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Step back in time for a moment. The year is 1778. Imagine yourself marching alongside George Washington's Army. You're cold, tired and hungry. Or maybe it's 1895 and you're driving 7mph in a new-fangled machine called a horseless carriage. Can you hear the engine? "Kerplunk, hiss, pitouee!" Blow the horn, "bwonk! bwonk!" Picture yourself standing beside Thomas Edison in 1879 when he invented the light bulb. Can you sense the anticipation? How would you feel if you were a civil war soldier in 1864 writing a letter home to your mom? Can you become the character in your mind and immerse yourself in a subject that excites you? Like many writers, Michael's stories come from what interests him. Often Michael and his wife Jane travel to museums, libraries, re-enactments and historic places. They go out of sheer curiosity but sometimes stumble upon a good story that is just waiting to be told.
While attending a revolutionary war re-enactment Michael noticed women and children in costume along with the soldiers. Why women and children he thought? His curiosity got the best of him and he introduced himself. He asked questions. He went home and researched camp followers (as they were called). In his research Michael found that families often followed their dad to war because they had nowhere else to go. Camp followers camped right alongside of George Washington's Army. They walked an average of nine miles a day, slept on the ground, worked for rations and nearly starved. At times George Washington had as many as 2000 women and children following his army. Soon Michael had imagined a story he titled Far From Home about the re-enactors he had just met. Another book Michael is working on is titled, Dear Mother, Dear Momma. It tells the story of the Civil War through two letters: the first from a young Union soldier and the second from a Confederate soldier. Through the letters we learn that both boys meet under friendly circumstances and wonder if tomorrow they will be shooting at each other. Back home they could have been friends. During the Civil War letter writing was the main form of communication between soldiers and their loved ones. This account is inspired by a letter from 1864 that Michael and his wife Jane purchased from an auction house.
What's next? Baseball? Steam locomotives? Cowboys? What interests you? For Michael the research is just as exciting as writing and illustrating the story. It's like stepping back in time.
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On a trip to an antique automobile museum Michael noticed a fabulous looking horseless carriage nicknamed by its' creator Frank Duryea, the buggyaut. Michael sat in it and pictured himself back in 1895. What would it be like to drive it he thought? How fast did it go? He went home to his local library to research Duryea and the first automobile race in America. He read an account of the race in a newspaper article dated November 29th 1895. He corresponded with the grandson of Frank Duryea and soon had gathered enough information to write The Great Horseless Carriage Race.
Young Thomas Edison came out of Michael's fascination with inventions. He visited all the Edison historic sites including the Menlo Park Laboratory and the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey. Michael wanted to see firsthand just what the inventions looked like and how they worked. He watched a movie on an 1894 Kinetoscope and listened to a recording of "Mary had a Little Lamb" on Edison's 1877 Tinfoil Phonograph. Michael rode the train that Edison worked on as a boy, sat in the baggage car that Thomas had converted into a laboratory and visited his birthplace in Milan, Ohio.
