on the predicted day, announcing that “The Ides of March are come”, and he was still unharmed, which implied that the prophecy was dead wrong. But while the seer agreed that the date had arrived, he noted that it had “not gone,” which meant there was still time for the prophecy to come true. And indeed before the end of the day, Julius Caesar had been stabbed 23 times by a group of conspirators, making the prophecy dead right.

But before this story, the Ides of March had not been associated with murder, bad luck or even minor tooth pain. The “Ides” was the just Roman way of describing the middle of the month. The ancient Romans used a lunar calendar with twelve months that seem a lot like ours—the months had names similar to the ones we use and each month was 29-31 days in length. But the Romans referred to dates on their calendar much differently. They named three of the days in each month and then referred to other days in anticipation of those named days. The “Kalends” was the first day of the month. The “Nones” was roughly at the end of the first of our modern weeks—it fell on the seventh day in March, May, July, and October and on the fifth in the other months. Finally, the “Ides” fell in the middle of the month, calculated as the fifteenth day in March, May, July, and October and the thirteenth day in the remaining months. So what we today call “March 9″ would be “the sixth day before the Ides of March” to them. After the Ides (mid-month) it got even more confusing. March 17 would be “the 16th day before the Kalends of April.”

So the bottom line is that unless you happen to be Julius Caesar on your way to meet your friend Brutus at the theatre, you don’t need to worry about the Ides of March. Nevertheless you might want to avoid walking under ladders anyway, at least if they’re as rickety as the ladders at our house.

“If the devil himself wrote a book, we’d want it in the Library.” So said Edwin Hatfield Anderson, director of the New York Public Library from 1913-1934. He took the reins when the landmark library building with the lions out in front was still brand new. Though John Jacob Astor left money to establish a public research library in 1848, it was not until 1895 that Astor’s library combined with other trust libraries to create a central public library in New York. And then it took them years to build a structure big enough to hold all the books.

The city offered the site of an old reservoir and also proposed to pay for construction and maintenance of the building if the trustees would let the pubic use the library for free. Free lending libraries are something most of us take for granted but, for most of the history of the printed words, books were the property to the wealthy and some thought the common man did not need access to many books or could not be trusted to care for them properly.

The new library was not ready to open until 1911, so the New York Public Library just celebrated its 100th anniversary with, among other things, a special exhibit highlighting the library’s collections and mission. This exhibit was still on display in early 2012 so I had a chance to walk through on a recent trip to the city. I had fun looking at what they chose to include, but I also wonder about the things they did not.

The exhibit was organized by four carefully-chosen themes: observation, contemplation, society and creativity. I ignored the themes and just wandered around.

The displays included much more than books and that’s not surprising—an exhibit composed entirely of books would be pretty much indistinguishable from the regular library shelves.

Glass cases included an Edison wax cylinder phonograph, Sumerian clay cuneiform tablets, e.e. cummings’ typewriter and Charlotte Bronte’s writing desk. An “adult video” magazine with a brown paper cover sat next to a photograph of soldiers who perished at the Battle of Gettysburg. These items are significant to the history of communication and literature and are the types of things I would expect to see in an exhibit like this. Admittedly, the decision to include the porn magazine was questionable in my opinion and I would have been more inclined to place it next to the copy of Mein Kampf rather than with an artifact from one of the most solemn and poignant chapters in our nation’s history, but then I don’t have a degree in library history so what do I know?

In any case, there were some other things I wasn’t sure belonged at all. Work by an artist said to be known for making paper out of mud and taking pictures of footprints? Sounds like something any number of grade school children would be capable of. And there were cyanotype prints of plants by Anna Atkins—I doubt they would have been included if the photographer had been male. Is a development more significant if it is the work of a historically under-represented minority? I don’t personally think so, but that’s my own very politically un-correct opinion.

And I’m straying from my initial question about what belongs in a library and what should be considered the most significant parts of the collection worthy of inclusion in the 100th Anniversary exhibit. I would have liked to have seen the most popular books of each decade in terms of circulation. And maybe the most expensive reference books. Or maybe some of the more interesting non-book items that the library has lent out over the years. (The library where I grew up used to let patrons check out paintings and sculptures. I annoyed my parents by replacing their traditional artwork with Warhol prints and putting statues in the refrigerator in place of the ketchup bottle.) Those things seem more pertinent to the history of a library than a video display showing women dancing in costumes that reminded me of the Kleenex dresses we used to make for our Barbie dolls. But then, that’s just my opinion.

