The Saturday Morning Post (No. 63)

I am still reading about the American Civil War. This time it's a non-fiction book, one that addresses all the issues that I avoided reading about in the Shaara book I read. I figured I owed Franklin that much.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine  B+

Looking through the ebooks available via the local library on the American Civil War I came across this book, and it sounded really interesting, in that while it concerns the war, it promised to address the everyday life of the South in the war. Histories that concern themselves with the everyday life of people are the type of history that I most enjoy. I am less interested in the doings of kings, than the how people lived in the past. 

I am happy to report that I not only enjoyed reading this book, but learned a lot about the era, and the causes of Civil War. While it is more focused on the big picture of how Southern society changed with the impact of war rather than everyday life, it drew on contemporary accounts recorded in diaries and newspapers to draw a picture of the vast changes in the life, and in the outlook, of the Southerner from the 1800's to the end of the Civil War, and how the war they started to preserve their society destroyed it.

This is a readable history that covers the era and subject in depth and detail, but not too much so as to make it dry reading. As I mentioned above, it uses the words of the people of the time to paint its picture of the time. I think it could've been shorter since the same viewpoints are repeated by various people. Still, I was never bored and actually read it without skimming. And since I get bored easily, I think I can safely say that if you are curious about the era, and the effects of the American Civil War in the southern states, you will enjoy this book while learning a lot.

My Universe - The People

The distant future? Well, yes. As I write it.
The city of Lanterna from Beneath the Lanterns

"My universe" seems like a rather extravagant claim. Let's just say that I have a standard background setting for most of my stories, one that I have developed over the years. Other than A Summer in Amber, Some Day Days and A Night on Isvalar, all my stories have a common background and back story. In this post I'm going to talk about the people in the rest of the stories. Be warned, I've never set this backdrop down in words, until now, so I tend to ramble.

First off, all of my character's ancestors come from Earth and all of the stories are set far into the future - 50,000 to 100,000 years or more in the future. The underlying premise is that humans have bio-engineered themselves into a "new, improved" species, "Homo Stellar", in order to eliminated the ill effects of weightlessness and space travel, to made them resistant to all known diseases, to give people conscious control over their emotional responses, and women control over their ovation, as well as extending their lifespan to around 200 years. This extension does not double the whole life cycle. It keeps youth and the "golden age" (sic) the same, i.e. about 25 years each, but increased our "prime" middle years five-fold, i.e. 150 years. I also introduced robotic and enhanced medical treatment in most, but not all stories.

What I didn't do was change the nature of humans. They are very familiar. indeed, no different than what we are today. This, given the timeframe is probably not realistic. Humans, if still around 50,000 years from now, would probably be unrecognizable to us. I turned a blind eye to this because I had no interest in speculating as to just how they might be different. Plus, I wanted to write stories with relatable human characters (plus dogs & cats), not Morlocks.

One reason why I lengthened my characters' lifespans was so that I could tell the stories I wanted, without having to rush through them. For example, the story arc of two Lost Star Stories spans over 20 years, starting with the characters in the range of 40 -50 years old and some more. The extended lifespan gives them plenty of headroom to have as many adventures as I could dream up without fudging either ages or compressing the time line in the stories. They can take several months to get somewhere, instead of minutes or hours. Longer times spans make my universe bigger.

I'm not an "ideas" writer even though ideas are the tentpole feature of SF. However, with this longer lifespan, there are issues to explore, and I do occasionally explore ideas. One of those ideas is what impact would a 200 year long lifespan have on human life and society? What would people do with all that extra time? Would people still fall in love and get married in their 20's? Would many/any of them stay married all their lives to the same partner? We're talking 170 years or more. How long can love last? Given two centuries of life, would it be normal to have several or numerous marriages/partnerships? How many children, and how often will couples raise a family, given 150 years to have them? How many children would a woman want over the course of 150 years given that they would have a choice? Would people raise numerous families with different partners over the course of 150 years? Lots of ideas to explore.

