History comes alive in HONOR AMONG OUTCASTS — released in conjunction with Black History Month

I’m proud to announce the release today of HONOR AMONG OUTCASTS, the second book in my Civil War-era DarkHorse Trilogy centering on the unorthodox friendship between a Southern abolitionist and a group of escaped slaves.

Set amid the bloody Missouri-Kansas guerrilla war of 1863, HONOR AMONG OUTCASTS takes you on a pulse-pounding journey of desperate men and women caught up in the merciless forces of hatred and fear that tear worlds apart—and affirms the healing power of friendship and love to bring them together.

If you enjoy journeying to the past through fiction, stories depicting actual events, and inspirational tales that will touch your heart, you’ll relish the adventure that awaits in HONOR AMONG OUTCASTS — a great read as a stand-alone novel or as part of the DarkHorse Trilogy.

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Order HONOR AMONG OUTCASTS now on Amazon — print or Kindle. Other outlets to be posted soon.

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What brought this unusual group to Missouri in the first place? Read THE LIES THAT BIND, Book 1 of the DarkHorse Trilogy, and find out. A Readers' Favorite!

And stay tuned for SOMETHING IN MADNESS, the final book in the trilogy, set in Mississippi during Reconstruction.

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And late this year, something completely different...

THE ANTIQUITIES DEALER, a futuristic thriller about antiquities dealer David Greenberg, who is drawn into a conspiracy by an ancient Israeli society to clone the great minds of history — beginning with Jesus Christ — think Hitchcock meets Dan Brown, with a dash of Michael Creighton!

Stranger than Fiction: The Intersection Between History and Imagination

The other day I was thinking about why so many of us love historical fiction. Why historical fiction, an adaption built upon past reality, as opposed to literary fiction, mystery or thriller genres, wholly based upon creative or imaginary constructions? (Some historical fiction is, in fact, quite literary.)

For one, history is much richer than most writers’ imaginations. As human actions are so varied and unpredictable, actual history is, therefore, far stranger than fiction. Yet, if you think of the figures of the past as real people—flesh and blood creatures with fears and desires like our own—then even their most improbable actions make perfect sense. We know what they did—that part is history. But deducing their motives, understanding the conflicts inherent in their times—and writing about them in a way that shows them to be parallel to the issues of our time in a meaningful way—takes imagination.

We writers tend to sculpt history’s icons to fit narratives that justify our own belief systems, to use the real struggles of historical figures to prove that our own ideas are somehow the inevitable result of humankind’s progress. But the men and women of the past were not chess pieces moved by the grand hand of history. They were people as complex and contradictory as you or I, living in what was not really a simpler time. Far from it.

Bringing History Alive
In every crisis throughout history, the result was in grave doubt at the time it transpired. Thus, the real drama that makes a good story already exists. It is up to the writer to bring it alive. Further, not all the historical forces we admire today succeeded. Look at Athens, its Golden Age snuffed out by military force. Or consider the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. The so-called “Good Guys” sometimes lose; and their cause, if not lost entirely, can be delayed, often for centuries.

Even when the Good Guys triumphed, it was often only by a razor’s edge. Take the American Revolution. Was democracy certain to survive against the powerful British world empire? Not at all. Was the Union destined to win the America Civil War? In fact, was slavery necessarily destined to end in the Nineteenth Century? Perhaps without Abraham Lincoln’s personal predisposition against the South’s “peculiar institution,” 1865 might have been just another year.

Literature is Character
And that gets to my main point—that historical figures were real people, with depth, personal quirks, and dimensions that even the greatest writers would have difficulty creating. Think of Abraham Lincoln as a fictional character. Problems with depression. Burdens that would crush most humans—including the loss of two beloved children! And his wife who had deep problems of her own. Not to mention he had a chaotic war to manage. Yet, his wisdom soared above his time. His mercy and foresight are justifiably legendary. And the whole poor boy/self-taught/log cabin background? How about rising from a country lawyer to represent the powerful railroads? And taking a stand against slavery, with his great Cooper’s Union speech, and then becoming president?

And Lincoln’s wit and storytelling? He was a great writer himself, not merely his speeches, but also his use of simple country humor to explain very complex issues.

How could you possibly conceive of a greater character than that?

