Work on my novel, An Uncertain Peace, began almost thirty years ago. I had an idea for a story about a Civil War officer who was involved in gathering intelligence. General Grenville Dodge led an early incarnation of all-source intelligence for the Western Union Army, and that seemed like it might be fertile ground for a story. That was about the extent of my thinking, and what came next was not linear progress.
My first effort was a caper novel, intended to be humorous and engaging. I was reading a lot of Donald Westlake at the time and had also read some of George McDonald Frazier’s Flashman books. My novel would be historical and funny. That’s not how things went. There was history, but it wasn’t funny. I learned that the only one who can do Westlake is Westlake. Somewhere around page fifty, I cut my losses and binned the manuscript.
Perhaps because I was chastened by this failure, I tried again with a darker, more realistic approach. The timeframe moved to the aftermath of the Civil War. Characters thought much and said little. Clocks ticked in otherwise silent rooms. In fireplaces, fires burned down to embers late at night. Abigail Maynard, who would become one of the main characters in the finished book, watched her husband die in surroundings chosen for their symbolic or metaphorical meaning; his death was revealed to the reader in prose that was morbidly insightful. I suppose this attempt was an equal but opposite reaction to my first try. However, channeling my inner Dostoyevsky proved to be an even worse idea than the Westlake foray. It lasted for thirty-five excruciating pages before joining its predecessor in the trash.
I turned to other projects.
Sometime in the late 90s, I accompanied my wife, Deb, to a language conference in Mobile, AL. She taught French. Tagging along to her conferences was fun because I had no responsibilities and could explore whatever city we were in while she attended various sessions. I was driving her to the conference center for a morning session, and, since we were early, we stopped at a coffee shop for a caffeine boost and a pastry. We began discussing the Civil War novel. As we sat and talked, bouncing ideas around and listening to Ottmar Liebert’s “Nouveau Flamenco” on a loop, the bones of An Uncertain Peace began to emerge. Deb missed her session, and I wrote up a plot/character sketch that afternoon. We later bought the Ottmar Liebert CD.
Now I had a goal and a sense of what my destination would look like, but a long, long road lay ahead to publication. More characters spoke to me, and the plot evolved, but the crucial first step had been taken.
But things were not about to get easy.
My father used to say, “If you have a plan, you can change the plan, but if you don’t have a plan, you’re just wandering around.”
I had a goal, but I did not have a plan.