What do you think belongs in a library? And what should be highlighted when that library celebrates a milestone?

The city’s decay looks classier, somehow. Rusted steel beams, burned out warehouses and strings of dismal wiring give the bottom layer of the city a steam punk look that in a way makes it seem more appealing than it does from other angles. I can almost picture Sherlock Holmes skulking through the shadows disguised as a luckless tramp (so that of course I would be the only one clever enough to recognize him, especially since people don’t expect to find the fictional London hero in 21st Century Charm City).

Baltimore doesn’t exude this same sense of shabby chic when I drive through by car.

It’s the back yard view that makes the train perspective so interesting. From my seat on the train I see the things people hide behind the manicured fronts of their houses and businesses. The things they’ve shoved aside, things that wait for action or disposal. The things they’ve perhaps forgotten or wish they could forget about. A giant political sign on wheels. Boats that may or may not float. Bicycles that either wait for spring or for someone to muster the energy to ride.

The train lets you watch a scene up close without intruding. I once had the good fortune to travel by train through the Pocono Mountains after a snowfall. In the early amber light just after sunrise, snow-covered hillsides spread out around untouched in all directions. There were no footprints, and the roads wound through the trees like white ribbons, with no tire tracks to mar the scene. I felt like a bird soaring high above the pristine winter show. (Maybe not so high above—the windows in the observation car weren’t that far off the ground after all, but it was a different perspective.)

Obviously I’m not the first to enjoy the view of the world through a train window. Adrian Belew recorded the song “Swingline” about looking out of a train watching life in “the backyards of the Midwest.” I wonder, though, how many people find like I do that dilapidated city fixtures look so much cooler by train. Maybe Baltimore needs an Underworld City Train Tour that highlights places that could have been the sight of nefarious doings and tells stories about grave robberies that really happened in the city and ghost stories that probably didn’t. And we’d throw in something about Edgar Allen Poe just for good measure.

What d’ye think? Anyone who wants to be a tour guide could dress like Sherlock Holmes or Jack the Ripper. Applicants should send pictures of themselves in their best steampunk/Jack the Ripper/tramp attire. And give me permission to post them…

For a control-freak like myself, I think one of the biggest problems with the life of a historical romance heroine would be the lack of choice and corresponding lack of control. Oh, you might get to choose what to wear and exercise control over the dinner menu, but you’d have very little choice in matters such as where you’d live and who you’d live with. And sleep with. An educated woman of even minor gentility could not choose a career to support herself. Even if she had scads of money (I’m sure there’s a more fitting period term, but you get the idea) she was still expected to make an appropriate marriage so her husband could manage that money. If she had little fortune, she had to marry it. Her only other choice would be to serve as a companion or governess, or to live with a family member or lover—all choices that involve dependence on a man. As a female, there was virtually no hope of being independent. Even a woman of means generally needed to marry to be fully accepted into society—and then her husband would control her money.

Now I do think that I am happy living in co-dependence with my husband. But in the back of my mind, I always have the knowledge that I have supported myself before and could do so again if necessary. To live in a society that offered no such option would be terrifying. So why do I like to read about it?

Is it the same kind of thrill I get from riding a roller coaster? After all, if I was speeding down a real mountain in a real runaway mine car, I don’t think I would find it nearly as entertaining.

Or do I conveniently ignore the lack of choice while I’m reading and fantasizing, just as I ignore the lack of indoor plumbing and central heat?

Since it is the lack of choice that creates so much of the drama in these stories, I guess I can’t say I ignore it. So it must be the thrill of escaping danger—in this case, the probable danger of an unhappy living situation.

Since the heroine in these books never settles happily ever after into a life teaching someone else’s children, the story must be about finding a loving husband despite near impossible odds. Think how much difficulty we have making relationships work in the modern era, where, thanks to the internet, the virtual pool of virtual mates is virtually limitless. By contrast, the Regency heroine gets to meet only: (1) the gentlemen in her neighborhood, (2) the rakes and boobies she dances with during her disappointing first season, and (3) the random dashing hero that crosses her path on page three when she’s given up hope of ever finding a man to capture her fancy. What are the odds that her marriage will end up happy?

Well, this is fiction, so the odds are a lot better than they were in real life.

So, like the ride on the Disney version of a runaway mine train, readers of historical romance get to experience a hint of danger with a safe ending that likely would not have happened had the experience been genuine.

