Randall Gregg

I've always been drawn to the hidden corners of history, those shadowy spaces where forgotten stories lie buried beneath official narratives. As a writer, I don't just dig through archives—I excavate human souls. Each manuscript becomes my shovel, each sentence a careful brush sweeping away decades of dust from lives long overlooked. My research often keeps me up at night, poring over yellowed documents and faded photographs. But it's not the facts and dates that haunt me—it's the eyes staring back from century-old portraits, the hastily scribbled notes in margins of letters, the human fingerprints left on history's pages. I've learned that trauma doesn't die with its victims. It echoes through generations, shapes families, molds futures in ways we're only beginning to understand. When I write, I'm not interested in polishing historical monuments. My words are meant to cut through mythology, to expose the raw nerves of our past. I've found that the most profound truths often hide in plain sight—in the spaces between official records, in the silence between diary entries, in the things people couldn't or wouldn't say. Every story I tell is an act of resurrection. Take "Sarah's Locket," for instance. I didn't want to just describe another historical moment; I needed to make it breathe. History isn't a sequence of dates or a collection of facts—it's the sum of countless human hearts beating against impossible odds. It's love letters written by candlelight, secret meetings in church basements, whispered promises that somehow survived centuries to reach our ears. My work has taught me that survival itself is an art form. In the face of history's most brutal machinery, people found ways to love, to hope, to pass down their stories like precious heirlooms. When I write about these lives, I'm not just recording history—I'm bearing witness to the extraordinary courage that pulses beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary lives.