Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathleen Maca.
Hi Kathleen, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
As a child, one of my favorite things was to visit my grandparents’ farm. My grandfather, who was born in 1890, lived an amazing life in the real “Old West’ that I was fascinated with as a kid. He was a wonderful storyteller, and I could sit with him for hours as he told me about the past. Then, when we visited family cemeteries to maintain the gravestones and sites, he would tell me about who all of the surrounding graves were as well: what they were like, what they did for a living, what adventures they had…and I was hooked. So I learned early on that the past isn’t just a list of names and dates – it is filled with the people and their stories that populated it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I never thought about that love of stories as a career path. But I did do storytelling in a way while I worked in the advertising industry for 20 years.
After I left that line of work to focus on having a family, a friend invited me to write articles for a magazine that she was editor of, saying I could basically write about anything I wanted. Without even thinking about it too much, I immediately gravitated toward the stories of the local historic homes, the people who had lived there through the years, and what life was like on Galveston Island in the past.
It wasn’t something I had planned, but it showed me a way to enjoy what my heart loves every day and has given me the opportunity to share it with others through articles, books, and walking tours.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Most people who say they are not into history had a class that asked them to memorize dates. I start somewhere else. I start with a mystery, a scandal, a strange headstone, or a family feud, and let the history come in behind it. By the time someone realizes they are learning something, they are already hooked and asking me what happened next. Seeing the “Wow!” expressions on their faces is my favorite part.
The research always comes first, and I take it seriously. I spend a lot of time in archives, old newspapers, court records, and vital records, because the facts have to be right. And I’ve also been a genealogist for over 50 years, so accuracy of research is my main focus. But facts alone rarely drawn people into a story. What does are real people and their lives. So once I know what happened, I look for who it happened to, what they wanted, and what they stood to lose. A date is forgettable. A woman who escaped an abusive marriage and started her own successful business over 150 years ago, or a father and son who found themselves on opposite sides of a CivilWar battlefield facing each other are not.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
In a way, telling ghost stories and talking about local lore is a bit of a risk. It can be frowned on by other historians, and in some instances make them take me less seriously.
But I’ve found that these stories, in addition to being endlessly entertaining, are a way to involve readers or tour guests who aren’t interested in the history you would read on a historic marker. The history that is interwoven into the stories provides the context and setting, and people remember those facts surprisingly well when they hear about them in story form.
Whenever I travel, I try to do both a historic cemetery tour and a history-based ghost tour (not a “hokey” one), because the stories that communities around the world hold onto are very revealing about what different cultures hold as important.
Pricing:
- A History of the Hotel Galvez book 21.99
- Ghosts of Galveston book 21.99
- Ghostly Tales of Galveston book 12.99
- Tremont House-A History book 24.99
- Galveston’s Broadway Cemeteries book 24.99
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kathleenmaca.com
- Instagram: @kathleen_maca
- Facebook: Author, Kathleen Maca
- LinkedIn: Kathleen Maca, CTA
- Other: Tik Tok: @authorkathleenmaca
