Dori Hammer is…On the Writing Block!

Sherry Ickes
5 days ago
4 min read

Our next author has a young reader’s book set in Gettysburg. But first, let’s find out a little more about Dori…

Dori Hammer lives in Bainbridge, Pennsylvania, with her husband, their three children, and their poodle-pug dog named T. Dori is currently a high school business teacher who helps her brother at the family farm’s roadside produce stand during her summer breaks. Dori’s childhood summers spent on the farm were used as inspiration for the inaugural book in the series. Dori also drew inspiration for her book from her son’s metal detector and the many holes he dug throughout their yard searching for treasure.

Do you have a writing schedule, or do you write whenever you can squeeze it in?

I wish I was a structured person who could stick to a schedule, but the desire to write comes and goes. I write for fun as opposed to a career, so I don’t force myself to write when I don’t want to. I’m a wife, a mom to three teenagers, teacher, and I help my brother in the summers with his roadside produce stand so my time is stretched pretty thin. Book #2 has taken me longer than I wanted to write, but I lost my mom in October of 2023, and it’s taken me some time to find my drive to write. My mom has always been my biggest fan of all the hobbies, projects, and businesses I have had over the years. I so wanted to have her read the second book in the series because I did something special with the character names to reflect all the important dogs in my life. My mom was a huge dog lover and would have been so excited to see the names of our family dogs in the book.

How much research do you conduct for your storylines?

I conduct a lot of research for my storylines. Sometimes, I end up going down a rabbit hole that I later regret because I have so much historical information I want to cram into the book that I struggle to decide what is kept and what gets the chopping block. While what I write is fiction because it involves time travel, it’s important to me to get the details as accurate as I can. The book I’m working on right now has the characters (my three children) traveling back in time to Bannack, Montana. Bannack is a real place with a rich history about how Montana got its start and how its role in the gold rush of the 1860s in that region was significant. I found first-hand accounts from people who lived there, and they provided a lot of the historical accuracy I was hoping to achieve.

In what stage of your writing, did you determine that your book was to be a standalone, or a series?

I knew from the start that I wanted to create a series. My inspiration comes from various time-travel series that my kids enjoyed reading so much during elementary school. I wanted to include my children in my story and have them travel to a variety of places to learn about historical events. I purposely put Book # 1 on the cover for two reasons. The first reason was so that people knew to expect more books. The second reason was because it drives me crazy when the first book in a series doesn’t have a number on it and then it’s sitting on the shelf with the other books that do have numbers. I don’t want to see book # 2 without seeing a labeled book # 1 to the left of it.

Who is your favorite mystery sleuth? (Books, TV, amateur and professional alike)

Yikes! That’s a tough one. Nancy Drew will always be my favorite book mystery sleuth. My mom would take me to Walden Books at Park City Shopping Mall in Lancaster when I was a teen and I loved it! For TV, Ben Gates in the National Treasure movies was the inspiration for an adult historical fiction book I started but I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish. As an adult, I love the stories of what happened in our country in the 1700 and 1800’s and the mysteries that historians are still trying to solve today. Our country is really young when you compare that to the history mysteries of the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, or what they are trying to figure out about Oak Island.

What is Lost and Found From Underground about?

While tasked with removing boxes of junk from their grandparent’s barn…Huntley and his twin sisters, Callie and Emma, discover a metal detector from their mother’s childhood. After showing their mom the metal detector, she snatches it away, saying it’s too dangerous for them to use. However, curiosity drives the trio to find the detector and try it out for themselves. After all, what could be so dangerous about digging some metal objects out of the ground?