Testimonials
“If we don’t preserve people’s stories, they will disappear after two generations.” —Bob Joyce
Published Memoirists | Personal Histories | Books about People Who Have Passed | Letter Collections | Family Histories
Published Memoirists
Without the expertise and guidance of Mary, my memoir, Hush Now, Baby, would still be a rough draft. She is the consummate editor and writing coach. Struggling to shape my book, I called on Mary to do three things: First, to examine my manuscript with a fresh eye for detailed editing. In the process, she not only hammered my ubiquitous clichés and dashes, but also polished both punctuation and language usage—all things difficult to spot in your own writing, even if you’ve taught English for over thirty years as I have!
Second, to help with clarity of purpose and continuity throughout my fifteen chapters. Peppering me with pertinent questions, she forced me to rethink specific passages as well as the overall message I wanted to convey. Together we reorganized chapters, decided where to put scenes, and decided what to delete. (She’s ruthless on the latter!) Third, to hold my feet to the fire. I’m a procrastinator. In addition, I have trouble with closure, so I’d still be tweaking the text on my deathbed were it not for Mary’s insistence that we keep to a writing schedule.
No athlete has enjoyed a more rigorous coach or one with more encouraging words. She believed in my story, and it showed in all of the energy she put into our sessions. Mary met all of my expectations of a writing coach with candor, caring, and supreme professionalism.
Angela Williams, Charleston, South Carolina
Life coach, writing teacher, and author
Without Mary’s help and encouragement, I would have never started writing my autobiography. Being foreign-born and not trusting my English language skills, I needed her expertise. She took on the challenge of pulling together my story and giving it the direction it needed. She also helped me recall and write long-forgotten incidents. Because of her, I was able to write, publish, and sell The Other Side of Knowing: Searching for Truth and Peace during World War II and Its Aftermath.
Margit Benton, Charleston, South Carolina
Retired hotel manager
Mary has helped me with a variety of family history writing projects. After my husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness, she recorded conversations with him and wrote The Memoir of Peter B. Johnston based on these interviews. Later she organized and edited his letters and talks. Mary works well from transcription to finished text, keeping the authenticity of the speaker’s voice and organizing material in a cohesive fashion. She also organized and edited two volumes of family letters (Letters Written by Blanche and Rich Johnston between 1922 and 1986 and From Ida’s Daughters), bringing order to material that family members valued but did not have the time and/or skills to complete. She is helping us preserve voices from my family’s past. More recently she helped we write my own personal history, Bloom Where You Are Planted.
Charlotte Cannon, Chicago, Illinois
Retired reading teacher, mother of four, and grandmother of fifteen
See memoir (Rooftop Publishing)
Personal Histories
Mary was easy to work with and thoughtful about how to best achieve our end goal—facilitating the creation of my dad’s autobiography, The Personal History of Charles Lynn Fife. Mary did a great job of not only structuring and editing his writing but also adding meaningful elements like timelines, newspaper articles, and quotes, as well as interviews with his kids and others that made the autobiography very accessible and easy to read. The interviews that Mary conducted were great! (I was one of several that she interviewed.) Mary was easy to talk to and share my experiences with. She was always punctual and efficient; she knew what information she needed and made it easy for us and my siblings to be a part of it. I know my dad really enjoyed the entire process and trusted her input. She did a great job of making my dad’s history interesting, engaging, and a true representation of his life. During the final years of my dad’s life he read it many times, and when he was no longer well enough to, his hospice volunteer did, bringing tears to both of them.
Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Chicago, Illinois
Marriage therapist
Mary did a remarkable job working with our mother to tell the story of her life. She began the process with a series of interviews that made Mom feel very comfortable telling Mary anything and everything about her life. The beauty of the finished product was in how well Mary organized sometimes disconnected stories into a series of chapters that captured the major aspects of our mother’s life and accomplishments. I learned things about my mother I had not known. Mom is very proud of the book. Her extended family, friends, and members of our community have loved reading it. I appreciate Mary’s wonderful writing, her attention to detail, and her commitment to keep the project on track so that my mother’s extraordinary life story got told. As I worked with Mary to revise and edit Up, Up and Away! I’ve Got a Lot to Do Today, while also adding pictures with important captions, Mary was a complete professional—a delight to work with at every step. I highly recommend Mary’s work!
