The Rat Killer and other Weird War Tales out now!

My latest short story collection, The Rat Killer and other Weird War Tales, is out now on Amazon and Smashwords. It's going through the Smashwords system of Premium distribution and will soon be available in all major online retailers. The cover is, as usual, done by my talented brother-in-law Andrés. It looks a bit different form his regular stuff and I think it works well. The book retails for $2.99. A blurb is below.

A rat hunter on the Western Front suspects his prey are plotting against him…
A routine trip through the trenches leads to an unexpected insight…
A soldier discovers the most dangerous enemy can't be killed…
A bereaved woman performs a forbidden ritual to avenge her father’s murder…
A doomed militia is offered a path to victory that leads to damnation…

Here are five tales of war from the pen of military historian and novelist Sean McLachlan. From the bushwhackers of the American Civil War to the trenches of WWI, these stories walk the line from the strange and paranormal to the frighteningly real.

Spirits of St. Louis Anthology out now!

Missouri publisher Rocking Horse Publishing has just come out with Spirits of St. Louis, an anthology of ghost stories set in Missouri.

It includes my story "After the Raid", an offshoot of my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness. For those who have read the novel, it follows the story of Helena, the daughter of the German photographer who gets killed by the bushwhacker band, and how she takes a terrible revenge. Of course a terrible revenge comes at a terrible price. . .

The story also stands on its own in case you haven't read the book (ahem).

Here's the back cover blurb.

Lonely Hitchhikers. Dirt Roads. Tired Soldiers. Strange Children. Mysterious Ladies. Dark Houses. What do they have in common? 

They all haunt the pages of this book.

From the Lemp Mansion to The Exorcist, from the 1904 World's Fair to Jefferson Barracks, the history of St. Louis, Missouri and its surrounding river towns is filled with stories of haunts and the supernatural.

Spirits of St. Louis: Missouri Ghost Stories is a collection of over thirty stories from authors across the globe, celebrating these ghosts, banshees, and shadows.

Do you believe in ghosts? If you believe or not, this collection of dark tales of the dead and disturbed is sure to keep you awake at night. Lock the doors, turn down the lights, and prepare to be terrified.

Helping out with National Novel Writing Month

I've started a thread on the National Novel Writing Month website for writing a Civil War novel during NaNoWriMo.

If you're writing about the American Civil War, I'll be happy to answer your questions if I can. I've written two books about the Civil War for Osprey Publishing and numerous magazine articles for magazines such as Missouri Life and America's Civil War. I also have a novel set in Civil War Missouri titled A Fine Likeness.

My research focus is on the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater and guerrilla warfare. I'll try to answer any questions posed to me, however. I've already had a couple of good ones. Please don't ask questions that can easily be researched online, though. I'm going to be a wee bit busy this month!


Image of bombardment of Fort Sumter courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Finished my next novel!

Whew! I just finished the sequel to A Fine Likeness, tentatively called The River of Despair and the next in the House Divided series of Civil War horror novels. While A Fine Likeness is a standalone novel, I wanted to explore the world a bit more.

The River of Despair came in at 107,000 words, 12,000 more than the first book. It will probably get trimmed some, and will be off to beta readers soon. I have to hurry, though, because next Friday is the beginning of National Novel Writing Month, when I change my tune and start writing a post-apocalyptic novel called Radio Hope.

Oh, and Jack Badelaire over at the Post-Modern Pulp blog just gave A Fine Likeness a nice review. My favorite part is when he says "I think the only weakness of A Fine Likeness, if there is one, is that I'd be hard-pressed to pin this book down in any sense of a traditional genre. I don't really consider it traditional horror, but the supernatural elements definitely take it out of the realm of historical fiction. I think the author was actually very smart in independently publishing this book, because I can't imagine a traditional publishing house attempting to market this book."

That's exactly what several publishers said in their rejection slips!

Broke the 100,000 word mark on my next novel!

