History, Real and Imaginary

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/27/the-end-of-the-slave-trade/?ref=opinion

I have just finished my second novel, Frankenstein's World.  Like The Christmas Mutiny, it's an alternate history (although a less plausible one, being based on the idea of Victor Frankenstein being a real person, and his inventions actually working as described in the original book).
I will shortly begin selling Frankenstein's World, and will begin and writing my third, also an alternate history, this one featuring three different alternate-history versions of the American South.  And none of them will be a descendant of our own world's Confederate States of America.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Outlook hazy, ask again later."\\

A Small But Wonderful Thing Happened Today

I almost didn't notice it at the time.

I was telling Gideon a "Gideon story" (I tell him a lot of stories, and Kathe is after me to start writing them down -- I know she's right...) in which Gideon was with a group of carolers.  They sang "Stille Nacht", and Gideon told the group that his Dad had written a book about the Christmas Truce.

Gideon interrupted to ask if it was true that I had written a book "with pages, that people read?"  I told him, not many people so far, but I had hopes that it would sell more eventually.  I opened my laptop and showed him the illustrations I had used, and he pointed to one of my advertisements and said, "I have seen that!"

  

 

 

So I guess now he knows it's true.  In the morning, I will sit down with him and page through the copy I had made at CreateSpace.

I'll try to find a passage from the book that I can read to him.  

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Maybe the soccer game?"\\

The Christmas Mutiny, Carbon-based Form

I just got in the mail a proof copy of The Christmas Mutiny from Amazon's CreateSpace. Now I can show people a physical copy. I expect to show it around a lot.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "It looks pretty good."\\

I'm Ready to Beg, Folks

Unemployed for close to two years, nobody is hiring, my books aren't selling.

If you have not bought one of my publications, please consider it. I personally think The Christmas Mutiny is a good story. I also think highly of my short stories "Hansel and Gretel Lost in the Bardo", "The Men Who Saved JFK" and my manual on massage technique, With a Friendly Touch, all of which are available for download at Amazon.com.

For the next seven days, if you e-mail me at john_m_burt@hotmail.com or text me at (541) 602-6026 to inform me that you have bought one of my stories, I will reply with 1) my personal thanks and 2) my new story "Dragons Live Forever", a 375-word flash piece which has not yet been offered to the public.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "You can always ask."\\

Christmas Truce Poem

Not long after I finished The Christmas Mutiny, I met a woman writing poems "to order" at the Saturday Market. I commissioned a poem on the subject of the Christmas Truce, but then didn't see her for several months. I learned later she had been out of town most of the time.
Yesterday, she was at the market again, spotted me and delivered the poem. I like it a lot:


The Christmas Truce, by Cassie Ruud

We will not fight today.
We will not let you order us
into these pukish
mud-blood-soaked trenches
on this day.
You took us from our families,
from the arms of our wives and children
and thrown us against each other
for reasons
we do not understand.
So we will not fight today.
We will stand a tree,
sing our songs,
play soccer out in No-Man's-Land
almost far enough away
to hide from the trench stench
We will pretend our darlings
are close to us, show
each other pocketed lockets
full of pictures,
smoke our pipes in silence and stare numbly into the fire.


//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Peace on Earth."\\