Laura L. Bush, PhD, Phoenix, Arizona
Editor and personal historian
Peek inside Up, Up and Away! I’ve Got a Lot to Do Today
I hired Tell Your Stories to help me polish and publish my autobiography. I found that Mary was easy to work with, but I underestimated the complexity involved and the amount of time creating my book would take. Mary pushed me to express more of my feelings in my narrative and to tone down my criticism of other people. I now see that these changes improved the quality and readability of my book.
Mary used a number of tools to help me to organize my story, photos, and captions. I am not a tech-savvy person, so I was not very comfortable using them. She effectively worked around my shortcomings. She suggested I feature some stories by placing them in textboxes and highlight certain thoughts by using pull quotes. I am very pleased with the final product and see how these two features add a lot to my story. My one regret is that I rushed to complete the book. I now wish I had taken the time to expand on a couple of my chapters. Mary was excellent for my project. She reminded me of my high school English teacher in that she challenged my grammar, spelling, and thought process. Without question, she made From Collierville to Kiawah a better read.
Morgan Morton, Kiawah, South Carolina
Retired business executive at Procter and Gamble and Warner-Lambert
Peek inside From Collierville to Kiawah
At the age of seventy-three, with some physical weaknesses and mental limitations due to a stroke, I wanted to write about my life to leave a bit of myself for my grandchildren, who are very young and live far away. I had not written much for others to read, and my mind was slipping. Until I spoke with Mary, I was not sure I could record my life story. She explained how we could do it. Across several months she would interview me on the phone. (We live a couple thousand miles apart, so meeting in person wasn’t possible.) After transcribing the interviews, she would weave together my stories. Then it would be my turn to make the changes I wanted. Despite my challenges with focus and memory, I’ve been able to tell my story with Mary as my writing partner and mentor. I never could have done The Life of Blanche B. Johnston without her.
Blanche Johnston, Salt Lake City, Utah
Retired law librarian
Peek inside The Life of Blanche B. Johnston
Books about People Who Have Passed
Mary knows what is required to make Her Book: The Life and Words of Anne Scannelly Able Pooser come into existence. She helped me see that my mom’s boxes of notebooks and papers could be tamed into something beautiful and readable. I wanted to believe it was possible, but without Mary’s organizational skills, talent, and clear “assignments,” I sadly would not be able to make it happen on my own.
Mary was very encouraging throughout the long creative process while I plowed through the boxes upon boxes of my mother’s writings. She was patient as I struggled through the emotional revelations I experienced while reliving events in my life and the life of my mother. Patience and kindness were necessary, and Mary demonstrated both in abundance. She also helped me learn to use my computer, kept me on task, set deadlines, and assisted in making contacts with other professionals as time went on. Her “connections” are skilled, and I am happy with their contributions.
I would certainly encourage anyone interested in creating a personal or family history to do it! It is a wonderful feeling to hold that completed work in your hands. If they are anything like me, it will be more likely to happen with the help of a true professional. You could not find anyone better than Mary!
Camber Henry, Charleston, South Carolina
Retired Delta Airlines flight attendant
Peek inside Her Book: The Life and Words of Anne Scannelly Able Pooser
I hired Tell Your Stories to help me create a short book about my father’s childhood and his experiences as a bomber pilot during World War II. Mary kept me on track with insightful guidance. I felt like she was a friend helping me write. Mary edited the book at least twice. Each time she offered suggestions about what I might add or change to make the story clearer and more interesting.
In addition to using email and having phone meetings, we used Basecamp to send photos and large PDF files large back and forth. Mary suggested including a timeline, redesigning some old newspaper articles, and having an illustrator create a map of my dad’s bombing missions—all of which added a great deal to the book. While I had already completed a rough draft of the book before I learned about Mary and her team, it was very helpful to have her edit my draft and discuss with me the reasons for including or not including certain portions of my father’s story. Working with Mary significantly improved the manuscript over what I would have been able to do alone. I was surprised by how smoothly and quickly the whole process went and couldn’t be more pleased with World War II Stories of Herbert Henderson Hill.