Yesterday I broke the 100,000 word mark on my next Civil War horror novel, tentatively titled The River of Despair. I think I have about 5,000 more words to go and I hope to be done by the end of the week. I got a real kick in the pants by a crit partner. Over beers one evening we agreed to get our books to each other by the end of the month. He's already given me his so I need to get going!

The book is sort of a sequel to A Fine Likeness but can stand on its own. One of the protagonists is Allen Addison, the son of Richard Addison, who was one of the protagonists in A Fine Likeness. Allen is Richard’s only surviving son, yet is generally ignored by his father. Several characters from the first book including Jimmy and Rufus also appear in this volume. Much of the action takes place on the USS Essex, shown here.

The end is in sight for my next Civil War horror novel!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been forging ahead with the sequel to A Fine Likeness. I had more than 60% done, had the ending written, but didn't know how to get there. It was coming in little 1000-word bursts. This is different than my usual method which is to have the entire story arc in my head and I'm really only filling in details.

Now I'm happy to say I know exactly where I'm going. That last span of the story arc is in place in my head and cone again my writing is essentially filling in the little blank spots, like that crusty old riverboat captain that makes a certain scene but didn't exist until my fingertips surprised my mind by putting him on the page.

So I'm hoping to get this sucker done by the end of this week. We shall see!

Forging ahead with my next Civil War novel

As I've mentioned before, I've been working on a sequel to my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness. I took a hiatus from writing it for a while because I was a stuck. I had written the first 60% or so, knew the ending, but didn't have the bit in between.

That's strange for me. Usually I have the whole story arc in my head from the start and the writing process is just filling in the details. This time, the penultimate section really had be stuck and I took a break to do various other projects, including a spinoff short story that will be published later this month.

Now I'm back to writing the novel. I still don't know quite how I'm going to get to where I'm going, but each scene has been coming to me in chunks of about 1,000 words or so. It's also becoming apparant that this novel will be longer than I anticipated. Oh well. A story has to be as long as it takes to tell. It's good to be working on this again!

Now if I could only think of a title. . .

I got a short story accepted!

I recently signed a contract with Rocking Horse Publishing, a Missouri-based small press, for one of my short stories to appear in an anthology. The anthology is called Spirits of St. Louis: Missouri Ghost Stories, and will be available next month in print and electronic formats.

My story, "After the Raid", is a spinoff of my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. It tells the story of Helena, who sees her father gunned down by bushwhackers in front of their home and wreaks a terrible revenge. . .

I never got to fully tell Helena's story in the novel so this was a good chance!

Civil War Photo Friday: An 1864 Silver Dollar

When I was writing my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, I had a scene where the protagonist pulls a silver dollar out of his pocket. Then, being the stickler for accuracy that I am when it comes to historical novels, I wondered if silver dollars actually existed in 1864.

It turns out they did, and they were beauties!

Interview with men's adventure author Hank Brown

Today we're chatting with action author Hank Brown, who is doing a blog tour for his most recent release, Tier Zero. Hank has come out with several novels and short stories in the men's adventure genre, a genre that was in the doldrums before the current publishing revolution. So with no further ado. . .

Checking out your list of publications, one that jumped to my attention was Radical Times, a Civil War story. Actually it's a Reconstruction story set in Arkansas right after the war. What made you pick a setting well away from the epic drama of the major battles?

Mostly it was because of history and my exposure to it. In school I had only learned the superficial facts about the Civil War...North, South, slaves, Abraham Lincoln...that was about it. Public school taught us even less about Reconstruction, which is to say: nothing.

Then about a year or two before I wrote Radical Times, I checked out a book from the library about that historic period. It blew me away how much I didn't know about it. And when that happens I'm compelled to set off on a researching spree. It annoys me how the truth of this tumultuous period are ignored, at best; or censored, at worst. Our present political dynamic depends on that ignorance (or censorship). Anyway, as all this information was floating around in my mind I began conceiving characters (as often happens). The story grew out of all that.

You served in the Armed Forces. Beyond the obvious, what are the main differences between warfare in the 1860s and the modern day? How is the soldier's experience different? Are there any similarities?