I’m sure I could turn this roller coaster analogy into a strange reality show if I thought about it long enough. But now I’m wondering why this genre appeals to people who don’t necessarily like either roller coaster or wacky analogies. What do you think?

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THE WINNER!

Thanks to those who joined the discussion about the level of sluttiness for romance heroines! The winner of the Valentine Giveaway Hop (as selected by a random number generator) is Mayra Calvani. She wins her choice of any of my books. I had a lot of fun with this event so I’m sure I will join in another one soon. I need another excuse to use the random number generator again!

This is a traditional Regency with absolutely no sex, but you'd never know it from all the groping hands on the cover

Now let’s consider the story in similar settings, popular Regency-set historical romances, which take place during the same time period, between 1790 and 1820. But these stories are written by 21st Century authors for 21st Century audience. In public, the conventions remain the same—if anything, those in the more recently-written stories are more rigid. The heroine must not be alone with a man or she could be “ruined.” If she is caught alone with a man, particularly in a compromising position, friends will force them to marry. Many plots hinge on this convention, whether it truly existed or not. A heroine must behave in public.

But in private, she’s expected to be something of a nymphomaniac, obsessed with the tightness of the hero’s breeches (really they would be pantaloons but that just doesn’t sound heroic). Even though Miss Ladylike and Lord Dashing detest one another and cannot possibly marry, by Chapter Five they still end up having sex (a) on the desk of the hero’s study (b) in the carriage on the way to visit indigent tenants (c) in the bedroom that one has mistakenly walked into thinking it was the butler’s pantry or (d) all of the above.

Heroines in today’s novels are expected to have a strong virtuous streak that is overcome by an even stronger sex drive (and really, when the reader gets the description of the hero, who can blame her?) So what has happened? Have women really changed that much in the last 200 years? Or is it our ideal of a heroine that has changed?

To my mind, human nature really hasn’t altered over time and that’s why I find the study of history so interesting. Social conventions evolve all the time so humans have to channel their needs, urges, desires into different outlets, and that is fascinating to observe. I don’t think most women are or have ever been totally chaste angelic creatures or devil-may-care sexual mavens wielding unstoppable power from the bedroom (or that desk in the study). The truth lies somewhere in between. But I suppose the truth is not much fun to read about . We want to place ourselves in the position of a heroine we can admire. It just so happens that what we as a society choose to admire seems to have changed.

I thought the whole brouhaha over the kiss on the hand in Camilla was a bit much. But really I would rather read Francis Burney or Jane Austen’s books than those of most modern authors. I think my husband would rather have it the other way around. However, he needs to face facts: (a) Our minivan doesn’t have as much room as a carriage, (b) he doesn’t even have a study with a desk in it, and (c) really, would he want to wear 19th Century pantaloons? I think not.

But what do you think? About the depiction of heroines, I mean, not my husband in pantaloons. Do you think modern fictional heroines are over the top or right in line with human nature? After all, I’ve been on the fringe before, so if I’m completely wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. Let me know what you think!

READING ROMANCES ROMANCING THE VALENTINE GIVEAWAY HOP!

As part of this week’s Valentine giveaway, I’m giving away a copy of any of my ebooks, winner’s choice. To enter, all you have to do is either leave a comment on this blog or send a message to email@katedolan.com. And follow the link below to many more Valentine Giveaways! Have fun!

Thanks for reading!

And it wasn’t easy to find them, even though I know they’re out there. Oh I found books, just not many I wanted.

There were all sorts of subscription services that would alert me to free books–for a fee. Um, if I wanted to spend lots of money, I wouldn’t be looking for cheap books. So I said “no” to that idea.

Three of my own books are being offered for sale at 99₵, and frankly, I wish they all were. The goal for me is not to see how much money I can make per book, but to get books into as many people’s hands as possible. Some of those people will, hopefully, like my stories.

It is the publisher’s decision, not mine, to price books, and the ones that are more expensive are not necessarily any better. In other words, my 99₵ books are as good as anything else I’ve written, and I figure that’s the case for other authors, too.

I want to have a place to find those books. A place to find the cheap books that are worth having, or at least worth giving a closer look.

So I’m creating a “Value Menu” on my website for books priced $1.99 or less. These are books that I’m familiar with and I think are worth buying. Does it mean I’d give them a five star review? Not necessarily. It means I think they’re worth at least as much as a bag of McDonald’s French fries.

Please check back when you’re looking for a cheap read, and hopefully I’ll have something that sounds appealing.

Thanks for reading!