HF Working on a Civil War Novel: Third Time's the Charm!

Historical-Fiction
You asked about plantations in Middle Tennessee. In my family history there an example that would fit - family members who lived in Tennessee went in together to buy a plantation in Mississippi but it ended up in a lawsuit. So the plantation doesn't have to be located in Tennessee to be historically accurate!
 
General Robert E Lee’s Warhorses, Newman Springs Publishing. It came out a week before the Covid shutdown last year 😳.
It chronically takes the reader through the animals (primarily horses) Lee owned; the difficulty he had maintaining horses for the ANV and his post war rides through Virginia on Traveller and Lucy Long.
Thank you for asking.
Oooh, I know a lady who'd probably love a book on that subject! I'll pass it along to her.

I'm with you on the covid thing - the Raiders book came out March 15th, and lockdown started here on March 13th. I had a couple of presentations a week lined up from March to July, when I was supposed to do one at Andersonville on the anniversary of the hanging, and not a single one came off. A few were eventually done as Zooms, and I finally did the Andersonville between surges this past summer, but it was a pretty tough time to have a new book come out.
 
Oooh, I know a lady who'd probably love a book on that subject! I'll pass it along to her.

I'm with you on the covid thing - the Raiders book came out March 15th, and lockdown started here on March 13th. I had a couple of presentations a week lined up from March to July, when I was supposed to do one at Andersonville on the anniversary of the hanging, and not a single one came off. A few were eventually done as Zooms, and I finally did the Andersonville between surges this past summer, but it was a pretty tough time to have a new book come out.
Lol.! Your Raiders sounds like my experience. I had two signings and two lectures set up….. all were cancelled. The monuments coming down at about the same time made matters worse.
My book printing expires in April - not sure I will renew for another year.
Thanks for alerting those you think might have an interest
 
Another yet-unpublished "author" here, still trying to finish the same book I keep writing, scrapping, and rewriting since I was 12. (I'm 28 now, haha.) For those interested in knowing, it follows a young soldier in Company F of the 26th North Carolina through the war and into reconstruction, but I keep scrapping it and starting over. Part of it is I've grown a lot as a person and a writer since age 12, but part of it is also that I keep changing up what I want to happen, ie, what events the main character will experience, and when, in regards to non-historical events. Not even sure if I want to do it all as one book, or as a series. If it's one book, it'll probably be ridiculously long.
I can say that coming up with a "Plots and Fragments list" has helped a lot. It enables me to keep writing without forgetting the interesting tidbits I want to add, and preserves what I call "spinoff ideas," ie, possible new stories or alternate routes.
The one thing I have a hard time with is that there's so much interesting stuff that ties into the research part of the book, and I end up spending 99.9 percent of my time "diving into rabbit holes." I want the actions of the 26th to be as historically accurate as possible, even though my main character manages to find his way into some crazy messes. :wink:
 
Another yet-unpublished "author" here, still trying to finish the same book I keep writing, scrapping, and rewriting since I was 12. (I'm 28 now, haha.) For those interested in knowing, it follows a young soldier in Company F of the 26th North Carolina through the war and into reconstruction, but I keep scrapping it and starting over. Part of it is I've grown a lot as a person and a writer since age 12, but part of it is also that I keep changing up what I want to happen, ie, what events the main character will experience, and when, in regards to non-historical events. Not even sure if I want to do it all as one book, or as a series. If it's one book, it'll probably be ridiculously long.
I can say that coming up with a "Plots and Fragments list" has helped a lot. It enables me to keep writing without forgetting the interesting tidbits I want to add, and preserves what I call "spinoff ideas," ie, possible new stories or alternate routes.
The one thing I have a hard time with is that there's so much interesting stuff that ties into the research part of the book, and I end up spending 99.9 percent of my time "diving into rabbit holes." I want the actions of the 26th to be as historically accurate as possible, even though my main character manages to find his way into some crazy messes. :wink:
One nice thing about writing nonfiction - I could stick an awful lot of interesting, related facts in the endnotes for each chapter!