Herb Hill Pullman, Washington
Chemistry professor
Peek inside World War II Stories of Herbert Henderson Hill
I truly don’t think the project of telling my father’s life story would have happened without Mary’s help. She kept my brother and me focused by providing us with overall guidance, format, and deadlines to keep the project moving along. During the times when I was overwhelmed with all the photos we had, Mary was invaluable in helping us narrow down which ones to include and suggesting concise, relevant captions for them. For these reasons and more, I would definitely recommend Mary to anyone looking to complete any similar undertaking. She does an amazing job, and I’m so grateful we got to work with her on The Life Story of Hazen Randall Hillyard.
Margaret Lazenby, Boston, Massachusetts
Peek inside The Life Story of Hazen Randall Hillyard
I hired Mary to help me tell the story of my husband’s life, The Life Story of Jim Poth; he was a university physics professor for thirty-eight years and passed away in 2011. Although the project was rather long, it was entirely worth it. I was extremely pleased with all that Mary did, from the interview phase to the proofing phase and final product. Mary absolutely amazed me—she could be given a name and immediately come up with information on them including pictures and other relevant material. I would highly recommend Mary to someone looking to tell a personal history, and, in fact, I already have.
Alice Poth, Oxford, Ohio
Letter Collections
After listening to a World War II documentary, my wife Linda and I decided to create a book with my father’s 200-plus letters to my mom, written while he was stationed in Europe in 1945 and ’46. We also had his diary, numerous photographs, Army uniforms, mementos, newspaper articles he’d sent home, and books about the 82nd Airborne to which he had belonged. We knew we needed help to organize all of this material. Mary, recommended by a close friend who had worked with her on a memoir, came to our house to assess the project. When she saw the mess of stuff on the dining room table, she said, “We can do this.” We hired her on the spot!
The first thing we worked on was computer communication. Mary was very patient with us old folks as she introduced us to Google sheets to organize and edit the written documents and Freedcamp to organize and caption the photos. After reading all of the letters, she suggested which to include and what material could be deleted. With her help, we selected various items mentioned in the letters that needed further explanation. I wrote footnotes for some and textboxes for others.
Next we selected newspaper articles. Someone on Mary’s team redesigned these to fit the dimensions of the book. Mary also helped us create the introduction and epilogue. When the text and photos were ready, the book designer submitted design samples. Mary, Linda, and I discussed what worked best, and the designer took it from there, differentiating between Dad’s letters, text boxes, V-mails, diary remarks, and the text that I wrote with unique fonts and design treatments.
We couldn’t be happier with Dearest Bea. It is a story of love between my parents and our family and friends. It also shows the love of our country which has unfortunately been forgotten by many of our citizens and leaders. We commend Mary and her team for their organization, teamwork, and work ethic. We have had nothing but positive comments from people who have read the book. Bill Mulligan, the son of my dad’s best friend, wrote us this comment: “Mary Johnston’s introduction was brilliant. In plain language, she sets your book apart from so many ‘typical’ books of that era. The whole thing is a blockbuster. (I’ve written a number of history booklets and want you to know that I especially appreciate that you not only accomplished it, but with excellence—and then some.)”
John Common, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
Retired dentist
Family Histories
Tell Your Stories created a 615-page book, The Carr 16, about my father’s family of sixteen children. Mary and her book designer were wonderful to work with. A couple times we ran into something that they didn’t think could be done, but by working together and being persistent, the book turned out just the way I had envisioned it! Mary made a lot of suggestions about how to improve the text my relatives and I had written. We accepted almost every single one. She uses a variety of tools—Google Docs, Basecamp, and Freedcamp—to help organize material and facilitate the creation of a book. It took me some time to learn how they work, but I found that all of them were very helpful to move the project forward and get everyone on the same page.
Mary suggested using multiple features—textboxes, illustrations, pull quotes, and interviews with a variety of people—to add interest to the book. I chose to use everything, which added to the overall beauty of the book. Getting professional help to create a family history adds to the cost, but had I done it on my own, my book would in no way be as amazing and would have taken much longer to complete. I wanted something special to share with my family members that would be a rare treat, and I got it.
Donna Harrison, Charleston, South Carolina
Pharmacy professor