While I am aware of these questions, still, I've kept most of these considerations largely in the background of my stories, by either focusing on "spaceers" in space ships, or young people in the Tropic Sea stories. Many are largely unresolved in my mind. Some I do address rather obliquely. In my upcoming Chateau Clare story I've had to touch on many of these questions, since families and family relationships are an important element in the story, as well as in how the society operates in an otherwise very familiar world. In that story, an adult may have great-great grandparents alive and not consider it unusual. One might have many cousins of varying degrees, some as old as our grandparents or as young as our grandchildren, if you're that old, as well as a variety of half-siblings who might also be a century older or younger than yourself. However, because I use a first person narrator to tell these stories, this aspect of life is seen through his eyes and taken as customary, so that exploring these feature in great detail with sweeping descriptions of the society would be too much out of character for a character grown up an intimately familiar with that society. You almost always have to cheat anyway, but you can make it a little less obvious with little, off-handed explanations as you go along. Which works for me, since even I don't have a sweeping overview of it myself. I explore it as I go along.

I'm just rattling on and on, so I'll cut my discussion here, and return next week to rattle more about the my societies. 

 

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 62)

 

We have another civil war novel this week. This is the fourth and last book in Jeff  Shaara's civil war series. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Fateful Lightning by Jeff Shaara  B

This is the fourth and last of his books on the American Civil War. It opens in Alabama, 1864. The previous installment ended with the Confederate defeat at Chattanooga in the fall of 1863. This installment begins with General Sherman leaving a burning Atlanta and Scarlet O'Hara behind him in the fall of 1864, thus skipping Sherman's entire campaign of the spring and summer that culminated with the capture of Atlanta. Shaara mentioned that he skipped this section as his publisher wanted only four books, so he had to choose what to write about, and me chose Sherman's famous March to the Sea, and subsequent march north through the Carolinas for Virginia to meet Grant's army laying siege to R E Lee's army at Petersburg.

Like the previous volumes, this is a novel that uses historical characters as point of view characters, drawing from their memoirs and those of their contemporaries. General Sherman plays a large role in this book, as does General Hardee, the Confederate general who had to deal with Sherman's advance through Georgia. In addition we have a Confederate cavalry captain, and a freed slave who became attached to the Union Army as point of view characters as well. While there are half a dozen engagements described in the book - which I skipped - most of the novel from the Union side, provides a view of what was a long march against mostly the weather, swamps, and poor roads, while on the Southern side, we see the often futile attempts to do the Unions any harm, and the growing realization that the war was lost.

Shaara uses the freed slave, Franklin, to tell the backstory of slavery in the south, and how they faired during the war, as thousands the freed slaves followed the Union army, knowing that they would likely be killed by the Southern cavalry if left behind, since they were considered runaway slaves in the eyes of these Southern soldiers. I must admit that I skipped parts of his story as well, as I found it too great a digression from what I was most interested in. But you probably should read it.

All in all, a pretty good book. I learned a lot about the campaign that I knew next to nothing about, save for what the "march to the sea" would tell me, and nothing at all about Sherman's campaign north. I don't think it replaces a modern, well written history book on the subject if you are interested in the campaign's history, but as a novel of the period, it worked well.

Chateau Clare Floor Plan, Maps, and Art

 

A scene from the story - Lan meeting Cia at Mayfair Square

Since the Chateau Clare, the estate that Lan Taya inherits is central to the story, I had initially considered painting a view of it as the cover art. However, I know that painting buildings in any detail is not my strong point as a painter. I'm more comfortable more organic forms and the "impression" of buildings. In addition, as a practical consideration, given the portrait shape of the cover, if I wanted to fit the whole chateau in on the front cover, it would've had to have been very small, with a lot of sky. Instead, I chose the more intimate scene, above, for the cover. It has Lan meeting Cia at Mayfair Square on a summer's morning. It is the type of scene I am more comfortable painting. My inspiration for the cover was the painting below, one of my earlier paintings. I didn't quite get the richness of the sunlight that was present in Crescent Morning, but I ain't the painter I used to be.

Crescent Morning

Having painted the scene, I then, in Gimp, added the black outlines, the so-called "cartoon" effect to the painting, which I feel gives the painting a bit more crispness and texture, making it a little more interesting, at least for a book cover. I need all the help I can find these days. I usually add this effect to all my cover art. 

I like books with maps. And so...

I felt that to describe the chateau and its interior I, at least, needed a floor plan of the place. I am not a draftsman, so the drawing are a bit crude, but using graph paper I laid out the floor plan of the chateau - a good exercise in making sure that I knew what I was talking about when moving about the chateau. Below are the floor plans for Chateau Clare that I drew up for my use. They will at least be in the print version, and maybe the ebook as well.

