Advance promotion for A Hostage to Heritage. What a nice gesture on the part of this book reviewer. Thanks!
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A Hostage to Heritage, second title in the Michael Stoddard American Revolution Thrillers series, is scheduled for a 17 April 2013 release. Here are the cover image and book jacket description:
A boy kidnapped for ransom. And a madman who didn’t bargain on Michael Stoddard’s tenacity.
Spring 1781. The American Revolution enters its seventh grueling year. In Wilmington, North Carolina, redcoat investigator Lieutenant Michael Stoddard expects to round up two miscreants before Lord Cornwallis’s army arrives for supplies. But his quarries’ trail crosses with that of a criminal who has abducted a high-profile English heir. Michael’s efforts to track down the boy plunge him into a twilight of terror from radical insurrectionists, whiskey smugglers, and snarled secrets out of his own past in Yorkshire.
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I’m sending out Michael Stoddard #2,A Hostage to Heritage, to beta reviewers this weekend and continuing to schedule promotion for the book’s release at the end of April. Meanwhile, I’m talking
Michael Stoddard, masseurs, and dark chocolate in an interview on the Mysteristas blog. Stop by and check it out!
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Early books
The earliest books with some form of paper for pages most often had no cover images. If you were fortunate enough to own books, the front cover was usually dark leather. In the twentieth century, paper jackets became common over the covers of books. Soon, publishers discovered that they could include an image on the jacket to make it more interesting. These images were printed on the front covers of paperback versions, too. Sometimes the images gave an accurate representation of the book’s content. Often they did not.
Advantages of physical books
In the good old days of publishing, when books were made of paper, authors groused over bad cover images for their books. However, prospective readers might overlook a poor book cover because there was a tactile connection. Consumers could hold a book and thumb through the pages, reading at leisure, perhaps even enjoying that “new book” smell.
Challenges of ebooks
No tactile (or olfactory) connection exists for consumers who purchase electronic books. Thus an ebook’s cover image pulls a great deal more weight in the consumer’s decision-making process. It must capture the attention of the ebook’s target audience; accurately convey the ebook’s concept, tone, and setting; and lure the audience inside. Yet many writers who self-publish, and even a few publishers, either fail to understand these crucial functions of the cover image or ignore them in favor of just getting the ebook out there with some cover image.
Finding cover art that reaches the right readers
For my “Mysteries of the American Revolution” trilogy, my original publisher used artwork from the public domain as the basis for each cover image. When the press ceased operation, and my rights reverted to me, one of my first tasks was to seek out cover artists to create new covers. I’d been listening to what my readers liked about my books, and why. I knew those first covers weren’t appropriate for the books.
Here’s a before-and-after comparison of the cover art for each book in the trilogy.
Good cover art becomes even more important if an ebook series is involved. When executed correctly for each title of the series, the cover images create a unified appearance that identifies the ebooks and author for the target audience. The images also promise the reading experience that will be found in the series. It’s a covenant of satisfaction and security for readers, the knowledge that if they enjoyed book 1, they can find more of the same in other books of the series. If you love your readers, you’ll give them all that.
How important is a book’s front cover image in influencing your decision to buy the book?
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Many years ago, encumbered by the point of view of someone dwelling in the twentieth century, I joined a group that depicted a unit of the Thirty-Third Light Company of Foot during living history events in the American South. My desire was to immerse myself in the activities and sensory impressions an eighteenth-century woman living during the Southern theater of the American Revolution would have experienced, so I could more accurately depict the world of Sophie Barton, protagonist in my first book, Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution.
Reenacting is an enlightening research tool. It helps me create the world of the Southern theater in my fiction. Reenacting is the ultimate hands-on history. By immersing myself in the military world of the late eighteenth century for entire weekends at a time, I cannot escape brushes with some of the hardships that plagued our ancestors. Sudden downpours and windstorms with no shelter. Sudden freezing rain, even with shelter. Heat indices of 120 degrees. Mosquito swarms without screens. No plumbing. No refrigeration. No electricity. No phone service. You get the idea.
My first reenacting event, I didn’t know to expect primitive conditions. After more events, I settled in with the understanding that at the end of the weekend, I’d be reunited with the technological comforts of my time. That’s when I comprehended how tough, persevering, and remarkable my ancestors must have been—and how fortunate I was to live in a country where I had access to wonders such as running water, electricity, refrigeration, and plumbing.
