SHOT TOWER Complete!

Years of research. Two drafts and two polishes. Auditions for agent and publisher begin.

The Black Jacks and Star of the West.

Google Books has an e-book preview of this Black Jacks book. The Black Jacks appear in the historical  novel Shot Tower.

And the Star of the West cotton trading clipper out of Liverpool is in there. Mobile was a port of call. Was Savannah?  Not certain but it will be in Shot Tower.. Mobile Bay itself, if all goes as planned, is projected to appear as a setting in Shot Tower Book III.

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Note Websearchers who may have landed on this pase as a reult of some randow searcg,Shot Tower, The Novel is not published at the time of this posting. check the rest of this site, for instance the Front Page for news of its avaiability. Or heck, check Amazon.com.

Historical Fiction Influences; SHOT TOWER Update

Here's a brief sketch of some of the historical fiction I've read in the past, all of which I can say I enjoyed and that made me want to read more of it, and write some of it.

Here's a pretty comprehensive site about a wide-ranging genre: historicalnovels.info.

Earliest I remember -- which doesn't mean it was the earliest I read -- was Julian by Gore Vidal, about a Roman Emperor who tries to reestablish the old Roman religion after Christianity was well-established.

Vidal's Burr is called "snotty" by a politician and strangely enough, upon thinking about all this the last few days for this post, the one "insight" by Vidal that I've retained all these years is that the renegade criminal Burr considered George Washington a pompous half-wit who had a big butt. Kind of snotty. If you look at full-size portraits of Washington you see where Vidal might have gotten the big butt part. But pompous half-wit or not, if that's what it takes to defeat an Empire and launch liberty, so be it.

Then there was I, Claudius, The Name of the Rose,  August 1914, Little Big Man.

Of course The Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian are excellent. Be sure to read them in order. I'm still only about half-way through.

These three Roman epics I read individually way back. Then a few years ago I decided to reread them all one after another, a kind of reading Roman orgy. I forget the order but that was worth doing: Quo Vadis, The Robe,  Ben-Hur.
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Then there's Allen Furst's World War II espionage novels You'll want to read them all. They can be read in any order but I recommend reading Night Soldiers first, or last. It's different. A bit more epic in scope.

Update on Shot Tower. By any measure more than half done this official First draft. Moving in on Chapter 20 of 30 tonight. So by that measure it's about two-thirds done. No promises but I'm pushing to nail down this official first draft next weekend in Philadelphia, home of the Shot Tower. The fast-moving action-packed last 10 chapters of the rough draft make that a possibility. Maybe I'll do the last page edit and save in the shadow of the tower or something nutty like that. Stay tuned.

The History Girl

The History Girl at the Indian King Tavern, Haddonfield NJ.

"This place matters!" the motto and clarion call for The History Girl, whose worthy site may focus on New Jersey but swings around the "tri-state" area -- NJ, PA & DE. For instance this post on Jenny Wade, the only civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg.

We've agreed to do a piece for her on the setting and background of our historical novel Shot Tower, which though it launches in Philadelphia, does swing around a few elsewhere's, such as a spot in New Jersey called Pavonia

That will happen upon completion of work on the current draft.

Shot Tower Project Update

The Sparks Shot Tower

Progress on the historical novel Shot Tower -- if not apace -- proceeds steadily. Rough draft completed two weeks ago and now about a quarter of the way through the first official polished draft. Slow going but getting done. Projecting a May finish.

Took a walking tour of Southwark today -- the site of the Nativist Riot, the Shot Tower and, in sight line of the Tower, the approximate location of main character and family's domicile. It all fits. 

Spoke with members of the family that owns the house on the site of the resident-demolished China Factory. They are into having a historical plaque marking the location of Southwark's most notorious whorehouse.

First had brunch at a kitchen-deficient Catahoula (No fruit for the Garden District Breakfast! No Creole Mustard Hollandaise for the Eggs Ville Plate! Crawfish Bisque sadly lacking in crawdaddies.) What unadorned food there was was pretty good. Pricey but excellent Bloody Mary. 

All is well.

Shot Tower

All right. Here it is. The project is pretty far along.The project being a historical novel. Research must STOP! Thirty-plus years off-and-on should be enough! Two official false-starts and then three strikes and you're out! The photo here is the best and most dynamic of the Tower I've come across so far, for the purposes. The purposes being a candidate for a cover (if acquirable, reasonably.) This is from an informative page about the Shot Tower at a quite interesting site altogether there at Workshop of the World - Philadelphia. The authors may be only slightly, and forgivably, remiss in not noting the cultural significance of the building. Forgivably because it would be a somewhat editorial observation. What you're looking at when you see the Shot Tower is the birthplace of the American arms industry.

As a side note, the tropical-looking vegetation in the photo is known as the Tree of Paradise. Any wandering city boy would know it -- if not by name  -- that species of critter being expert in the flora and fauna of your urban vacant lot. It is tropical in origin but thrives in temperate climates. It's being tagged as "invasive" these days by those who go about such things. But back in the day who knew from invasive? It was here and it was everywhere and it wasn't going anywhere.

Here's another side of it, this bad baaad invasive tree is being used as a Tree of Solace for cancer patients.