I've found that nonfiction is an easier "sell" than fiction, and for me it's turned out to be more profitable by quite a bit. I still get decent royalty checks from books on birds that I wrote starting back in 2006 (by that point, I'd been published in every bird magazine in the US and Canada, an one in the UK, but when I finally sold a novel, the publisher didn't do much to promote it (they were a start up and cranking out 5 new books a week at that point), and it didn't sell terribly well, so Amazon "bundled" it with 9 other slow selling novels from the same publisher and sold them as ten books for 99 cents! I didn't work that long and for that many years to make 7% of nine cents per book, so I exercised a clause to take my rights back, and went back to nonfiction, shifting to History because I had gone down a rabbit hole with the raiders and was pretty sure the standard version of events was not accurate.

Two other random observations - it's much easier to finish a book when you have a contract and an actual deadline, and you can always go back and write a second book connected to your first with the information you had to set aside. Having published the book on the raiders (and built myself a bit of a reputation besides, as I submitted it under a different pen name than the other books have on the covers), I'm now working on a book with all the (in my opinion) interesting stories that people aren't aware of, tentatively called "Unknown Andersonville". Now all I have to do is finish researching it (National Archives closure is making it hard to get research materials), find a publisher, and do a decent job of it.

Good Luck!
 
Another yet-unpublished "author" here, still trying to finish the same book I keep writing, scrapping, and rewriting since I was 12. (I'm 28 now, haha.) For those interested in knowing, it follows a young soldier in Company F of the 26th North Carolina through the war and into reconstruction, but I keep scrapping it and starting over. Part of it is I've grown a lot as a person and a writer since age 12, but part of it is also that I keep changing up what I want to happen, ie, what events the main character will experience, and when, in regards to non-historical events. Not even sure if I want to do it all as one book, or as a series. If it's one book, it'll probably be ridiculously long.
I can say that coming up with a "Plots and Fragments list" has helped a lot. It enables me to keep writing without forgetting the interesting tidbits I want to add, and preserves what I call "spinoff ideas," ie, possible new stories or alternate routes.
The one thing I have a hard time with is that there's so much interesting stuff that ties into the research part of the book, and I end up spending 99.9 percent of my time "diving into rabbit holes." I want the actions of the 26th to be as historically accurate as possible, even though my main character manages to find his way into some crazy messes. :wink:
Keep plugging away Fenwick. I can’t tell you how many times I put my manuscript down and picked it back up later with renewed determination.
If you don’t mind a little advice, pick up a copy of Caring The Flag by Gordon Rhea. It’s a true story of Private Charles Weldon. Unlike yours it a true story but I think if you look at how Rhea structured the book, it will help you on blending historical events with fiction. More precisely, blending in historical accuracy with what might have happed with your character.
 
One nice thing about writing nonfiction - I could stick an awful lot of interesting, related facts in the endnotes for each chapter!

I've found that nonfiction is an easier "sell" than fiction, and for me it's turned out to be more profitable by quite a bit. I still get decent royalty checks from books on birds that I wrote starting back in 2006 (by that point, I'd been published in every bird magazine in the US and Canada, an one in the UK, but when I finally sold a novel, the publisher didn't do much to promote it (they were a start up and cranking out 5 new books a week at that point), and it didn't sell terribly well, so Amazon "bundled" it with 9 other slow selling novels from the same publisher and sold them as ten books for 99 cents! I didn't work that long and for that many years to make 7% of nine cents per book, so I exercised a clause to take my rights back, and went back to nonfiction, shifting to History because I had gone down a rabbit hole with the raiders and was pretty sure the standard version of events was not accurate.

Two other random observations - it's much easier to finish a book when you have a contract and an actual deadline, and you can always go back and write a second book connected to your first with the information you had to set aside. Having published the book on the raiders (and built myself a bit of a reputation besides, as I submitted it under a different pen name than the other books have on the covers), I'm now working on a book with all the (in my opinion) interesting stories that people aren't aware of, tentatively called "Unknown Andersonville". Now all I have to do is finish researching it (National Archives closure is making it hard to get research materials), find a publisher, and do a decent job of it.

