My new book is entitled Growing a Top-Notch Family Tree with Stories from its Branches. It was released on Amazon on July 1, 2023.

This two-part book gives advice to genealogists about specific steps to take to grow a great family tree online, with details about what to do and what to avoid to have the best possible tree for current family, future generations and the wider community to enjoy. It includes details about three different online sites, Ancestry, FamilySearch and MyHeritage. It also discusses the importance of DNA testing and DNA matching with relatives to help you verify your findings.

The second half of the book shares interesting stories about family tree members, including famous ones like Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins, colorful characters from the Stewart/Stuart family of Scotland, and “troublesome” women relatives like Elizabeth Woodville of England, Elizabeth Hutchinson, from Massachusetts, and fancy dresser Thomasine Boyes, a British immigrant to Massachusetts and wife of Rev. Francis Johnson, a popular Puritan minister. Stories are told about great-grandfather Hall Deland, a key figure in the Underground Railroad in Michigan, along with a great-grandfather who got rich buying slaves and working them on his Louisiana plantation. Some stories are funny, such as one about a relative’s embarrassing encounter with Puritan ethics, while others are quite sad, such as the chapter about six generations of sad endings among Zealand relatives.

This book is designed to be both educational and entertaining for anyone interested in genealogy, be they new to the subject or an experienced master.

I have a great interest in genealogy and find it fascinating. By writing this book, I wanted to share what I have learned about building a family tree and inspire others to create a family tree online or improve upon an existing one. 

My target audience for the book is anyone who has an interest in genealogy and growing a great family tree online. I hope readers will realize how captivating genealogy can be after finishing my book. And I hope its tips will give them practical advice on how to have a top-notch family tree themselves. 

This is my fourth self-published book. My first book was a novel titled Torn Between Worlds, a Mexican girl’s journey to find herself. This book is written in the form of a diary, covering a young girl’s experiences from age 12 to 15, and detailing her adventures in the US, Mexico and Spain during that time period. My second book is called Life Lessons: Guidance for All Ages. It’s an anthology of stories by mature adults sharing events that happened to them in their lives and what they learned as a result. My third book is What’s so Special About Spain? This is a travel guide to Spain designed for children, covering nine interesting cities to visit in Spain. 

I grew up in Chicagoland and worked as a journalist there for many years, after receiving a master’s degree in journalism. Later on, I worked as a magazine editor. Then I earned a second master’s degree in education and was a teacher for 12 years. 

Now I am retired and living with my husband in sunny Spain, where I keep busy writing, reading, practicing yoga and singing in two choirs. I also write a blog covering politics, books, art, poetry, travel and more. I spend time attending a weekly writer’s group meeting and also devote time to marketing my four books. In fact, this is how I became aware of this opportunity I have here of promoting my book on Authors’ Lounge. 

Here is a link to my blog. 

https://spainwriter.home.blog/.

For more information about my book, see this Amazon link.