Game of Thrones, Paladin, and A Bad Idea

Game of Thrones (GOT) just started its seventh season on HBO, and I admit I’m a fan. I’m a nut for dragons and mothers of dragons, and giants, and really evil women like Cerci Lannister, and really creepy girls like Ayla Stark, and really tough ugly guys with hidden hearts like The Hound, and really smart little guys like Tyrion Lannister, and on and on.

In addition to the great characters, the complicated plot is written as well as anything I’ve seen on TV, and I’ve been watching since black and white 15 inch screens were the norm. Ask me sometime about Paladin. Talk about a member of the Black Watch. I bet he could have stopped a Night Walker.  Anyway, kudos to the writers of Game of Thrones.

Yesterday the online news included a bit that the writers of GOT have been tasked with writing a new cable TV series about a modern Confederacy, complete with slavery. Sigh. Another ‘what if’ alternative history series.

Please understand I like alternative-history novels. From Harry Turtledove, Gingrich and Forstein, to my friend Jeffrey Brooks’ alternative Civil War novels, I’m intrigued by those authors who dare to change history. Ballsy writers, every one. I’ve also enjoyed some of the episodes of the cable TV series where the Japanese and Nazis have divided the USA after winning WW II. Spooky, that.

Nonetheless, as a Southern man, and a GOT fan, Im fretting over the prospect of a tightly-written, visually exciting, action-driven cable TV portrayal of a modern Southern Confederacy as a bastion of slavery in modern times. I find the idea chilling, repugnant and socially dangerous. I agree with the person who just posted on a Civil War online forum that nothing good can come of such a TV series. Why go there? It’s would not be history, it would be entertainment that crosses that invisible line that keeps being shoved backwards.

Protecting and understanding our history, warts and all, is an honorable obligation, even the uncomfortable parts. That includes museum exhibits focusing on the horrors of slavery, just as it includes museum devoted to the Jewish Holocaust. It includes museums that display military artifacts from the Confederacy, and places like Andersonville Prison. You get my point.

To me, protecting history also includes holding the line on preserving stone monuments erected to honor the common citizen soldiers of the Confederacy. That said, I’m not so sure about defending those monuments outside public buildings honoring the political leaders who ruled the Confederacy. In a museum, yes, on the courthouse lawn, not so much. But that’s a different social conflict that will work itself out.

All that is to voice my opinion that it is unwise and needless to titillate TV viewers with imagined visions of modern institutionalized Southern slavery. One hundred and fifty-two years after the Civil War ended, we Americans are still uneasy about race relations.

I simply don’t see any benefit from a TV series that panders to the worst facet of our historical national story in a non-historical ‘what-if’ context.

Taking a deep breath and moving on, the manuscript for A Different Country Entirely progresses. The end is on the far horizon, like first seeing the Chisos Mountains as you enter Big Bend National Park.

I’m excited about my first novel set in Texas. It’s a tale of 1855 and is awash with ‘differences.’ Issues and people may have been similar to today, but were also very different back then. And, Texas was geographically way out there, and truly different from the rest of the states back then, likely even more than now.

Maybe I jumped on the GOT writers story because I’m spending a lot of keyboard time writing about the slavery aspect of my historical Texas story. Like with my McBee Civil War novels, I don’t want A Different Country Entirely to ignore the reality of slavery in Texas in 1855, but neither do I want to use slavery as a gratuitous sideshow.

Human bondage was, and is, a disgusting evil, surely, but forced slave labor also underpinned Texas’s cotton and agrarian economy until 1865, a decade beyond my story. It's ugly presence deserves a place in historical novels set in that time and place.

So, a prominent minor character is a slave named Thompson. But I can’t spoil my own plot, so enough of that.

Enjoy what’s left of a hot July.

Independence Day Morning in Galveston

Happy Independence Day, All Y’all.

I’m in the midst of a great week vacationing in Galveston. One spouse, two sons, two daughters-in-law, two granddaughters and two grandsons in one rented beach house with wi-fi and three toilets—Thank Goodness. Lots of sun, sand, and surf.

Being a clan of history nerds, we also visited the only bookstore in Galveston yesterday and carried out three sacks of new and used books. The store is locally owned and in the tradition of such places is nicely crammed floor to ceiling with shelves of new and used books and narrow aisles.

It is also the store where a good friend approached the owner on my behalf with my McBee Civil War novels in hand and asked if she might stock them. I was leery because my books are independently published, and I doubted one of the few brick-and-mortar bookstores left would accept them. When friend Dick e-mailed me that not only will the store owner put my books on her store shelves, but she would also schedule me into one of her monthly slots for a book-signing event in the store. Wow! I discovered that at least one independent bookstore owner likes independently published books.

The Galveston Bookstore features books of local Galveston interest and history. My ancestor John J McBride was a Galveston businessman before and after the Civil War, and is the inspiration for my central character in the three ‘Honor’ novels--John J McBee. After reviewing the novels, she decided that was enough of a Galveston connection. Wooo-Hah!

So, the ten McBride’s actually went to the bookstore yesterday so I could meet owner Sharan, thank her, hand over a box of my novels, and chat about what to expect on August 12^th, when I go back for the Saturday afternoon book-signing. I’m happy, can you tell?

And I’m starting a new trend right here in this blog post. If the product of little independently owned breweries can be called ‘craft’ beer, books written by independent authors who don’t have agents or contracts with traditional publishing companies, can be called ‘craft’ novels. I write ‘craft’ novels, sometimes while sipping a cold ‘craft’ beer.

Now, back to Independence Day, a bit more somberly than usual, maybe because I'm surrounded by my wonderful grandkids and their wonderful young mothers all this week.

Our country was born by means of a terrible long war. We all know that. Wars are hard on the landscape and those who have the misfortune to live where battles are fought. That was true back in 1776-81 during the American Revolution, and in the 1860’s during our Civil War. Generals call damage to civilian homes and property ‘collateral damage,’ and simply prefer not to mention accidental civilian deaths.

In Redeeming Honor, I included a vignette during the great battle at Chickamauga, Georgia, a sad incident straight out of a Texas soldier’s diary. He describes how their advance was halted for a brief moment while a civilian family crossed their path. A young woman, holding two infants with two more children clinging to her long skirt, was fleeing. The young woman, whose husband was likely gone for a soldier, and her home either destroyed by artillery shells or overrun by soldiers, is hurrying towards the Texans, trying to get her brood out of harm’s way.

There were no photos of that scene to guide me as I created a word description of the frantic mother and her terrified children caught between two armies. I can only hope I somewhat captured the dangerous urgency of the moment.

Photography has changed from 1863 to 2017. Modern wars are well documented with visual images, sometimes documented with striking vivid images of moments we’d prefer to ignore, like this one.

While photography has greatly changed, the core aspects of war stay the same. Sadly. Tragically. This photo was posted online, taken this week. Mothers are still fleeing with their children when the war comes to their doorstep. In 1863 in north Georgia, America, and in 2017 in Mosul, Iraq.