Matthew Langdon Cost

Matthew Langdon Cost is a former business owner and social studies teacher who is now making writing his career. Upon graduating with a B.A. in history from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1989, he began work on his first book, a historical novel about the Cuban Revolution of 1953–1959. The fictional protagonist in this manuscript follows Fidel Castro and his successful revolution in overthrowing the corrupt regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. The novel utilizes flashbacks from Cuban history to reveal that this particular revolution was inevitable, but is currently collecting dust awaiting a visit to the island of Cuba.

Cost then wrote two mystery novels, Mainely Power and Mainely Fear, based in the town of Brunswick. Although both flirted with interest at several major publishing houses, he ended up self-publishing them. Both were reviewed very favorably in the Maine newspapers and sold about 2,000 copies each, mostly in Maine.

In 2007, after taking a two-week class on teaching biography in the classroom, Cost decided to return to historical fiction, choosing Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War as his topic. Seven years of research and writing brought him to a crossroads, and Cost decided to leave teaching to finish this novel. In October 2013, he met an editor that agreed to work with him on the manuscript, telling him that not only was it not done, but had just begun. Six months of intense editing led to a finely polished novel of Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War. When traditional publishing didn’t pan out, Cost went the route of Amazon where his 382-page novel now resides.