Two Categories
There is more than one type of historical novel. One type takes actual events and, through good writing, dramatizes them. This is what Michael Shaara has done in The Killer Angels, one of the novels in his trilogy in which he dramatizes battles of the Civil War.

Then there is the imaginative use of the past to create an entirely new story, an alternative history, with deep themes. Joseph Conrad does this in Heart of Darkness, which makes an important statement about imperialism. Or E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, which mixes historical figures and fictional characters to reveal issues surrounding racism, marriage, women’s rights, and more.

My novel, The Lies That Bind (Book 1 in my DarkHorse Trilogy), is this second category of fiction. Using some unusual twists and concepts, The Lies That Bind attempts to create a new experience for the reader, even though it is set in a familiar place and time, a rural hamlet in antebellum Mississippi. Using this method enabled me to offer the reader different perspectives on race, gender, family dysfunction, friendship and brotherhood, power lust, economic markets, and a host of other issues. Precisely because The Lies That Bind isn’t tied to actual events, I was free to add in surprising plot twists, as well as pathos, irony, humor, really anything that I felt fit the story.

There is much good reading out there to fulfill and enlighten historical novel readers of all kinds. For me, I’m re-reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.

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Historical Novel Society Review of The Lies That Bind: “The action and drama are compelling from the first page to the exciting conclusion. The animosity between the French plantation and Hurst builds to an exciting and surprising climax. Antoinette is so mysterious, one doesn’t know of her mission until the end. Highly recommended, and I am anxious to read the next installment.”

Playing with Story Structure to Delight the Reader

Last Saturday, I participated in the St. Louis Writers Guild’s annual Writers in the Park event, where area writers could attend workshops, network and sell their books to the public. One of the sessions I attended was David Lucas’ (president of the SLWG) presentation, which outlined several types of novel structure. Listening to him made me think about the ways in which I use these techniques to structure my novels.

Telling the Story
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on Honor Among Outcasts, the follow-up to The Lies That Bind (book 1 of my DarkHorse Trilogy). My novels are so imaginative, one could assume I develop them by “seat-of-the-pants” method. I confess, I do like to let the stories go where they will, to create interesting characters and to let their natures build the action, to let them surprise the reader and me. As a writer and a reader, I like the little surprises that show up in a story as much as anyone.

However, there is much more method to my madness than that.

The Structure
David covered the four-part structure, which I often rely on to give the story a spine, to make it easy for the reader to follow.  For example, the first two sections might encompass these elements:

·      The Set-up. To establish The Lies That Bind, I put all the major characters in a troubling situation in the first quarter of the book. For instance, Durksen Hurst, my “hero” (or anti-hero),  and his partners, a group of slaves, devise a scheme to build their own plantation called DarkHorse. By the end of that section, they’ve acquired the land and are in a pretty precarious position, having to build a plantation and not get exposed, with death and danger lurking around every corner.

·      The Development. The second section begins with Antoinette, whom Durk loves, ready to abandon him on her own secret mission. Antoinette, too, has her set up and development. You will find Cassandra-like, mysterious Antoinette a very complex woman, certainly not a typical “heroine.” Additionally, in this section, Durk and his partners clash with the wealthy and powerful Frenches (Devereau French and his mother, Missus Marie Brussard French), who are trying to do them in.

A word here: In defiance of typical structure, The Lies That Bind has a second hero (or “anti-hero”) in Durk’s antithesis, Devereau French. Devereau, who is struggling for his own freedom from his manipulative mother, is not your typical villain. Rather, Devereau has his own set of problems, which will delight and amaze. Readers will see how Durk’s and Devereau’s problems are different—and yet the same.

Sections three and four have their own characteristics, but that’s for another blog.

It may seem that I’m constantly defying structure; yet I am really just playing with standard structure. My goal is to produce constant surprises for the reader and, I confess, to amuse myself!

Mythology as Structure
In his presentation, David also tied storytelling to Joseph Campbell’s writings on myth. Campbell studied all the world’s myths and found common elements among them, elements that are found in the most successful fiction. Theoretically, every story we read is, in essence, a new myth. One can argue this stuff all works based on our basic human wiring. Right?

Campbell writes that all myths, symbolically, feature a hero on a journey. The hero leaves the ordinary world and is called to an adventure. In The Lies That Bind, Durk plunges into the swamp/forest; he and his partners scheme to build an egalitarian plantation in a slave society.

