Morgan Wilder

Recently I stumbled on a treasure trove of photographs of Civil War soldiers in the archives of the Library of Congress. I spent hours looking through the portraits of those long-ago heroes, most of whose names and stories are lost in the mists of history. But being the careful scholar that I am, I noticed that there were more than a few drop-dead gorgeous soldiers in that photo archive. That led me to make this portrait album of 27 handsome soldiers from the Civil War.

Choosing which men to include in my portrait album was no easy task, let me tell you. With a lot of help from my writer’s group, I whittled my gallery of dozens of portraits down to twenty-seven men. A few were famous. Most are completely unknown today. All we have left of them is their faces — some bold, some reserved, some raffish, some soulful — but all men who were willing to put their lives on the line for a cause they believe in. And all worth a second look, or even a third.

Click Here to Get Your Free Copy of Red-Hot Men of the Civil War

There’s more than one kind of romantic love.

There’s the kind we have all dreamed of, and a few of us have actually experienced — the love that falls on you like a thunderbolt, shocking you out of your normal self and electrifying you with feelings that make everything else seem pale and lifeless.

Then there is the kind of love that happens in my book, Wounded. The friendship between Adam Spencer and Sarah Winslow builds silently until it catches fire when he discovers her secret.

Which one is more romantic? I leave that to you to decide, dear reader.

I’ve been working at home on mundane projects for several days, scarcely leaving the house except to walk the dog. My husband and daughters are away. When I felt in need of a little romantic moment, I had to turn to the world of the imagination.

I had never seen this quote from Langston Hughes before, but it fits the photo perfectly, don’t you think?

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

Those words have even more resonance in Northern California, where rain has been very scarce for three years now. The weather report keeps promising rain, but somehow it never comes.