Military History Photo Friday: Bicycle Soldiers

Here's a part of the Blitzkrieg you generally don't see. These World War Two German soldiers are part of a bicycle regiment. While most histories emphasize the quick motorized movements of the so-called "lightning war", the German army made extensive use of horses and bicycles.

Bicycle soldiers have been around almost as long as there have been usable bicycles. Since bikes are cheap, portable, and don't need to be fed, they provided a viable alternative to horses. They were first used in warfare in South Africa in 1895. This photo shows British bicycle troops in the Boer War in 1902. They also saw common use in World War One.

Speculating on Confederate land

As I mentioned in my post about the Baldknobbers vigilante group in the Ozarks, when Confederate veterans returned home, many found their land had been confiscated for failure to pay taxes during the war and was now occupied by Union men.

Speculation in land skyrocketed in Missouri and many border and Southern states after the war as monied Northerners hurried in to grab cheap plots. One of the was Daniel Fogle, who in a letter from 1867 observed that he couldn't even get off the train without being offered land for sale, "There are a great many that are thronging the railroad stations, exceedingly anxious to sell lands."

The best deals were to be had from county governments, who had seized rebel farms when the taxes weren't paid. Fogle reported, "These lands sell for near nothing--but it is considered very hazardous to buy and occupy them as they mostly belong to men who went into the Southern army and dare not return, and there is a large band of them sworn together, and unknown to authorities, who will and do kill every man who attempts to occupy their former homes."

The enduring bitterness of displaced and disenfranchised Southerners led to many outlaw groups (often made up of former bushwhackers) and well as larger organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. The legacy of the war continued long after the last battle was over.

Help me pick my next ebook cover!

Next week I'll be releasing a dark fantasy novella titled The Quintessence of Absence, a reprint that originally appeared in Black Gate magazine. Set in an alternative 18th century Germany, it deals with a struggle between good magic and the darkest regions of the occult.

I decided to try designing my own cover for a change and used the free template software at Copysafe. Here are some I've come up with. Which do you like?

Cover #1

The templates are a bit rigid. For example, I can't center this byline. But hey, it's free!

Cover #2

Cover #3

Cover #4

So which one do you prefer, numbers 1, 2, 3, or 4? (Oh, and those white boundaries are a product of blogger. They won't be on the actual covers)

Hitting that word count!

As I mentioned in the beginning of the year in a post about my writing goals, I plan on writing 200,000 words of fiction in 2013. While that sounds like a lot, it's actually only 550 words a day. Quite doable. I even put a counter at the very bottom of this blog to keep myself motivated.

Now that we're a third of the way through the year, how am I doing? Well, as you can see I'm only a little over a quarter of the way to my goal. A nonfiction project took up a great deal of my time, and then I took a week off while I was traveling in Estonia. So yes, I'm behind, but with almost 52,000 words written I still feel pretty good.

I'm also speeding up. When you commit to writing fiction every day, your daily word count increases, and the words flow better. In July I'm spending two weeks on a writing retreat in Tangier to work on a novel set there. I'll only be writing: no email, no music, and I won't answer phone calls except from family. If I'm not caught up by then, that break in Morocco will certainly get me caught up!

Wild West Photo Friday: A Mexican Caballero in San Antonio

Now that the A to Z Challenge is over, I can get back to my regular Photo Friday series, whether it's Civil War, Wild West, or Military History. This week it's the Wild West, with this fine Mexican horseman photographed in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1870s.

Before there were cowboys, there were vaqueros. The Spanish made it to the Southwest first and set up extensive ranches. The process continued after Mexican independence from Spain. When white settlers started streaming in, they learned the trade from the Mexicans. Sadly, most Western films and books forget the vaqueros, just like they forget the black cowboys.

Photo courtesy New York Public Library.

Two Popular Military History Guest Posts over at Black Gate

As you know, I often do guest posts, especially for the Black Gate and Osprey Publishing blogs.

Black gate just came out with its top 50 most popular posts for March, and two of my posts were in the top ten, #3 and #10 to be precise! They were about a pair of fascinating dioramas I discovered in the American Legation museum in Tangier. Built by master modeller Edward Suren of London, these battle scenes are incredibly detailed. They include the Battle of the Three Kings (1578) and the Battle of Tondibi (1591). I've included lots of pictures and background about both battles.

Done with the A to Z Blogfest

This April I participated in the A to Z Challenge, in which more than a thousand bloggers wrote posts related to every letter in the alphabet. I kept to my usual themes of the Civil War, Wild West, and adventure travel, with a bit of high strangeness thrown in for kicks.

I did every letter except X. My excuse? I went on this caving expedition and I couldn't think of anything anyway.

Of course, the point of the blogfest isn't really to do all the letters, it's to meet other bloggers and have fun. Mission accomplished. Check out my blogger profile if you want to see some of the blogs I like to read. While many are related to the subjects I write about, some are completely different, and that's fun too.