Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Midlist Writer blog, where he talks about writing, adventure travel, caving, and everything else he gets up to. He also reproduces all the posts from Civil War Horror, so drop on by!

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

More Neoconfederate nonsense

As I mentioned in my last post, the Neo-confederates don't like my Civil War novel's negative portrayal of Bloody Bill Anderson, rapist and murderer of unarmed prisoners. Big surprise.

The admin over at the Missouri in the Civil War Message Board deleted the thread, saying,

"The message boards extend a courtesy to our "Contributing Authors" to promote their books, articles, speaking engagements, etc. In the case of a book or article posting, I must ask that any critique of an author's work be on the highest and most polite level. If you have an "historical" issue with the content of an author's work, please specifically address a statement from the book or article with page numbers, dates, the text in question and your documented response to the author's position. No personal or "petty" exchanges will be tolerated on the message board from authors or respondents. Thanks for your cooperation."

Yeah, I was partly guilty for the petty exchange, but as anyone who knows me knows, I have a zero-tolerance policy to assertive stupidity. Despite the admin's words, Bloody Bill's #1 fan Neil Block wrote again. This time he used a spell checker, sort of.

"One last time, if it remains here, I'll express an opinion. I hope it suits this board:
I find it unexceptable for anyone to make remarks or assumptions about the mental condition of anyone who has been involved in close quarters combat in any war. If you ain't been there, don't assume that you would be able to handle the stress in any given situation or the results of having war waged upon "your soil" and againest your friends and family. None of us can judge others or be for sure how many of us would regain their humanity after having cared so little for it to survive. For 150 years those have that demeaned Missourians to be less than perfect in their eyes have assumed that they are moral & intellectual superior to the rest of us. Promoting work that makes statements about real life soldiers should be based on works by those that actually knew the soldier and not statements made in judgement by his adversaries. I know there are soldiers and former soldiers that read this message board and if they have been CQC they may have known a few "Bill's", but they have also known some "John's"........John McCorkle suffered the same fate as Bill Anderson did, CQC, losing family in the same event, but John was able to return and make a life after the war. We don't know his ghosts but he was able to maintain his civility thru some pretty tough times...........Nobody Knows Who Will Return..............that is why soldiers make the best peace makers...........beating up on Bill Anderson has made quiet a few folks a little $$$......."Doing right ain't got no end" is the redleg way..........defending his victims is mine..........Neil Block"

To which I responded,

"And I find it unacceptable for anyone to make remarks or assumptions about a book they haven't even read.
I hope this thread does stay up because it points out the narrow pro-Confederate bias that is all too obvious among some in the community. The idea that one side was bloodthirsty and evil and the other side was perfect and honorable is contrary to the facts. Both sides did terrible things in that war, and both sides included honorable men.
Mr. Block says: "Promoting work that makes statements about real life soldiers should be based on works by those that actually knew the soldier and not statements made in judgement by his adversaries."
I'd like to see him apply that idea to Union soldiers and Redlegs as well Confederate soldiers and bushwhackers."

Will this end the debate? I doubt it, considering the Neoconfederates griping at me anonymously in the comments section. Those comments were all redirected to my blog from the same cc'ed message sent via Yahoo mail. Gee, I wonder who sent THAT? Blogger tells you some amazing things if you understand the system.

9 comments:

  1. Neo-confederates? Plural? Gosh, by my count there's just one. Maybe. Maybe. All the man said was that he wouldn't be reading any of your books. Are you sure that makes him a neo-confederate? And me? Have you still not figured out what Mrs. Anonymous's gripe is? It's the horrible genre you choose to write in. (Please see my comment of this evening addressing your first neo-confederate themed rant for clarification.) Dislike of a poor choice of genre for a Civil War novel apparently makes me a neo-confederate too? It would have to, in your book, because that's the only way you can come up with a plurality of neo-confederates anonymously griping at you.

    You flatter yourself with all this neo-confederate nonsense. I am a disliker of sub-par genres of popular fiction. Period. So stop beating this pathetic neo-confederate horse to death. It hasn't got a leg to stand on. It makes you sound aggressively stupid and as a writer and former practicing archaeologist myself, I don't have any tolerance for that.

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  2. If you hate horror set in the Civil War, why are you reading a blog titled CIVIL WAR HORROR???

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  3. This "author" is a Northern bigot. Why waste time with him? He obviously thinks Southerners are not Americans and are inferior to Northerners. His book was intended to insult millions of Americans and now his blog is doing the same. I get threats from people sometimes. The best thing to do is ignore them. This "author" tries to use ONE threat to paint all Southerners as illiterates who can't spell and love war crimes that were committed long before any of us were born. Many "freed" black slaves were raped by Northern troops, but he will never admit that, he is fixated on "Bloody Bill" and his hatred of Southerners who are in fact AMERICANS. No, it was just the Southerners who committed war crimes and it's just the Southerners who commit crimes today also, and Southerners can't spell, don't you see.

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  4. "As I mentioned in my last post, the Neo-confederates don't like my Civil War novel's negative portrayal of Bloody Bill Anderson, rapist and murderer of unarmed prisoners. Big surprise."

    I couldn't care less about your portrayal of ANYONE in your "book." More people have already read your posts than will ever read your "book." But your posts reveal your true prejudice, and prejudice should be sterilized with sunlight and exposed for all to see.

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  5. A.J.,

    These comments are nothing. There's some joker over on the Kindle Publishing Forum called thetimucuan who said, "there was little in the South that was not raped, human or animal, female or male, by the time the war ended."

    And he goes on and on and on. Yeah Union soldiers raped, but I can't recall any sources saying they raped the hogs!


    http://forums.kindledirectpublishing.com/kdpforums/thread.jspa?threadID=22154&start=0&tstart=0

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  6. Actually, there ARE accounts of Union troops raping farm animals. I see your Amazon ranking shows you sell about one copy a month. If you had not exposed yourself for what you are, you might have sold a few copies, but not now. You just keep digging yourself deeper. I doubt if there is more than a dozen people in the South who do not despise the Confederacy, but they are also sick of the bigotry from the likes of you.

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  7. Anonymous: I've been following this blog for some months now and have seen no Northern bias in Sean's writing. In fact, he has mentioned Union atrocities on several occasions. He has said none of the things you claim he said.
    Do you have a source for Union soldiers raping farm animals?

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  8. Sean: I looked at that Kindle thread. That fellow is obviously mentally unbalanced, as are most internet forum trolls. You have better things to do with your time. I checked out his profile and there's no real name and no books listed. He's probably not even an author!
    Seriously, Sean, ignore people like him and keep blogging about the Civil War, your travels, and your books. That's what I come to this blog for.

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  9. Wait... what? An anonymous commenter using straw man arguments about a book that likely hasn't been read, making assumptions about an author who likely hasn't been met? It couldn't be.

    Although my personal experience represents one tiny plot point, I can certainly attest to the fact that my numerous professional dealings and conversations with Mr. McLachlan regarding historical topics (including the Civil War) have not revealed the "bigoted" person that Anonymous paints here.

    Until the straw man act disappears and references to particular passages in the book (with reasoned responses) appear, Anonymous certainly looks the laughable troll here.

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