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Mary Sheeran

Goodreads Author

Born

Bethlehem, PA, The United States

Website

http://www.whohavethepower.com

Genre

Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Spirituality

Influences

Tchaikovsky, George Balanchine, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Anthony Burge ...more

Member Since

February 2013

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My first novel, "Who Have the Power," began when, after studying women's history, I wanted to explore why there was such a discrepancy between the world of, say, the American West as depicted in movies and television and what actually happened.

I focused on the Comstock Lode because I had grown up with the television show, "Bonanza." This series, entertaining as it was, got almost everything wrong about women of the West, about the Comstock Lode, and many other things. It took considerable time to write it, as women's stories began coming into libraries in the late 1980s and the 1990s. What took longer were stories of Native American women of the small tribes in California. Not that there is all that much now. The book both criticizes the i My first novel, "Who Have the Power," began when, after studying women's history, I wanted to explore why there was such a discrepancy between the world of, say, the American West as depicted in movies and television and what actually happened.

I focused on the Comstock Lode because I had grown up with the television show, "Bonanza." This series, entertaining as it was, got almost everything wrong about women of the West, about the Comstock Lode, and many other things. It took considerable time to write it, as women's stories began coming into libraries in the late 1980s and the 1990s. What took longer were stories of Native American women of the small tribes in California. Not that there is all that much now. The book both criticizes the invisibility of these people to popular depictions of the West and tells a story of how economic plundering just hurts everybody - but the truth will emerge eventually.

My second novel, "Quest of the Sleeping Princess," also began with a fascination - of the ballet choreographer George Balanchine. The story concerns a woman who is tending her dying mother, and her one respite is to go to the ballet. She creates a fantasy world that mirrors the Sleeping Beauty, and through the novel, I write about imagination and how Balanchine created his own world.

When I am not writing, I am singing or performing in some way. I've played leads in "Brigadoon," "Stop the World," "Picnic," "Cabaret," and in off Broadway plays in New York, where I also sang leads in small opera companies: Mimi in "La Boheme," Norina in "Don Pasquale," Marie in "La Fille du Regiment." I've sung many recital programs and lots of cabaret shows. The last cabaret show I did featured Tom Lehrer's songs. Then I went home to start working on "Banished." That took about six years - watching movies, researching the blacklist, revising, revising, and finally, done!

Meanwhile, a friend, Cate Simon, had gotten a contract for her historical romance, "Courting Anna." I had a romance sitting in my computer - for about ten years. I had gotten a series of rejections and then, as usually happened with me, gone singing. So I hunted the romance down and - it's really a historical romance, as there's a lot of history in it. It's related to "Who Have the Power" and I wrote it, perhaps, to try my hand at a romance and realizing that no one was reading WHTP. I found the book and started reading and couldn't put it down - I couldn't remember how I'd ended the thing. This book was contracted by Prairie Rose Publications, and it's name is "A Dangerous Liberty." It won the Romance category of the 2020 Independent Press Awards, and to my surprise, has gotten some enthusiastic readers. So if you have a manuscript hiding in your computer, do resurrect it!

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Mary Sheeran’s books

Average rating: 4.0 · 25 ratings · 15 reviews · 5 distinct works

	Banished From Memory 3.95 avg rating — 19 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Who Have the Power 4.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2006	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Dangerous Liberty it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Quest of the Sleeping Princess did not like it 1.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2010 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Idylls of the Collar 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Mary Sheeran's Blog

Query frustrations for historical novelists

One of the annoying questions agents like to have you answer (for them) when writing a query letter is, what book - obviously they want a best seller - does your book resemble?

Since I mostly write historical fiction, they're asking what historical novels would I lump my historical novels with?

This bothers me.

Because in order to write historical fiction, I need to read history. Nonfiction. A lot o Read more of this blog post »

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Published on June 20, 2021 21:50

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The Beginning of Always (The Persistence of Memory #3)

by Karen Janowsky (Goodreads Author)

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Easily Memorize the Periodic Table of Elements

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A Mother's Song: A Story of the Orphan Train

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May 08, 2021 10:15AM

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