Back at work
I am! Yesterday, 1200 words on the two boys story which now has a place to send to once it's finished (this was the two boys who don't, but now they eventually do, and what it's about really I'm not sure but I love these young men -- they grow up too). It has a name now too: "The Rubaiyyat of Omar Camacho." Omar writes internet porn at a young age, and by the time he's an adult he's writing love poems. Today, 900 words and a lot of research on my glorifying terrorism story.
I'm really excited about my glorifying terrorism story. It's another alternate-history story involving slavery. This seems to be on my mind a lot. Anyway, in this one, due to a change in tactics (but not strategy), John Brown and his Provisional Army survive Harpers Ferry: they go in, get the arms, -- which they did successfully and with minimal harm to themselves in the real world -- and get out, taking the arms back to the Kennedy Farm. The real-world strategy was to build a fighting force that would terrorize slaveowners and liberate slaves, so that's what's going on in the story. Old Brown himself is sick at the time of the story and hiding in a cave in the mountains. The fighting force is broken up into small units moving around in the forest, making alliances with the Indians there. Our guy is a free man who has been captured during a raid on a town where the Provisional Army has torched the houses of -- here I'm still researching, but one of them may be JEB Stuart as a youngish lieutenant, I haven't decided -- killing some white guys and freeing some slaves. Our guy has been beaten and is awaiting either death or liberation, whichever will come. He's deeply religious and has pledged his life to the holy cause of freedom, and John Brown.
In this timeline, when the Underground Railroad conductors come, you say either "I believe I'll go with the old man," or "I believe I'll cross the Jordan," meaning, either you'll go join the Provisional Army or you'll go to Canada, or one of the refugee communities in the territories.
"I believe I'll go with the old man" is the thing that Shields Green, a friend of Frederick Douglass, said in real life when he joined up with John Brown, and again, when he had the chance to leave the party at Harpers Ferry, and again, when he had the chance to take the defense that he was only following orders. So in this timeline, he only said it a couple times, but it became the recruiting pledge for freed slaves joining the Provisional Army.
I am just so pleased with this story. My biggest challenge is not the research -- I knew where to find the stuff already, such as can be got -- but getting the first-person language of the narrator right: I want to evoke nineteenth-century speech patterns and conventions of memoir, while having a twenty-first century story in hand.
And well, if they don't want it for the anthology, I think I've seen another couple of markets that might be interested.
Oh, and one of the interesting things I have discovered is that John Brown's trial was most certainly illegal -- there are several reasons he opught to have been tried in federal court rather than a Virginia court. It was one of several ways in which Virginia was winning battles to impose its will on the rest of the country. That doesn't come in handy for this story or for the other one in which the slavers didn't get their way in the Constitutional Convention, but it may come in handy for something else.
I'm really excited about my glorifying terrorism story. It's another alternate-history story involving slavery. This seems to be on my mind a lot. Anyway, in this one, due to a change in tactics (but not strategy), John Brown and his Provisional Army survive Harpers Ferry: they go in, get the arms, -- which they did successfully and with minimal harm to themselves in the real world -- and get out, taking the arms back to the Kennedy Farm. The real-world strategy was to build a fighting force that would terrorize slaveowners and liberate slaves, so that's what's going on in the story. Old Brown himself is sick at the time of the story and hiding in a cave in the mountains. The fighting force is broken up into small units moving around in the forest, making alliances with the Indians there. Our guy is a free man who has been captured during a raid on a town where the Provisional Army has torched the houses of -- here I'm still researching, but one of them may be JEB Stuart as a youngish lieutenant, I haven't decided -- killing some white guys and freeing some slaves. Our guy has been beaten and is awaiting either death or liberation, whichever will come. He's deeply religious and has pledged his life to the holy cause of freedom, and John Brown.
In this timeline, when the Underground Railroad conductors come, you say either "I believe I'll go with the old man," or "I believe I'll cross the Jordan," meaning, either you'll go join the Provisional Army or you'll go to Canada, or one of the refugee communities in the territories.
"I believe I'll go with the old man" is the thing that Shields Green, a friend of Frederick Douglass, said in real life when he joined up with John Brown, and again, when he had the chance to leave the party at Harpers Ferry, and again, when he had the chance to take the defense that he was only following orders. So in this timeline, he only said it a couple times, but it became the recruiting pledge for freed slaves joining the Provisional Army.
I am just so pleased with this story. My biggest challenge is not the research -- I knew where to find the stuff already, such as can be got -- but getting the first-person language of the narrator right: I want to evoke nineteenth-century speech patterns and conventions of memoir, while having a twenty-first century story in hand.
And well, if they don't want it for the anthology, I think I've seen another couple of markets that might be interested.
Oh, and one of the interesting things I have discovered is that John Brown's trial was most certainly illegal -- there are several reasons he opught to have been tried in federal court rather than a Virginia court. It was one of several ways in which Virginia was winning battles to impose its will on the rest of the country. That doesn't come in handy for this story or for the other one in which the slavers didn't get their way in the Constitutional Convention, but it may come in handy for something else.