Beyond the obvious, I'd say it's the officers and men themselves that are most different, followed by the command doctrine. The US armed forces have become extremely top-heavy organizations, with a cumbersome bureaucracy only slightly less inept than the non-uniformed government institutions. The technology which enables unprecedented micromanaging runs the risk of turning fighting men into robots. The technological advantages and overwhelming air support our troops have enjoyed since WWII glosses over the chinks in our armor, of which I believe this is an example.

When Von Steuben was drilling Washington's troops to fight the British he remarked on what made the American soldier unique: You couldn't just institute a policy and expect Americans to follow it, without first explaining its purpose. That does not seem to be the case any longer. Once when training with some soldiers from the Mother Country, after Desert Storm, I remember the ironic moment when one of the Brits cried out in frustration about all the suffocating regulations he had to abide by while attached to the US Army. Holy historic role-reversal, Uncle Sam!

A good book review and a strange one

Last week my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness received to more reviews. A new four-star review on the novel's Goodreads page says that while the reader isn't into paranormal, "The author does an excellent job in incorporating accurate Civil War and Missouri history and handles the military action sequences with ease. The tale reads smoothly and is a very easy read. The motivations of the main protagonists on both sides of the conflict are realistically developed."

He goes on to say: "A Fine Likeness is one of those novels that falls between genres: American historical fiction with a regional focus, paranormal, a bit of the "Western." That may limit the readership, but the writing shouldn't be penalized for that."

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I couldn't find a regular publisher. The rejection letters kept saying how they didn't know how to market it. So I'm marketing it myself!

The second review is from the Indie Book Review. It was positive ("intriguing" "timely") yet odd in places. While I'm not the kind of person who bites the hand that feeds him, I'm wondering why Captain Addison is referred to as "General Captain Addison" and how exactly my background as an archaeologist informs the novel.

But what the hey, don't look a good review in the details!

A Fine Likeness named "Favorite novel of 2012"!

It's always nice to receive acclamation from a fellow writer, especially one as talented as G.R. Yeates. On his blog he did a roundup of favorites for 2012 and had this to say about my novel:

"I’ve chosen a writer who has followed a similar path to myself – that of historical horror. A Fine Likeness by Sean McLachlan is set during the American Civil War and deals with Confederate rebels and Union soldiers facing off against a black magic cult that are seeking to use the war-time strife to their own ends. A thoroughly immersive read written by someone with a real passion for the period the story is set in. The level of detail is as impressive as the well-drawn and convincing characterisation. I also liked the touch of including real historical characters in amongst the mayhem to add to the tone of authenticity that resounds throughout the book."

Thanks, G.R.! Check out the guest blog he did for me about his World War One fiction here.

My Writing Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

It's a new year, the traditional time to take stock of what you've done and what you're planning on doing. Yes, it's completely arbitrary, but it's good to do these things every now and then.

The year 2012 was so-so for me. I only had one nonfiction book come out: The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang, Jesse James & The Northfield Raid 1876. I also came out with the print version of my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. Both have gotten good reviews, although I wouldn't mind better sales on the novel. I did get some nice attention when the city of Madrid paid me to give a reading at their annual Noche del Libro festival. Considering the state of the Spanish economy, I doubt I'll get to do that again!

Another milestone was seeing my fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence come out in Black Gate Magazine. It's free online, so click that link!

For my travel writing, check out this Gadling post about my year in adventure travel and what to expect from me in 2013. I'm much more satisfied with that part of my career, with popular series on Iraq and the Orkney Islands. Lebanon won the "where to send Sean next" poll, so it looks like I'm going there, editor willing!

So what's up for 2013? I'm making fiction a priority. My dream has always been to divide my time evenly between fiction and nonfiction. My history and travel writing careers are humming along nicely, while fiction still lags behind. I wanted to finish the sequal to A Fine Likeness in 2012 but didn't. I'm also way behind on a story I promised A.J. Walker for an anthology we're doing. Several other fiction projects got nowhere fast.