As for the appearance of the chateau, Lan Taya, who discovers that he has inherited a chateau, describes the chateau, on his first sight of it, as looking like a factory building - the effect of all of its many large, small-paned windows. And indeed, that is what I drew my inspiration from - an old factory building in France that I passed by in one of my YouTube virtual train rides. 

The chateau is located some 20 km south of Celora, the capital city of Lorria, on the Isle of Autumn. This island is an "island" created by a wide loop in the River Fair around a long ridge, which has been made into an island by a canal and a series of locks that were cut through the narrow base of the loop to shorten the distance barges have to travel to the city from the sea, and manage river depth. The Isle of Autumn is the exclusive haunt of the Great Houses and New Wealth of Lorria. Its river shore is lined with these large estates. Chateau Clare is one such mansion, located on the south shore of the Isle. I've made a rather simple sketch of the chateau and grounds below. 

I also did a small painting of Autumn Avenue, which is the road that circles the Isle of Autumn. It is lined on both sides by the walled estates. The isle also has its own tram lined, the tracks which you can see along the left of the road.

And finally, I created a map of the central portion of the city of Celora, showing the locations mentioned in the novel. Being founded by settlers from the Solar System, rather than growing organically over a long time, it was laid out in a strict grid, with boroughs created by wide boulevards and avenues. These grand roads have elevated tram rail lines running down their center boulevard. Where the grand boulevards and avenues cross, there are large traffic circles, with the raised elevated train stations in the middle of the circle with walkway bridges to the four corners of the intersection. I've named some of the boroughs created by the grid of grand avenues, (ALL CAPS) but not all of them.

I wanted to get the look of the city maps like they are portrayed in the old travel guide books I have, but without drawing the city of Celora by hand. At first I considered taking photos of those guide book city maps and mixing and matching them. But most were too large scale. I then thought about using Google Maps instead, and so I used the satellite version of some of suburban London, just to create the texture of a city. I used screen shots of various locales, made them into tiles to fit in between the boulevards in with varying orientations so that they don't repeat too much. The map isn't really necessary to follow the story, it is just there to add a level of realism to Celora. And as I mentioned, maps are fun. 

A rainy evening in Celora

I hate to spoil stories so that I don't know what else I can say about this one, especially at this point, when, at the time this entry is posted, it had not been released. I do plan, however, to talk about the larger setting, in which most of my far future are set, so stay tuned!

The Saturday Morning Post (No.61)

 

Back to the American Civil War this week, with a second novel by Jeff Shaara. This time covering the events leading up to a single battle in that war in the west.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Smoke at Dawn by Jeff Shaara   B

I enjoyed this installment of Jeff Shaara's American Civil War books more than the first one I read, Gods and Generals. I think it was because of its focus being narrower, on just one battle, or rather the events leading up to a battle. The battle itself was perhaps the last 15% of the book, and given my disinterest in the chorography of a soldier's view of the battle, this focus on events and characters other than the battle itself made it a more enjoyable book for me. 

The book recounts the months after the Union defeat and rout at the battle of Chickamauga Creek and their retreat to the city of Chattanooga followed by the halfhearted Confederate siege of the city by General Braxton Bragg, General Grant's arrival, and then the battle of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Hill several months later that breaks the siege and sends the Confederate army running. 

Like in the book before, the novel uses real historical people as characters. We have as viewpoint characters General Grant, and Sherman, as well as General Thomas, and a private in the Union Army. On the Confederate side, we have General Braxton Bragg, the commander of the Southern army - a man who easily  made enemies of everyone he met, including his subordinate generals - and General Patrick Cleburne. The novel offer a fictionalized glimpse of the problems and hardships both armies faced in the field due to poor weather and the lack of food, as well as an imaginary re-construction of the main characters thoughts and relationships. I'm quite sure Mr Shaara did all the research he could on the battle and personalities from original source material. However, not all of the characters left memoirs to draw upon, so that there is always an element of fiction in these historical characters. But that said, this is the way I like to learn about history - well researched novels like Shaara's, and Fraser's Flashman books.

The next and last book in this series, A Fateful Lightning covering Sherman's March to the Sea, was available, so I picked it up as well. Its review is on tap for next week.

