Why Ozarks history?

I've lived in the Ozarks all my life and have long had an interest in local history, whetted partly by my interest in genealogy, since all branches of my family settled in the Ozarks generations ago. I've been freelance writing for publiction for almost thirty-five years, and for the past twenty years or so my speciality has been the history of the Ozarks and surrounding regions like Kansas and northern Missouri. Even my fiction tends to be historically based. I've altered the oft-cited advice to "write what you know" only slightly, in that I tend to "write where I know." Periodically I'll be posting thoughts and news pertaining to historical people and events of the Ozarks and to my writing about those events.