Readers’ Choice = Writer’s Mission!

There are many sorts of writers, and there must be those who always focus on just one book project at a time.

But I am not that sort of writer.

The last year I have been very much focused on finishing the memoir of my year spent serving as a peacekeeper in South Sudan – but now the final draft has been submitted to the publisher, and as I wait to review the copyedits and the final galleys, I find myself wondering which of my many incomplete literary projects I should focus on next.

Because the idea of TwiggTales is to help writers get momentum on their stories, and the “Friends Who Write” contest gives authors a great incentive to get in three or four thousand words toward a specific project – if that’s what they choose to do.

Last December, during the first “Friends Who Write” contest, I didn’t focus on a specific project – instead, I wrote a variety of pieces on topics ranging from economic philosophy to travel, and even now, I find myself struggling to decide where to focus my writing energy.

So, I thought I might ask you, the readers, to help me decide between two of my big future projects.

I’ll sketch out a few options – give you a little taste of the text of each book – and ask you to tell me which one you’d like to see me develop here during the month of March. The project that you and your fellow readers choose will also help to frame what sort of pieces you will get to see from me this month. A book proposal? A query letter? A few thousand words of story, or perhaps some combination of these things!

So, without further ado, here are the options:

Fighting Bob & The Grenadier in Petticoats

This is a biography of Lady Florentia Sale and her husband, Major General Robert Sale – a Victorian power couple whose story proves that truth really is stranger than fiction. My sample chapters are complete, so the next step would be a book proposal – although I could write additional chapters of the story as well.

Here’s a taste of what this writing encompasses:

Neither Lady Sale, nor General Elphinstone, nor the Envoy received an immediate reply from Gundamak, but this was not entirely unexpected; the roads between Cabul and Sale’s brigade had become so dangerous that few messengers would hazard the trip, and fewer still made it through. But one sign of hope did appear in a rather unusual fashion, causing Lady Sale to note in her journal that:

And even as the officer’s dogs were raising hopes of a rescue by General Sale’s brigade, he and his men were already on the march, traveling light and fast. But they were not headed north to Cabul.

The fact that his “Council of War” had chosen to continue on to Jellalabad rather than return to Cabul may come as a surprise, especially as several of its members would seem to have had very personal motivations to return to the city, either to take vengeance for the murders of their family members, or to protect their still-living families from harm.

None of the council members were cowards; while Sale was particularly notorious for being at the front in a hard fight, Broadfoot was similarly aggressive, always trying to get himself and his Sappers into the action. Dennie and Monteath had never shied from a battle, and McGregor was a political officer, who would have known his future prospects depended on the good favor of the Envoy - who had written repeatedly asking for reinforcements.

Yet every one of them voted against marching to Cabul in an attempt to lift the siege, and this decision would later be discussed in the Houses of Parliament, with no less an authority than the Duke of Wellington declaring that Sale had done the right thing, for reasons that become clear when we reflect on what the general and his officers had to consider.

War is STILL a Racket

This is a non-fiction work, an updated and expanded version of Major General Smedley Butler’s 1935 pamphlet. It highlights the fact that the largest and deadliest form of organized crime – the use of wars to generate corporate profits – is still alive and well today, and that we cannot afford to wait another 90 years before doing something about it. If I was to use this project as my focus for “Friends Who Write, Season Two” then each of my next three posts would probably be chapters of the book.

Those chapters would be similar in tone to this excerpt:

In 1935, General Butler described the financial aspects of the military-industrial complex and its impact on the nation’s economy as he saw it at the time.

Reflecting on General Butler’s career, one might imagine that a man who had fought across the world from Haiti to China and won two Medals of Honor would not easily be shaken by anything. However, if he were to be resurrected today, the general would almost certainly be shocked that our national debt is no longer a mere 25 billion dollars – but that it is now 34 TRILLION DOLLARS, and that 23 percent of that is due to military spending during the 20 years that America spent bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, which of these projects would you like to see me develop this month?

In many ways, now that I have written this, I myself am leaning towards the biography – since it would led me both showcase how to construct a winning book proposal and encourage me to write a bit more of the book itself.

But, I did start by saying that I would let the readers’ choice guide me – so, if you’ve read this far, please drop a comment and let you know which you’d rather see me write more of – Fighting Bob & The Grenadier in Petticoats, or War is STILL a Racket.

Whichever gets the most votes before March 8th will be the winner!