Introducing Chateau Clare

 

Chateau Clare Front Elevation

I spent the summer of 2023 daydreaming up and planning this story. As usual, there were many false starts and variations along the way. Still, from the beginning there was going to be one of the characters, and not necessarily the narrator, inheriting a large, long abandoned, house. A house with connections to ancient sorcery in an age where sorcery had long been outlawed and mostly forgotten. The "invisible girl," was always going to be in the story, and a scene in a small restaurant for tea on a spring day. I had decided that the narrator was going to be the assistant art director for the city's metro company. There was going to be a mysterious disappearance in the past that had implications which would play some undefined part in the story. All these elements made their way into the story, in some form or another. 

My intention was, from the beginning, to write a story that would be the polar opposite of the type of fantasy known as grimdark. My manifesto was: 

Have you grown weary of long, dark and grim fantasy epics? Tired of evil priests, ruthless kings, sinister queens, knaves, and scoundrels – intricate palace intrigues and endless wars? Are you jaded by blood-soaked tomes of battle after battle, death after death? Need a break from accounts of disembowelment, torture, rape, and murder? In short, are you looking for a change of pace, a different sort of fantasy? Look no further.

Moreover, I wanted to write a more literary styled story - not literary fiction, but a genre story that dared to tell an ordinary story of ordinary people living an almost ordinary life, that was written in a leisurely, with almost literary, lack of plot, much less action. A fantasy story without adventures, dangers, dragons, elves, or magic. In short, a story that thumbed its nose at the conventions of most fantasy stories. Clearly not a commercial story, but then why not? I have nothing to lose.

Mayfair Square on a summer's day

Now, I said this all before in my tease, so what is the story about? Well, let's start with the current blurb;

Chateau Clare is a leisurely paced, mundane slice of life fantasy novel set in a (mostly) post-magic, everyday Edwardian-era sort of world. The stakes are low, the company pleasant. In it Lan Teya discovers he’s the heir of a once slightly sinister and powerful Great House – a family he never knew he belonged to. With this inheritance comes the long abandoned, Chateau Clare of his sorcerer ancestors. As the new master of Chateau Clare, Lan reluctantly sets out to renovate the chateau, and in the process, uncovers not only its secrets, but a great injustice that had been inflicted on his immediate predecessor by at least some of the other Great Houses – a wrong that he reluctantly finds he must right. But at what cost?

As a slow paced novel of everyday life in a secondary, but semi-familiar world, Chateau Clare is filled with colorful friends, little mysteries and a hint of romance. It is ASMR fantasy at its best. So, if you’re looking for excitement, move along, nothing to see here. But, if you’re looking for a nice, pleasant read, Chateau Clare may be just your cup of tea.

The Gardens Boulevard on a spring evening

I make it clear early in the story that what is described as sorcery is actually advanced technology, much of which has been abandoned or outlawed some 1700 years before the story begins by a revolution of sorts known as the "Second Founding." I can't bring myself to write stories with magic, so my magic is always the Arthur C Clark's sufficiently advance technology that passes for magic type of magic. This world, like the Nine Star Nebula or the planet of Dara of Sailing to Redoubt, has been settled by slower-than-light spaceships from the Solar System of Keiree, Beneath the Lanterns, and The Girl on the Kerb. 

In this story, one of the three ships has, at least so far, failed to arrive, and the lack of its resources perhaps led to the failure of the advanced technological civilization to fully take off. In Sailing to Redoubt it was a great wave that destroyed the main settlement of Dara. In the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories we have our dissenting settlements, and in the Post-Solar Age stories, we have the great plague. By such devices I find a way to arrive at my favorite setting - a 1900-1930-ish world, with motor cars powered by electricity, building powered by solar panels, and, in this case, a city inspired by Paris. I always find a way to set my future stories in the past.

Autumn Avenue, Isle of Autumn

I view my writing as art. Of course writing and publishing is also a business, but at my scale of publishing, I don't really have to concern myself with producing a book with greatest (or any) potential to sell copies. I can produce the book I feel like producing, and that's certainly what I've done here. While I realize that this story is not likely to appeal to some, if not many, of my readers, I'm willing to accept that. Heck, it may appeal to a different set of new readers, or none at all. We'll see. The important thing is that I had fun dreaming it up. And when it came to writing, I had it so well in mind - along with some written notes to go on as well - that I wrote it from beginning to end in less than three months - at an average rate of around 1600 words a day. And, unlike my last two books, I had no lingering doubts about it when I finished it. Oh, sure, at some point you always have doubts about any story you write, but when you first finish it and feel good about it, like I did with Chateau Clare, it's good, no matter what those later creeping doubts. We'll see how other people find it.

