RomanceEverAfter

The Writing Craft

Interview with Melissa Johnson
Publisher of HistoryLink 
www.historylink.info

Historylink.info originated, in a round about way, from my frustration with managing a very large collection of bookmarked favorite research sites. 

It seemed that, no matter how many sub-folders I created, the resources I found inevitably became buried or, by the time I found the site again, the link was dead! So, for my own personal use, I started putting my research finds into a database, organizing everything by time period (i.e., Regency category (i.e., Travel and Lodging) and topic (i.e., Coaches and Carriages). Eventually, because I thought others might have experienced similar frustrations (and it was just more fun than a database), I decided a web site was the best format to store, and grow, my collection. It has become much more than a site of links, and the process of writing overviews of the topics is very enjoyable.

How will writers (and readers) find your site helpful in their research?

The top search engines either don't pick up some of the hidden information on a topic from, say an author's web site, or it gives way too much information unrelated to your topic, such as Regency Hotel information when looking for information on the Regency period. 

Certainly there are some very savvy Internet searchers out there and I don't doubt that they can find what I find - eventually! It is also important to provide print resources in conjunction with the Internet links. One of our goals is to further enhance the Reference Summaries with examples; both from contemporary sources and also from fiction.

In addition to the historical Reference Summaries and Chronologies, we have within our File Cabinet various original materials such as a Character Profile Chart, Writing Exercises and how-to articles. Multi-published author Colleen Thompson (a.k.a Gwyneth Atlee) has written, to date, seven articles for us. I love her style of writing because she is so thorough and weaves into her articles helpful quotes and advice from other published authors. 

I hope to reinstate a regular newsletter, but currently the focus is on the the historical Reference Summaries. Also, we are currently trying out a message board, and I hope visitors will take advantage of the forums for discussing historical research and writing related topics.