In the United States, we take our twenty-first century standard of living for granted. We forget that comforts such as running water are truly wonders, luxuries to many people in the world, people who start each day by walking several miles, burdened by buckets or jugs, to the nearest source of water (likely not clean). Survival is foremost in the minds of these people when they awaken each day, just as it was for people—patriot, loyalist, and neutral—during the American Revolution.
Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers and friends. When you gather with family and friends to celebrate this holiday, consider the hardships endured by courageous people who lived more than two centuries ago during the time of the American Revolution. Today, people throughout the world endure those same hardships. Remember those people in your thoughts and hearts for a moment. And don’t take for granted your luxuries or your liberty.
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Remember, remember, the fifth of November.
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Today is Guy Fawkes Day, a tradition marked with parties, bonfires, and fireworks for hundreds of years in Britain, a celebration to mark King James’s survival of an assassination attempt. Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of revolutionaries who plotted to blow up the House of Lords. The “Gunpowder Conspiracy” was uncovered on 5 November 1605, and many members of the group were captured. A confession was tortured out of Fawkes. After he’d staggered to the top of the tall scaffold where he was to be hanged (step 1 in the “hang, draw, quarter” sequence), he threw himself off it and broke his neck.
Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated in America early during the colonial period. The fête had fallen out of fashion by the time of the American Revolution, another tie to cut while severing bonds with Britain. (In my third book, Camp Follower, the loyalist main character, Helen, laments to her friend, “I’ve noticed they don’t much celebrate the old ways here. It’s even difficult to find a decent bonfire for Guy Fawkes.”) Thus my first exposure to Guy Fawkes Day came in 1982, when I was living in Britain. The enthusiastic responses of Brits to the festival, like their responses to football (soccer) games, made me speculate that in the British Isles, I might not have to look far beneath the stiff, upper lip to find a tribal human from thousands of years ago.
The next time I was exposed to Guy Fawkes Day was a little over a decade ago, when I participated with my school-age sons as British camp followers for the annual reenactment of the Battle of Camden. After dark, the Crown forces reenactors played at mob mentality while parading a
fireworks-filled effigy of Guy Fawkes (“the Guy”) to a bonfire. My sons were both frightened and fascinated by the spectacle. As they grew older, and we attended more Guy Fawkes celebrations at the annual reenactment, they grew to love the festival almost as much as the Fourth of July, which is what it resembles to us Yanks.
Many expatriate Brits in America hold their own Guy Fawkes celebrations. One told me the story of having a celebration about fifteen years ago interrupted by the arrival of the police. A neighbor, witnessing the effigy and bonfire, had called 911 to report human sacrifice in progress.
These days, Guy Fawkes is making a comeback here in America. In Raleigh, North Carolina, “bands and bonfires” mark a fiery, official Guy Fawkes night downtown. I’m glad to see the festival reappear. It provides a good history reminder. And it’s an introduction to a season of lights that hearkens back to the wonder of early humans, who rejoiced at the return of the sun after the winter solstice.
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Huzzah! The Blacksmith’s Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution is finally back in print! That means all my books that have been released are available in both trade paperback and
electronic formats — and in time for the holidays.
You wouldn’t believe the roadblocks I ran into getting this particular title back in print. Hurdles during the final week? The subtitle got left off the book, and my cover illustrator suddenly became my co-author. Yikes!
Got a minute? Please help me make this new print edition more visible on Amazon by tagging the book to place it in the correct search categories. Here’s the quick and easy procedure:
Done! As I said, quick and easy! If you want, you can also click the “Like” button on the book page. That’s up at the very top, near the title.
Thanks very much!
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I took a six-week hiatus from my blog this summer to finish the first draft of another Michael Stoddard book, called A Hostage to Heritage. While that “cools,” I’ve been editing the second draft of book one of a science fiction series that was almost purchased by Warner in the mid-1990s. As fall is right around the corner, it’s time to resume my bloggery. So without further ado…
Last year, I posted the first part of an essay about the origins of Dunstan Fairfax, my series villain. His character developed in my imagination over a lifetime. He continues to evolve as my series progresses. It’s been awhile since that post, and you may want to reread it before proceeding. This post continues the topic.
Villains in fiction arise from an author’s personal experiences. Those experiences start in childhood with fictional examples. I discussed mine in Part 1. Inevitably, the real world provides its own examples—not just in childhood, but in adolescence and adulthood. Those experiences, too, are cataloged in the psyche, but with a much more three-dimensional flavor.
