Well, hello, everybody! My name is Ramblin Spokes and I am a seasoned Civil War author. I will be dropping in here occasionally to pull back the curtain on how we Civil War authors make our magic.
In a forum like this, I can also test my out my new writing on Civil War book buyers like yourselves.
You know, every Civil War book needs some powerful theme to put across that this whole thing is a lot more than who-shot-john and here we go with yet another darn battle.
To that end, I have crafted a phrase that I think captures the deeper meaning of the war. Notice how I use it in these different passages:
(a) "Frederick Douglass saw the Civil War as the inevitable consequence of man's inhumanity to man."
(b) "It’s man’s inhumanity to man, and to a race, that makes Black History Month so important, so necessary."
Have you spotted my turn of phrase yet? Here's another clue or two:
(c) "Sadly, the war produced any number of examples of man's inhumanity to fellowman."
(d) "The memories of man's inhumanity to man are imbedded in its soil."
Haven't got it yet? You're not tryin'!
(e) "No one could have predicted that it would become the Civil War’s greatest example of man’s inhumanity to man."
(f) "Colonel Virgil S. Murphy would write in his diary: '...an unholy ground that exemplified man's inhumanity to man.' "
There is no harm in repeating your core theme. In fact you must do so, lest the reader put the book down.
You see, man's inhumanity to man is what will make my book worth buying and reading. It captures the total war experience in a nutshell. It's almost a kind of branding, it's just that powerful.
So go forth and find you own inhumanity as you write your own Civil War history.