It's time to get cracking. My goal this year is to write 200,000 words of fiction. While that sounds like a lot, it's actually only 550 words a day. Quite doable. Some days I'll write more, and some days I'll write none because I'll be traveling. When I'm on the road I need to focus on what I'm seeing and how I'm going to communicate that to my readers.

To keep myself honest I've put a word count bar at the bottom of this blog. I'll be updating it once a week or so. Light a fire under my ass if I'm not writing enough.

I'll also be ramping up this blog, reaching out to other bloggers for guest posts and to guest post on their own blogs. You'll see me participating in more blogfests too. This blog started the year with only 100 hits a day and finished with almost 300 daily hits. I'm going to see how much I can raise that.

It's going to be a fun and challenging year!

A fine review for A Fine Likeness

My Civil War novel A Fine Likeness has garnered another five-star review. Under the title, "A rip-snorting historical horror story", user Kayann wrote:

"I generally don't read much long-form prose on my kindle, unless I'm trapped on an airplane but I was at home for this one. That says something about my experience with A FINE LIKENESS. Setting aside my downloaded newspapers and blogs paid off, because reading A FINE LIKENESS -- which must run over 85,000 words -- renewed my faith in both the e-reading experience and my attention span.

"McLachlan sets his horror-history story well outside the norm, avoiding the tried-and-true territory from big clashes like Gettsyburg and Shiloh. I would like to see more stories set in places that are often overshadowed by the giant military maneuvers. By sidestepping the stereotypes, McLachlan takes readers smack dab into the guerrilla war of the trans-Missouri theater. This clears out the preconceptions that Hollywood has inserted into our minds and prepares readers for a singular story with hairpin turns.

"McLachlan leads on with solid action and an especially deft hand for description. He clearly knows the terrain under his characters' feet and offers sensory impressions of the natural world that anchor the story in place and time. One well-handled account of riders approaching an abandoned camp through smoke and a screen of trees instantly conveys the creepy reality of the tale -- and there is real poetry here as well. Most tellers of swashbuckling tales tend to skip this stuff, and their stories often suffer as a result. McLachlan is at his best with description of this kind and with action -- much more so than with dialogue. One downside: I wish we had seen Bloody Bill sooner in the story, but it's tough to get everyone on stage, and set up the tale, which is braided together while being told from different perspectives.

"Central themes -- spirit photography and spiritualism - serve to tie the story together and prove thought-provoking. I even found some relevance for our own times --contemplating soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan dealing with guerrilla warfare on very different terms.

"I recommend."

I'm giving away two copies of my Civil War novel!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

A Fine Likeness

by Sean McLachlan

Giveaway ends December 15, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

That's right, I'm giving away two copies of A Fine Likeness on Goodreads. If you haven't read my book, or simply want a print copy, here's your chance to win one of two copies for free! Deadline is December 15. This is available only to members of Goodreads, which is kind of like Facebook for avid readers without all the annoying privacy issues that are really, really tempting me to ditch Facebook.

So sign up for your chance to win a copy. And while you're at it, why not friend me at my Goodreads page?

GUEST POST: Civil War Mystery: Objects in photographs are closer than they appear

Today I have an interesting guest post by Kathryn Hohmann, author of the Civil War novel Soldiers Rest, which like my own novel features photography as a central theme. She offers some tips on writing historical fiction. You can learn more about her on her webpage and Goodreads page. Thanks for coming, Kathryn!

Like a resident of a coastal town who rarely gets to the beach, I was surrounded by hallowed ground but never visited the Civil War battlefields of central Maryland. On weekend bicycle trips, I was more worried about the hilly terrain than the interpretive markers along the route. Although I sensed that the landscape possessed some eerie quality, I gave the matter little consideration.

Then I relocated to Montana and on a backcountry outing, I broke my leg and ended up bed-ridden and bored. I rented The Civil War by Ken Burns and found myself engrossed. As the series comes to an end, Burns touches on the years after the war. To illustrate how Americans turned away from memories of the conflict, he includes a remarkable image of glass plate negatives of Civil War photographs, scrapped and salvaged for the silver emulsions on their surfaces and recycled into glass panes for solariums.