So while in adolescence and early adulthood, I became acquainted with classic fictional baddies like Lady MacBeth, Mordred, Sauron, the Cthulhu, Professor Moriarty, and Lestat, at the same time, real-life boogers were making themselves known to me—neighbor, relative, school administrator, nurse, doctor, teacher, clergyman, lawyer, police officer, middle manager. A number of them were sociopaths who didn’t give a damn about me or other people. They just wanted control, and they’d placed themselves in positions where they could get control.
Authors transform life’s black moments, transport them onto the page. Horror in an author’s life is an excellent place to look for the nucleus of sociopathic characters. And life after the shelter of high school had a good bit to teach me about horror and sociopaths.
My brush with Bundy
January 1978, right after I’d transferred to a college campus in north Florida to complete a Bachelors degree, the nation was flooded with news of horrific murders committed at Florida State University, in Tallahassee, not far from me. Ted Bundy had sadistically murdered young women my age. While he remained at large, and for weeks after he’d been caught, the atmosphere at college campuses all over the region was oppressive, near lock-down, especially after Bundy’s multi-decade “career” came to light. At my school, campus security beefed up. Students didn’t walk anywhere alone. Two female acquaintances quit college and moved back home with their parents.
Bundy was one of the twentieth century’s most infamous serial killers, a sociopathic Goliath. The effect he had on the people and institutions around me left an indisputable imprint on my imagination. Even though the word “sociopath” still hadn’t made it to watercooler discussions in January 1978, I learned that not all sociopaths are created equal. Those I’d met paled in comparison to Bundy. He demonstrated that there were monsters who could terrorize entire populations.
A year and a half later, I completed my first novel-length manuscript, book one of a science fiction series. The series villains, called Erovians, are an entire race of sociopaths: a “Goliath” that doesn’t give a damn about other sentient life. “David” in this series is humans and other sentient species who received Erovian genetic tampering. In the mid-1990s, the first book of that series was the book that came within a hair’s breadth of being purchased by Warner. You may see that book for sale soon.
Murder on the first floor
By the mid-1980s, the easygoing tropical paradise of my childhood had vanished. Sure, Jimmy Buffet the balladeer was blending margaritas in Key West, and Don Johnson was making crime in steamy Miami look cool, but they were fiddling while Rome burned. South Florida had mutated into an ugly fusion of traffic, concrete, and volatile ethnic groups. Crime escalated, even in the stable neighborhood where I lived near the Intercoastal Waterway, in a second-floor condo.
In the spring of 1986, a neighbor’s purse was snatched while she was on the condo property. In the summer, another neighbor was nearly beaten to death by her alcoholic husband. (I was one of three neighbors who called 911 that night.) And that fall, the neighbor in the condo below mine was
tortured to death by some of his acquaintances. His murderers were garden-variety thugs who were caught the next day. Nevertheless, another horror imprint was left on my imagination. I’ve never forgotten the sight of yellow crime scene tape strung all over the place I called home. Or the smell of rotting garbage and blood-soaked carpet while crime scene investigators took their time processing the place. Or the quantity and size of cockroaches that invaded my home because they were displaced by the cleanup.
I’d been brought up on the space program and had watched the launch of Apollo missions from the roof of my house. The space program was Florida. Then the shuttle “Challenger” blew up in January 1987. In the aftermath of the horror, we learned that decision-makers at NASA were aware of the potential mechanical failure and approved cheaper parts that might not hold up. Save a few bucks, kill seven astronauts. Were these decision-makers sociopaths? Prioritizing the bottom line above humanity is characteristic of the thinking of many sociopathic managers in Corporate America. You decide. For me, the Challenger disaster spelled closing time. I moved to Atlanta, Georgia later that year to earn a Masters degree.
The cannibal and the watercooler
In 1988, Thomas Harris’s second book about a cannibalistic psychiatrist hit the shelves. Rather sleepily it climbed the charts, but what sent The Silence of the Lambs into orbit and turned Dr. Hannibal Lector into a cultural icon was the movie, released in 1991, and Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of Hannibal. After that, the word “sociopath” became part of watercooler conversation at the workplace.
