Sgt. Mom

Air Force veteran, historical novelist, and cat-person

Bookworld

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There was a  lot of discussion earlier this year and in a great  many different writing and general interest venues regarding  the success of indy writer Amanda Hocking  – which, however you slice it, remains a  self-published and e-book success story. Candidly, I think that we need another zombie-werewolf-vampire saga like Custer needed another Indian, but hey- that’s just me. Not my cuppa, but if it floats yer boat . . .   To paraphrase the lyrics of a certain old pop song I can barely run my own life, why the hell should I want to run yours? Yeah Sunshine, go away and get those kids off my lawn!

Anyway as an indy-POD-author, untrammeled by the shackles of the literary-industrial complex, I had to give the Ms. Hocking all kinds of mad respect, for writing savvy,  plus marketing skills and the sheer neck to go out and just do it. 450,000 copies of nine books, each at a price of .99-2.99 and the author getting 30-70% in royalties   . . .   is   . . .   a   . . .   a lot of turnips.*

I’m an English major, dammit! But I appreciate the business aspects of it all.

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The Juggernaut – Revisited

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 The juggernaut was-and still is, according to a quick internet search, an enormous, towering wagon with the image of a deity or two enthroned at the very peak under a vast canopy. This structure is taken out for a grand procession once yearly, pulled by devotees through the streets of a certain city in India: no quick spin around the block and back again: this wagon is enormous, clumsy, and heavy. Picture Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, arriving to meet Mark Anthony, or the Persian emperor Darius grand entrance in 300; it’s an arresting visual, and often used as a metaphor to indicate a certain sort of power, will and devotion.  

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Northfield – Tales of a Citizen Militia

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It would seem from the history books that most veterans of the Civil War settled down to something resembling a normal 19th century civilian life without too much trouble. One can only suppose that those who survived the experience without suffering incapacitating physical or emotional trauma were enormously grateful to have done so. Union veterans additionally must have been also glad to have won the war, close-run thing that it appeared to have been at times. Confederate veterans had to be content with merely surviving. Not only did they have to cope with the burden of defeat, but also with the physical wreckage of much of the South… as well as the wounds afflicted upon experiencing the  severe damage to  that   whole Southern chivalry-gracious plantation life, fire -eating whip ten Yankees with one arm tied behind my back-anti-abolitionist mindset. But most Confederate soldiers laid down their arms and picked up the plow,   so to speak fairly readily… if with understandable resentment.  In any case, the still-unsettled frontier west of the Mississippi-Missouri basin offered enough of an outlet for the restless, the excitement-seekers and those who wanted to start fresh.

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