I consider this to be my 2025 novel, but I expect to release it this fall, once my beta readers finish going over it. After they reported in, I'll set a firm release date. In my next update on Chateau Clare, I'll have some floor plans, maps, and info about the story, maybe next week. Stay tuned.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 60)

A Victorian Era Mystery this week, suggested by one of my Beta readers. It's a free book on Smashwords, so the price was right to give it a try. I read this book and wrote this review awhile ago, however, it got lost in the growing backlog of my written reviews, and thus it is posted out of my reading order. (I'm currently have The Saturday Morning Post No. 70 written.)

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Gooseberry by Michael Gallagher  C

Gooseberry is the first book in the Send for Octavius Guy Series, comprising four books. It features the 14 year old title character Octavius "Gooseberry" Guy as a former pickpocket now an attorney's errand boy/detective. The character was a minor character in Wilkie Collin's Victorian story The Moonstone, along with some other characters from that story. The story is set in 1850's London.

The plot concerns an attack by a street gang of children, and a mysterious photograph that is found in the purse of one of the victims of the attack after they get home. What follows is a long and convoluted plot that I'll not even try to summarize. 

The story was first written as a weekly serial posted on Goodreads in 2014. It was written as a serial in the spirit of how The Moonstone and other novels of the period were published. It shows. I say that because I found the plot to be rather meandering, unfocused. Mr Gallagher says that he was inventing, and writing it, as he went along, and that shows. It's not incoherent, or anything like that, it's just that it rambles along from one little mystery solved to the next little mystery, without a sense of an over arching structure to the story. At least I felt that way, and as a result, I found myself forcing myself to pick up the story again, and again. I never quite got into it.

I think this story also illustrated the difference between an old story written as a contemporary tale, and a contemporary written story of the past. Take the Sherlock Holmes stories which were written in a contemporary setting. Doyle felt  no need to explain the Victorian world to the readers. And yet, somehow, readers a hundred plus years later can still follow and enjoy them without getting lost. (Though, of course, you can buy all sorts of books that fill out that world, if you care to.) On the other hand, you have this story, or for that matter, that other Victorian mystery I read a while back, where the authors see a need to explain just about everything about 1850 London to the modern reader. The author here does a pretty good job of inserting all his research into the story - it is a first person narrative, so you have the narrator explaining perhaps things that may be unfamiliar to modern readers, as they become relevant, unlike that other book where the author just shoved in incidental information and history lessons into the narrative willy-nilly. In both cases, I feel that all this information detracts rather than enhances the authenticity of the place and time. Authors should, by all means, avoid the use of modern terms and language and use the historically correct terms and phrases. Give the readers credit for figuring things out by themselves by context or experience in other books. 

So those are my two main criticisms - the story seemed unfocused for a mystery, and it lacked, for me, a sense of authenticity. However, the final straw for me was the fact that the ending was, well, just too far over the top - too unbelievable in that it included the unbelievable appearance of a major historical character. That, and the fact that it had an epilogue that just dragged on and on. I ended up skipping the entire epilogue. By that time I didn't care about the story any more.

All in all, not a bad story, just not one for me. You might like it, and its sequels. They're free ebooks in 2024 on Smashwords, so it costs you nothing to give them a try. And remember I'm only offering my opinion. And even with my complaints, I've given the book an average score, this, despite the cover's ugly green color and dopy typeface for the title.

The Lost Star Series (Part Two)

 

The Lost Star Series' last three books are currently still, for some reason, in limbo awaiting approval from Amazon. I don't know why it is such a problem this time around, but it is, and it has been very frustrating dealing with Amazon and it's form email which tell you nothing. However, I am confident that they will eventually be available for sale at $3.99 each. I'm also waiting for the green light to make them into audiobooks @ 3.99 each as well, which is the main reason for creating these books. Apparently they have to be live and published before you can create the audiobook. The first book is, but it is still not  eligible yet for audiobook conversion yet. Amazon is being a pain these days. However, I'll give them time - I don't expect much in the way of sales and it is a beta program. I'm just covering all my options.

