I hope so! This one's gotten off to a really slow start because of the challenges of alternate history. Many of my major characters, including the series protagonist and antagonist, are real people, so I'm having to research them fairly intensively in order to effectively get inside their heads. The other problem with real people is that there are too many of them--if I'd invented my protagonist, his parents would've had two children. They had six. Another important figure has oodles of aunts, making it hard for me to believably isolate her the way I'd like to make my plot nice and tidy. And that's not even getting into the sheer number of Important People who ought to play some sort of role. I feel like I could spend the next ten years of my life reading VIP biographies of my era and STILL leave someone out. I'm tempted to kill off all the inconvenient people, but I'm already killing four well-known people before their times, and I feel like anything beyond that would get ridiculous.
And then when it comes to the action side, I have the opposite problem. Instead of being bounded in by messy reality, I can no longer rely on what really happened as a crutch. In TSL, there's a battle sequence set during the storming of Badajoz. Once I'd done my research, I was able to write it with confidence, since all I was doing was inserting my fictional character into a well-attested real sequence of events. Any mistakes and military blunders aren't my stupidity--they're that of the generals involved. But for this story, I have to make all that stuff up. MUCH harder.
Anyway, I started writing 2-3 months ago, and I'm on my third attempt to get through the first 50 pages and get the story rolling. I hope I can pick up the pace soon...
Alternative history has been around a long time. "Ring the Jubilee" though by a SF writer was simply alternate history. For that matter it turns out that H.G. Wells "Men like Gods" was not the worlds first alternate history. They were apparently a popular genre in the 19th century! So popularity may rise and fall, but not going anywhere.
And welcome back Susan!
As TB said, Ward Moore's
Bring the Jubilee
dates back to the '50s and the ultimate alternate history book, Philip K. Dick's
Man in the High Castle
was published in the '60s.
Welcome back, Susan! I have to say, you sound amazingly jazzed and enthusiastic and just plain
up
about this possible new direction. I think it will go well for you.
Hi Susan! Welcome back. It does sound like you have some great new plans to work on. I admire your un-wilty-ness in the face of disappointment.
Oh, believe me, I've had my wilty moments, not to mention serious envy of writers who started at the same time I did or later who have books on the shelves now. But I've gone too far down this road to quit. I went six weeks without writing when we were moving to our new place and I was switching jobs, and I swear I had withdrawal symptoms.
And I'm glad my enthusiasm for my WIP is coming through all my angst about how hard it is!
Good luck with the your new writing direction, Susan!
Susan, I love alt-history. FWIW, I'm really interested in reading
The Sergeant's Lady
now. Really, you had me at "He's a clever sergeant, she's a widowed aristocrat, together they fight crime and Frogs".
connie, awesome! You
are
a pro. I want to read your book. I can't figure out how to get it on my computer, though. Gotta work on that. (The older I get, the more I hate technology.)
(pets her iPod and covers its ears)
FWIW, I'm really interested in reading The Sergeant's Lady now. Really, you had me at "He's a clever sergeant, she's a widowed aristocrat, together they fight crime and Frogs".
Well, I haven't written the mystery version yet. The one we tried to sell is romance with military adventure elements. Sort of Jane Austen meets Sharpe's Rifles, with sex. (I guess the mystery version would be Jane Austen meets Sharpe's Rifles meets Marcus Didius Falco, with sex. Which certainly sounds like a winner to ME, but I'm the one who wants to write it...)
Works for me.
Of course, it's possible that "...with sex." always works for me. Everything's better with sex!