These photographs –our collective heritage from the Civil War– dulled by years of sunlight and rain, were the inspiration for my historical novel, Soldiers Rest. The years spent writing my book and becoming conversant in a slice of the Civil War taught me a few lessons that I’d like to share.   

Hit the books – hard. Readers of historical fiction will spot your blunders. Study up, seek help and don’t be afraid to make revisions, especially if you’re in the e-book space. Read, research and read some more.

Take a small bite. History of any period is a sweeping canvas and unless you’re a Civil War scholar, you may want to consider limiting yourself to a small space of geography and time. I chose to concentrate on the aftermath of a single overlooked conflict, the Battle of South Mountain, part of the 1862 Maryland campaign. The event rarely gets the attention it deserves, overshadowed as it is by Antietam. The Battle of South Mountain was small enough to be a good candidate for my story, and focused enough so that when it came time for annual commemorations, the events were intimate and engaging, and there was little chance I would be lost in the crowd, as I might have been at Shiloh or Gettysburg.

Iraq Victory Lap: my fiction is on sale!

For the month of November I've reduced the prices on my ebooks. My Civil War novel A Fine Likeness is reduced to $2.99 and my short story collection The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner and other dark tales is reduced to only 99 cents!

Why? Several reasons.

1. I'm grateful that I returned safe and sound from traveling in Iraq. Despite all the street food I ate I didn't even get a case of Saddam's Revenge! Here is yours truly with the print edition of my novel at Babylon's Ishtar Gate.

2. My Iraq series for Gadling and my blog tour about my trip will both start this week.

3. I'm psyched that my Jesse James book has been released by Osprey Publishing.

4. I love hearing from new readers and I want more of them!

So if you haven't sampled my fiction, now is the time. The links above are for Amazon, but my Civil War novel is also available on many other online venues such as Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. If the recession is hitting you hard, check out my free historical fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence over at Black Gate magazine.

If you have read my fiction already, please help out a struggling writer by reviewing it. Feedback is always welcome!

Guest blogging about Weaving Military History Into Fiction over at Osprey Publishing

My military history publisher Osprey Publishing has been kind enough to let me do a guest post about Weaving Military History Into Fiction. Yes, my nonfiction publisher is letting me talk about my fiction work, even though they have a fiction imprint! Osprey has always been great to work with and this just proves it. Head on over and check it out.

Rewriting a battle scene

I got back into the next novel of the House Divided series, of which A Fine Likeness was the first. As I mentioned before, travel and a nonfiction deadline made my writing get stretched too thin so it's been a couple of weeks since I've been able to work on any fiction. It was nice to get back into it!

My first project was to rewrite a battle scene that's been bugging me. It's a fight between the USS Essex, captained by Richard Addison's son (whom we only met through letters in the first book) and some bushwhackers on the banks of the Missouri River. The bushwhackers have a cannon and for plot reasons I realized I needed to move that cannon from the south bank to the north bank.

It changed the dynamic of the fight completely! Just one little detail like that and I had to do a major rewrite of the entire scene--shifting paragraphs, editing the descriptions of who was doing what when, where they were looking, and who was posted where. If you're writing a complex fight scene, take my advice and get it right the first time!

Colored engraving of the Battle of Vicksburg courtesy U.S. Naval Historical Center - Photo #: NH 76557-K. My battle isn't as grandiose as this one. :-)

It's the penultimate day of my birthday sale!

I celebrated my 43rd birthday on August 16 and to celebrate, I dropped the prices of my ebooks for the rest of the month. My Civil War novel A Fine Likeness is reduced from $5.99 to $2.99, and my short story collection The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner and other dark tales is reduced from $2.99 to $.99. That's right, just 99 cents!

Tomorrow is the last day of August, and the last day of the sale. Get these books at a discount while you can! (and thanks to those who already have, I love getting new readers!)