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. . .

Book Review: A Plague of Pythons by Frederik Pohl

A Plague of Pythons by Frederik Pohl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I heard that Frederik Pohl, one of the Grand Old Masters of science fiction, had died earlier this month, I rummaged through my collection of vintage paperbacks looking for something of his I hadn't read. I came up with this short 1965 novel.

Someone or something is taking over people's minds and leading them to commit horrible crimes. Nuclear bombs go off, people go on killing sprees, and in one unsettling scene a jetliner crashes into the Pentagon. The people who get possessed are fully aware of what is happening but are unable to stop themselves, having to watch helplessly as their bodies kill, main, and rape those around them. Then they are let go and have to live with the guilt of their crimes.

No one knows why this is happening and as you might expect, civilization is quickly unraveling. Then one man begins to learn the truth, and is faced with the choice of stopping the madness or taking on this power for himself.

This is a gripping tale that still seems fresh more than 40 years later. It lost a bit of an edge when the protagonist learned what was causing the possession, but the story built up again as he gets wrapped up in the conspiracy. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes the genre.

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Wild West Photo Friday: Mexican Rurales

These tough looking hombres are Mexican rurales from the late 19th century. The rurales were officially called Guardia Rural (Rural Guard) and were founded in 1861 to fight the numerous bandits that infested the Mexican countryside.

They were a cavalry force that chased criminals across the land and quickly gained a reputation for brutal efficiency. They were trained like soldiers but acted like gunslingers. In fact, many bandits, once caught, were given the choice between prison or joining the rurales!

During the wild days in Arizona in the 1880s, when places like Tombstone were getting shot up on a regular basis, the rurales had their work cut out for them. The Cowboys, a loose-knit group of rustlers living in southern Arizona, often went south of the border to steal cattle, bring them north over the border, rebrand them, and then sell them.

Mexican ranchers, of course, resisted, and often got killed. The rurales stepped in and started fighting the Cowboys. They took some tough hits (which we'll talk about in a later post) but eventually put enough pressure on the Cowboys that they started rustling American ranches instead, as well as robbing stagecoaches. This escalation of crime north of the border heightened tensions in Tombstone with the law enforcement faction led by Wyatt and Virgil Earp and eventually led to the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

The rurales still exist and still fight bandits, although mostly they work to eradicate marijuana crops.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Book Review: AD 410 The Year that Shook Rome

AD 410: The Year That Shook Rome by Sam Moorhead
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The British Museum Press is famous for producing clear, well-illustrated books about archaeological subjects, and this volume is no exception. It focuses on Alaric the Visigoth's sacking of Rome in 410 AD, a momentous event that signaled the imminent collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

The authors go into detail about the politics that led to the sacking, especially Rome's mismanagement of the Visigoths. This Germanic tribe was fleeing the Huns from the east, and wanted only some land and food, offering loyalty and military help in return. The Romans in their arrogance spurned the Visigoths' offer and instead starved and massacred them. Alaric comes off as forgiving to a fault in this narrative and the Romans missed several opportunities to make good.

The book follows several other stories as well, including the clash between paganism and an emergent Christianity, rebellions in Africa and Britain, and relations with the Eastern Roman Empire, later to be called Byzantium.

Long quotes from several contemporary writers liven up the text, and there's a helpful Who's Who and annotated bibliography in the back. While any serious student of Late Antiquity will find little that is new, the educated lay reader for whom this book is targeted will find this an enjoyable, somewhat complex, and enlightening read.

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Civil War veterans invade Canada!

Courtesy Canadian Military Heritage

If I wrote this up as a novel, readers would complain that it was unbelievable, yet this actually happened.

In 1866, the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States was determined to free Ireland from British rule. Many were battle-hardened veterans from both the Union and Confederate armies and they hit upon a daring plan--capture Canada and use it as a bargaining chip with England.

On June 1, 1866, barely a year after the end of the Civil War, an army of about 1200 Fenians crossed the Niagara River. The Canadians reacted quickly and rushed some 850 militiamen to the area, including many University of Toronto students who got to skip class. None of the Canadians had ever been in a battle and only half had ever practiced with live ammunition.

The two sides met near the village of Ridgeway, Ontario. While the Canadians were outnumbered, they only faced the Fenian advance guard, which was roughly equal to their numbers.

At first all went well for the Canadians. They pushed back the Fenian skirmishers and engaged the main line. The Canadians drove them back for about an hour, when suddenly all went wrong. A few Fenian horsemen appeared, and fearing a cavalry charge the Canadian commander ordered his men to form a square. When he saw no such charge was imminent, he ordered his men to reform a line. This put the main body too close to the Canadian skirmish line and he ordered the main line to withdraw.

Other Canadian units saw this rearward action and assumed their comrades were retreating. They withdrew, and the Canadians' inexperience turned a rearrangement of the line into a general retreat. The veteran Fenians charged and turned the retreat into a rout.

The Canadians lost 7 killed and 37 wounded. Several more died of their wounds later. The Fenians had 6 killed and 10 wounded. While the Fenians carried the day, they realized the stiff resistance they'd met guaranteed more battles to come. Canada wouldn't be a pushover and their relatively small numbers would spell defeat in the long run. The Fenians slipped back into the United States. Many deserted and headed home while the leaders and about 850 men surrendered to U.S. forces.

You can read some first-hand accounts of the battle at the Queen's Own Rifles website, and blogger buddy and Canadian army chaplain "Mad Padre" recently refought the Battle of Ridgeway as a wargame.

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!

Scorched Earth Policy in Civil War Missouri

By the middle of 1863, 150 years ago, the Civil War in Missouri had gotten nasty. Regular Confederate forces had long since been pushed out of the state, but the Union troops were constantly harassed by cavalry raiders and guerrillas.

Many Missourians supported the South, especially in the small towns and countryside, and Union troops took vengeance on them by burning their homes, barns, even entire villages. Guerrillas did the same with Unionist homes and villages.

For example, in June a Union scouting party torched the house of a Mr. Robertson after guerrillas had been found sheltering there on two occasions. They also burnt the town of Sibley, which the guerrillas used as a base for sniping at boats passing down the Missouri River. That same month, rebel guerrillas burnt the Unionist town of Butler in Bates County. After the civilians fled the inferno there were no more Union families in the county.

In August, another Union detachment torched Gouge's Mill. They'd found a recruitment poster for the Confederate army tacked to a tree nearby, and discovered it was a rendezvous point for Confederate recruiters and a local guerrilla band. There was a blacksmith shop and gunsmith shop on the premises that the rebels used to repair their equipment. Another house nearby where they were accustomed to stay was also burned to the ground.

The war in Missouri would only get worse.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This is actually a modern fire of an early 20th century barn, with the firefighters cropped out. :-)