Happy New Year, everyone!
After a (mostly) no-writing “cooldown”, I’ve reemerged for yet another year of draft(s) galore, bouncing from one time period or genre to the next!
The first work on the list, “A Kingdom for a Prince” (working title), I’m happy to report, is finished as of yesterday! The third short story of my “In Other Words” Alternate History anthology, it centers on Hamnet Shakespeare (the Bard’s son, who in our history died at 11) living to old age–the last years of which are set against the backdrop of the English Civil War(s). I had originally planned to go in chronological order with this round of IOW work; thus the next draft (starting tmrw) would have been “Moses of the Islands”, which revolves around a very different path for Harriet Tubman in the wake of the Civil War, esp. the Combahee River Raid–an event which, as with those described in this meme, I am amazed there is not more awareness of and appreciation for. Unfortunately, the thematically appropriate AH book I wanted to read alongside working on this story is taking longer than expected to work its way through the local library setup, and there’s only so much time I’ve set aside for this round of work before the next project. Thus, I’m moving on to the next in line, “Flowers of Ypres”: an epistolary-style view of World War I from the perspectives of Stephen Crane (who in this world survived the bout of TB that killed him in 1900, at age 28) and his common-law-wife and fellow war correspondent Cora Taylor. With any luck, I should get to the Tubman story before the end of this month, and have all eight anthology stories finished by late Feb.; further details and updates will be shared on my various pages, as always!
Next shift in time and AH focus, as mentioned in the last post, will be A House United, the finale to my (for lack of a better umbrella title 😛 ) Dillinger series. After that, it’ll be another round of work on my Civil War short story anthology; hoping to have at least four out of the planned eight stories finished by the end-of-May deadline I’ve set. Then it’s all Cross & Flag series work through summer (with Book II and, maybe, III released on Kindle before year’s end), followed by more work on my “All Eyes” scifi-thriller draft and the “Pangaea/Lux” fantasy novels, with the second book of the latter series (current title: “Lux Besieged”) already chosen for this year’s NaNoWriMo in November. Somewhere amidst all this fiction work, I also plan to (at last) follow the route frequently taken by other History PhDs and work to have a chapter or two of my dissertation published in article form. Although I don’t see any kind of academic career in my future, this will let me keep some of my ties to the other world (besides AH) where I can get lost in deep, gripping chats on history, if nothing else 😀 . Should any of you wish to sample or pass along my other work while the article and fiction efforts progress, feel free to check out the sale on Dixie Curtain, starting next week at the link below!
That’s all for this month! Stay safe, and I’ll see you in February!
Mark Anthony Ciccone 
