The Lightning, the Stars and Bars Across the Sky

War Night, two days, 2,000 words. Day three, 3,000 words. Let's do it. Also, uh-oh. See below.

2003 and Me. Ahhh....Spring of 2003. We're wrapping up our substitute teaching gig in the Somerset Hills School district. We're running 4-5 times a week through bucolic Peapack New Jersey, two miles every time and we love it. We've begun A Line Through the Desert and naively think we'll be done by the end of the summer. We're taking our fourth and fifth grad courses (online) that summer too. We've rediscovered Led Zeppelin. We can feel the summer coming on, and we can feel the summer is going to be great. And so it was. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 5/1/23 (supplemental): The Confederate INSERT PROFESSION: What if the South Won the Civil War? As the CSA celebrates 50 years of Independence...That makes the year 1920 maybe. Maybe. But only if the books' about our opinion of the Antebellum South and what we think a post-victory CSA would be like. And who's the main character? 

We've done this before, with The Austrian Painter: What if Germany won the Great War. The whole point of TAP was to describe a different 20th century through a historical character showing that without our First World War, the whole wretched century turns out differently. Of course the alternate CSA thing has been done. Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South has a ridiculous premise perfectly executed. In GotS, Turtledove asks some tough questions. We've never read his other CSA stuff or Bring the Jubilee. 

We already have a few plot points. The CSA tried to take Cuba and failed because the Brits intervened. The CSA in the midst of a Civil War as Texas is trying to secede over oil sharing revenues. The CSA is an economic backwater run by a landed gentry. Exit question, it's 1920-something, has the CSA freed the slaves? 

Pro side, we're already reading a tonne of books about the Civil War (or War Between the States if one prefers) why not? Also, this idea could snag us some new readers. It's been done, but not by me. The Austrian Painter is a masterpiece, if we do say so ourselves. This could be a masterpiece too. 

Con side, it's another big project. Also, as the president in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country said, just because we can do a thing does that mean we must do that thing. Also, we just mentally committed to War Night. [It's been two days-Ed]. More also, the Austrian Painter is a colossus of our world reduced to a kindly old painter in an alternate history, which is one of the reasons why the novel works. There could be no such colossus in The Confederate. The protagonist (spoken in Red Letter Media pro-ta-gon-ist) could at best be a moderately well known historical figure. Final also, it's been done. 

But damn it. There's the ju-ju.

This idea we must ponder.