Good Luck!
I should like to read your current work when it comes out. Andersonville is one of those "rabbit holes" that I can't get enough of. Your book on the Raiders is now on my list, too. I might just have to go ahead and get it when I finish John Ransom's Andersonville Diary. :thumbsup:
Hoping that in the near future, I'll be able to spend more time writing, thus making a contract feasible. I usually only get a few minutes a night these days to write, as I've been working three jobs. Don't get me wrong- I'll stay up all night writing if I give myself half a chance, but 04:00 Comes early! :bounce:


Keep plugging away Fenwick. I can’t tell you how many times I put my manuscript down and picked it back up later with renewed determination.
If you don’t mind a little advice, pick up a copy of Caring The Flag by Gordon Rhea. It’s a true story of Private Charles Weldon. Unlike yours it a true story but I think if you look at how Rhea structured the book, it will help you on blending historical events with fiction. More precisely, blending in historical accuracy with what might have happed with your character.
I'll definitely put that on my list. Sounds like a good deal to me, haha. Not only do I get to read a book, I get the chance to draw framing out of them, and learn what to do/not do with my own writing.
 
Another yet-unpublished "author" here, still trying to finish the same book I keep writing, scrapping, and rewriting since I was 12. (I'm 28 now, haha.) For those interested in knowing, it follows a young soldier in Company F of the 26th North Carolina through the war and into reconstruction, but I keep scrapping it and starting over. Part of it is I've grown a lot as a person and a writer since age 12, but part of it is also that I keep changing up what I want to happen, ie, what events the main character will experience, and when, in regards to non-historical events. Not even sure if I want to do it all as one book, or as a series. If it's one book, it'll probably be ridiculously long.
I can say that coming up with a "Plots and Fragments list" has helped a lot. It enables me to keep writing without forgetting the interesting tidbits I want to add, and preserves what I call "spinoff ideas," ie, possible new stories or alternate routes.
The one thing I have a hard time with is that there's so much interesting stuff that ties into the research part of the book, and I end up spending 99.9 percent of my time "diving into rabbit holes." I want the actions of the 26th to be as historically accurate as possible, even though my main character manages to find his way into some crazy messes. :wink:
I'm a technical writer by trade, but I can offer a little advice for you - take it with a grain of salt since actual authors have already given excellent advice! I have published thousands and thousands of documents in the span of my career. Sometimes I will research hundreds of hours just to produce a 5-page document. Before I start writing, I have a fairly-high degree of expert knowledge of the subject matter.
I love what Gary Morgan said regarding non fiction vs fiction. I appreciate and respect his advice and would suggest to anyone to take heed if they should consider becoming an author of any genre. I have read scores more non-fiction historical books than I have historical fiction. That said, I can remember every historical fiction novel I have ever read and I definitely cannot say same about the every work of historical non-fiction that I have read. (Grain of salt.) If I were to write a work of fiction, I would begin by writing non-fiction; every setting is a real place which has real facts that can be described. Personally, I would find it is easier to place a fictional character into a real-world setting than to develop the setting at the same time as developing the character. I would tell the true story of the event/s first - in a sort of outline manner. I would completely forget about any previous character development that I may have conceived; I would do this to prevent accidentally shaping the setting with my character - it should be the other way around. In the historical fiction that I love to read, there is absolutely nothing more important for me than the setting in which the story takes place. The events move the character(s) - the character(s) is/are moved by the events (depending on point of view). The character(s) then brings the setting to life through point-of-view.
One more thing you may want to consider: have you thought much about your audience? If you want to sell interesting fiction in an accurate setting, one of the best forms of literature is that which is written to young people (10 - 15 years old). A lot of the historical fiction that young people read helps develop them into historians (even if they don't realize it!). One terrible and tragic shortcomings of our modern-day educational system is the lack of history being taught to our children. I truly feel that is one of the reasons why we have so many of the troubles we are experiencing nowadays. If one does not know his/her country, how can one love it? Help instill our youth with a love of American history and they will discover how great this nation is, what it took to become that way, and what it's going to take to keep it that way.
Best of luck in your writing!!! I'm looking forward to hearing about a published work from you some day!
 
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