I love BIG stories . . .
Fat, thick, heavy books - MOBY DICK, THE FIRST MAN IN ROME, MASON & DIXON, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, SHOGUN . . . I’ve read SHOGUN six times all the way through. I like books I come back to, novels where I take a pen and underline passages, write in the margins - novels that are bristling with sticky notes. I like a journey, and yet a sit-down where I can get in a character’s head. Some smaller books can be very big too - BLOOD MERIDIAN, DAMAGE, THE POWER AND THE GLORY . . . I prefer Virginia Woolf to James Joyce . . . I finish very few books I start, but those I do, I return to again and again. That’s my goal when writing my stories - that you return again and again.
So that’s what you’ll find here - my Big, Hairy, Audacious stories - somewhat literary, often historical, even experimental. Only that. Any profound insights I may have will be no place but there.
First on deck - TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS
TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS is a lively, yet dark and polemic retelling of the American Revolution through the unapologetic eyes of women and soldiers in the British Army, a two-time finalist in the Faulkner/Wisdom Literary Contest for the Novel and Novel-In-Progress categories. Something very different on a familiar subject.
1776 – America in Riots. Civil War. Crush it. And when finished, give the damn Americans what they want. So comes the great army, and with it, his Majesty's personal host, the Brigade of Guards, to fight a war they cannot lose. They bring their women. Obedience Gill, the “handsomest Woman on the Ration”, loses her soldier husband on the crossing to America. Good riddance. “Obedience”, her father named her, a child of the Great Awakening and “an Age” at 24. In truth, she’s running, having lived many lives. And now, in the midst of a fierce army, she’s alone. God, to be alone, even in this alien country. This strange America. This roiling, boiling America. But someone’s after her, a Coldstream grenadier, Thomas Elliot, with a murderous past. In her past. To her protection comes guileless man-child, Geordie MacEachran, Third Guardsman, whose loyalty is to the Guards above all else . . . Until Obedience. And he’s struck, as sure as a Rebel ball to the heart. In New York, Obedience, a tavern singer with an extraordinary voice, is noticed by the officer class, and by talent, luck, and wiles, experiences a meteoric rise, to her fame, to her peril. Geordie seeks to hold her. Elliot wants her life. But Obedience has other plans as the American rebellion fulminates into a global conflict to threaten Britain’s very existence. War, sex, and power. Enlightenment and religion. Racism and sexism. Military tribes.
Glad you’re here
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Tim