As I mentioned in a previous post, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea were too long to make into audiobooks on Amazon/Audible. I had entertained the idea of splitting each of them into two volumes in order to make them eligible, but that would've have involved also publishing the split versions as ebooks as well. If I did this, do I keep the complete versions also available while selling the split versions as the "Audio Versions," or replacing them with the split versions? Splitting the versions into two would've very awkward, as The Bright Black Sea was written as three novels, and The Lost Star's Sea was written as one novel, and then assorted episodes. The better solution, I decided was to break the series down into it component parts and sell it as a typical SF series of six books - the four natural novel-length story arcs, and the last two with less defined but still good story arcs. This six volume version will only be offered on Amazon - if I can get them to release the last three books they're holding hostage.

In producing the series, I ran each of the books through the grammar checker at Scribbr to clean up at least some of the remaining errors in the books. The process did add a lot of the missing commas, which should make the auto narration sound better. These books were written in a somewhat telegraphic style, reflecting the way some of the old nautical stories I was inspired by were written, so I chose not to follow the many suggests to add more words to smooth out the flow. The style is my artistic choice.  

I have also re-released both, both The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea as omnibus versions, each with three novels included, on Draft2Digital ebooks as well as on Google ebooks and audiobooks, using the new, improved versions of the text, making them read better as well. Changes to Draft2Digital/Apple audiobooks I believe cost money, and given that it took something like seven months for them to be processed the audiobooks in the first place, the old audio version will remain on Apple for the time being. I'll look into updating it when I am confident that they will update it in a timely manner.

In a somewhat related move, rather than upload the new versions to Smashwords, I unpublish all my books on that platform, and just added the Smashwords store to my Draft2Digital list of distribution. At that time I had only two free book sales in July on Smashwords. However, with the change, I ended up selling generated 142 sales in just four days after the move. The reason being that the books were treated as new releases and featured on Smashwords' home page for a couple of days. They have continued to sell well on Smashwords, all of which goes to show you that as in real estate, selling books is a matter location, location, location - if they are where readers can find them, readers will buy them. If they're fifty pages deep, no one will.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 59)

I started by looking for a novel set in the English civil war of the Cadfael books in the local library's online catalog, and ended up downloading an American Civil War novel instead. Mainly because I couldn't find an English historical period fiction book that I could hope to get within six months. The Civil War novel was an older book, and available.

The author's name sounded familiar, Shaara. It seemed that I had read a book by Shaara - The Killer Angles, about the battle of Gettysburg, and enjoyed it. Looking back, however, I found that book was by Michael Shaara, and this one by Jeff Shaara. But it turns out that Michael was his father, so I felt this should be a safe bet. In this book Jeff takes a similar approach to novelizing the civil war, as his father had, by using historical characters as view point characters. So how did he does he stack up against this father as a writer of Civil War literature?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara  C+

This novel focuses on the American Civil War in the East from its first rumblings to Gettysburg, i.e. 1860-1863. It uses as its main characters, "Stonewall" Jackson, Robert E Lee, on the Confederate side. On the Union side, it follows Winfield Scott Hancock, and Joshua Chamberlain, with a number of historical side-characters.

It opens by describing the life of the main characters in the years prior to the start of the war in invented or semi-invented scenes, and the decisions they had to make when the rebellion of the Southern States happened. The story then follows their careers in their chosen armies during the first three years of the war. It provides a fairly good overview, and describes in some detail, some of the major battles in the East from a both strategic and the personal viewpoint of the various characters the story follows.

As I have said in the past, I'm not really interested in a blow by blow description of a battle, especially from the ground level. I enjoyed the larger picture that this book presents. Though, in the end, you have to realize that though historical, the characters are works of fiction brought to some sort of life by their letters, memoirs and accounts of the people who knew them. I am certain that Jeff  Shaara did extensive historical research to bring these stories to life, but it is still fiction. 

I enjoyed the book, Jeff Shaara seems both knowledgeable, and writes well. And while I skipped over much of the ground-level battle scenes, I liked it enough to pick up another book in this series. A review of that book is upcoming in two weeks. I think I rated this father's book higher, but that may've been because it was more focused on just one battle, the most famous of the American Civil War.