Surprise! There's two of them!
Frances Hunter is actually two sisters, Mary Clare and Elizabeth Clare, who have put our lifelong love of storytelling to work writing historical fiction. We live in Austin, Texas, with our bunny Flower, who contributes by getting hay and bunny fur on all our research materials.
For To the Ends
of the Earth, our first novel, we conducted extensive historical research
and traveled the entire route of the journey described in the book, as well
as the Lewis and Clark Trail from Montana to the Pacific Coast. The novel
was published by Blind Rabbit Press in September 2006. It has been the winner
of the Violet Crown Award for Fiction, won a silver medal in the Independent
Publisher Book Awards, and was a finalist for Foreword Magazine's
Book of the Year.
We are presently working on The Fairest Portion of the Globe, the prequel to To the Ends of the Earth, and researching Bloody Island, a historical novel about Robert E. Lee.
Liz says: I've worked as a technical and business writer since 1988. Currently, I write and design historical exhibits for the Texas State Library and Archives. For many years, I produced The New Deal, a quarterly newsletter for political collectors. I also maintain another webite devoted to my interest in Herman Wedemeyer, an outstanding football star of the 1940s and one of the stars of Hawaii Five-O. In fact, it was writing Five-O fan fiction that I credit for reviving my interest in creative writing after many years of dormancy. In my spare time, I love to read, listen to Celtic and early American music, follow University of Texas sports, and just kick back.
Mary says: I was a small business columnist for the Austin Business Journal in the early nineties and currently write both fiction and non-fiction. My article "A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Incident on the Nueces" was published in the May 1998 issue of Civil War Magazine. In 2000, my poem "austin: a love letter" was selected as a winner in the Austin American-Statesman's Yeats of Austin poetry contest. I also serve as the webmaster for the Austin Civil War Round Table, a non-profit organization devoted to the study of the American Civil War. My day job is being a senior systems analyst at the University of Texas, writing software for university students and staff. Hook 'em Horns!