The national media glommed onto sociopathic killers with glee. It turned the 1989 execution of Ted Bundy in Florida into a three-ring circus. The number of people who tuned in to watch astounded me. Atlanta itself didn’t lack for sociopathic killers to fill the local news. One was Emmanuel Hammond, who kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered a woman named Julie Love in 1988. Another was lawyer Fred Tokars, who scheduled a hit on his wife Sara in 1992 while his young sons watched, because Sara had found out about his criminal activities.
But even after all that, I wasn’t quite ready to create Fairfax’s character. A few more pieces needed to fall into place first. I cover the final pieces that triggered the spawning of his character in the third and last installment of this essay.
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Essayist: Peggy Earp
Contribution: two copies of DVD on spinning
Winners: Jill Vassilakos-Long, Sandra
Essayist: Don Hagist
Contribution: copy of A British Soldier’s Story
Winner: Matt Casey
Essayist: John Buchanan
Contribution: copy of The Road to Guilford Courthouse
Winner: Jenny Q
Essayists: Suzanne Adair, Don Troiani
Contribution: two copies of Regulated for Murder>
Winners: Laura Tarbutton, Don Hagist
Congratulations to all the winners!
Thanks to my wonderful essayists who contributed so much to this year’s program. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History last week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.
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Welcome to my blog! The week of 29 June – 5 July, I’m participating with more than two hundred other bloggers in the “Freedom to Read” giveaway hop, accessed by clicking on the logo at the left. All blogs listed in this hop offer book-related giveaways, and we’re all linked, so you can easily hop from one giveaway to another. But here on my blog, I’m posting a week of Relevant History essays, each one focused on some facet of the American War of Independence. To find out how to qualify for the giveaways on my blog, read through each day’s Relevant History post below and follow the directions. Then click on the Freedom Hop logo so you can move along to another blog. Enjoy!
*****
Earlier this year, Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. Much has been made of a poll finding that, among Americans, the queen had a 61% approval rating while President Obama’s approval rating was a mere 45%. Some Americans declared, “Yes! Let’s return to the fold!” Brits quipped, “We welcome you, as long as you pay that back tax on tea first!”
Those findings don’t mean that most Americans are ready to chuck it all and leap into the lap of monarchy. The poll compares an elected official with a non-elected official. So it’s an “apples and oranges” comparison.
However Americans are undeniably fascinated with Britain. Helped along by Hollywood and American mythology, Britain represents an icon of both urbanity and villainy. Many Americans with ancestors from the British Isles succumb to the genetic pull and vacation in the UK. And let’s face it, the Brits do pageantry 24/7 to the heights that Americans, caught up in Calvinistic roots, cannot begin to approach—although certain annual events such as the Kentucky Derby come close.
The year 2012 is an election year in America. A good many “issues” are on the table. People are disgruntled. Beneath everyone’s vitriolic exchanges over the issues, the suspicion skulks for many Americans that the country is tromping through a tangled, endless forest. That it stepped off a path defined by founders more than two hundred years ago. And that squabbling over issues is not what the founders envisioned for the future of America.
It so happens that the country’s founders addressed a number of these hot issues in their speeches and writings. Read the counsel of America’s founders:
“Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.” (Thomas Jefferson)
“I have already intimated to you the danger of Parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on Geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party, generally.” (George Washington)
“The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.” (John Adams)
“If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women.” (Abigail Adams)
“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.” (John Adams)
“Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.” (James Madison)
“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” (Thomas Jefferson)
“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.” (James Madison)
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” (Thomas Jefferson)
Did any of that resonate with you? Do American people know that the country’s founders said these things? Do you get the feeling that America would be better off if citizens actually took the counsel of the founders?
This week, my guests have covered territory that was probably omitted from your high school history class. Omitted details often point to lessons we should be learning about human nature, religion, government, and society. In other words, they’re what makes history relevant.
We aren’t learning from history very well. Why does this matter? Because every time we don’t learn a lesson, we risk making a costly mistake. Ask yourself what can be done about it. (And the answer isn’t leaping into the lap of monarchy.)
This second annual week-long Fourth of July wouldn’t have been possible without you or my talented guests: Don Troiani, Peggy Earp, Don Hagist, and John Buchanan. What worlds can they open for you? Browse back through the posts. Look for their works. Then comment here on something you learned this week that made history relevant to you. Thanks for stopping by!
*****
Contribute a legitimate comment on this post by today at 6 p.m. ET to be entered in a drawing to win one of two autographed copies of Regulated for Murder. Delivery is available worldwide. Make sure you include your email address. I’ll publish the names of all drawing winners on my blog the week of 9 July.
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