Mary Lynn Archibald (www.winecountrywriter.com), urges anyone who loves his or her family’s stories to preserve and protect them before it is too late.

“Family stories are priceless,” she says. ”We had stories like the one about the time my grandmother almost shot my grandfather because he was so covered with soot from his job as coal-stoker on a steam train that she didn’t recognize him.

“Or the one about the hard years of the Great Depression, when Grandpa fed his wife and daughter down in Florida by fishing, shooting squirrels, and collecting pineapples from the fields.

“Or the one about the time during World War II when Mom was postmistress in our small town of Soquel, California, and played hostess to the FBI, who used her kitchen closet to steam open suspicious German mail.

“When I suggested to my mother shortly after her 81st birthday that I write a book about her life, she was all for it. Mom loved to tell old family stories, and I thought a book would be a great Christmas gift to the family that year.

“That was in 1995. We finished it in 1996, and not a moment too soon, as Mom had her first stroke of many that year, and I had to go to the rest home where she was recuperating to show her the finished product, which was then intended only for the family.

“She was so excited by all the attention her book engendered in the doctors, nurses and aides, that she perked up right away, and recovered fully.

“But we were very lucky. My advice: don’t trust to luck. Get started today, because before you know it, that priceless family legacy will be gone.

“And so, newly revised and updated in 2006, Briarhopper is my mother’s personal story, as true as her memories would allow. “Mom is gone now, but she left her legacy to the world,”

Mary Lynn Archibald is a freelance copywriter and author of two memoirs: The first is Briarhopper: A History (a personal odyssey that leads the reader from the Southeast Kentucky coal country, through Florida and Texas and finally to California during the Great Depression and afterward, throughout WWII).

Available now as an e-book on her website, and as a paperback, at www.booklocker.com/books/2669.html, and all other major online bookstores. Details at: www.winecountrywriter.com.

###