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…
In a previous post, “In the Beginning…“, I discussed how the concept for An Uncertain Peace originated in a coffee shop in Mobile, Alabama. That step was crucial; it gave me a goal. However, it did not give me a plan for writing the novel. I thought it did, but it didn’t. To use an…
By the end of my post, “How Do You Get To Chicago?”, I had a manuscript of 125,000+ words lying in a computer file. Visions of agents pounding on my door and publishers desperately outbidding each other for the book rights danced in my head. Then, like a car crash, reality smashed into my life….