According to Campbell, at some point the hero is tested and discovers who his allies and his enemies are. Clearly, Durk’s partners are his allies: their lives all depend on trusting each other. And the Frenches are his enemies. Right? Not so fast!

Devereau (my other “hero”) is being driven by his mother to destroy Durk and his partners. However, Devereau resists—he doesn’t want to do it. Now Devereau, as a second hero, is defying the mythological structure. Is he a friend or enemy of Durk’s? Why won’t he accept the role of enemy?

Finally, there is resurrection in the hero’s story, where the hero’s final problem is solved. Here, too, I give it all a twist so that the reader is surprised and left nearly breathless. Does Durk solve his problems (many of which he created himself)? Does Devereau gain freedom from his mother? Does Devereau defeat Durk or vice versa? Or do they both experience something a bit more ambiguous?

Of course, there are more stages to a myth than the ones I’ve provided. To learn more, see Campbell’s ground-breaking work, The Power of Myth. (See Bill Moyers PRB series.)

As you can see, from beginning to end, The Lies That Bind toys with traditional structures. I hope I’ve played well on readers’ expectations and delighted them with the book’s many shockers.

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News Flash! The Lies That Bind received two new flattering reviews this summer:

·      Historical Novel Society: “The action and drama are compelling from the first page to the exciting conclusion. The animosity between the French plantation and Hurst builds to an exciting and surprising climax. Antoinette is so mysterious, one doesn’t know of her mission until the end. Highly recommended, and I am anxious to read the next installment.”

https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-lies-that-bind-book-one-of-the-darkhorse-trilogy/

·      Midwest Book Review: “The debut novel of author Ed Protzel's 'Dark Horse Trilogy' series, ‘The Lies That Bind’ is a deftly crafted and consistently compelling read from beginning to end. While strongly recommended for community library Historical Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that ‘The Lies That Bind’ is also available in a Kindle edition ($4.99).”

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/jul_16.htm#Fiction

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Arrange a Visit
I love speaking to book clubs, organizations, bookstores or libraries about writing, history, or (of course) The Lies That Bind and my DarkHorse Trilogy.

To request a visit, just send me an email at: ed.protzel@att.net.

Speaking at Left Bank Books, St. Louis

The Book Title: Doorway to the Story

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Saw the Steven Spielberg film “Bridge of Spies,” this weekend, which vividly reproduced the paranoia of the post-WWII/Cold War era. The Soviets were hardliners, no doubt;, but we had many of our own hard cases, too. Both the U. S. and the Soviets had a long slug to victory over the Nazis. And, naturally, hardliners in both camps were in the ascendancy after VE Day. That’s the way it works.

As a writer, reflecting on “Bridge” got me thinking of the importance of titles, both of movies and books. That, of course, led me to thinking about the title of my own forthcoming novel, The Lies That Bind (TouchPoint Press, November 2015): a dark, ironic, and twisted tale of intrigue in the antebellum South.

I’ve been asked by other writers how I came up with the title, and I can honestly say it was a major headache–until it appeared in a flash of light. The challenge was how to encapsulate the story’s many elements, overall mood, themes, and time and place. Do you try to elicit mood or do you get specific?

That’s a lot to pack into a few words, and still try to entice a reader to wonder about its meaning and to pick the book off the shelf.

I haven’t yet read Strangers on a Train (the book by James B. Donovan the movie was based on), but I’m guessing the “Bridge” in the movie title relates not only to the physical Glienicke Bridge between East and West Berlin, but to the connection bridged between the mutually hostile East and West that brought about the story’s humanitarian Powers/Able/student prisoner exchange. On a human level, “Bridge” also alludes to the respect that developed between Able, the Soviet spy, and Donovan, the lawyer reluctantly representing him, as men of principle, without painting either as evil or enemies in the Cold War.

A good title focuses on a book’s central theme.
Hanks (as Donovan) argued artfully and logically not to put Abel to death so that he might be used a future pawn if an American were captured. Donovan was an insurance wheeler-dealer, a regular guy, not a political hardliner, and diplomacy won out over vengeance and death. Hey, we’re still trying to learn that lesson today, right?

My book title, The Lies That Bind, focuses the reader on the story’s central themes, too. But unlike the phrase “the ties that bind,” which has a positive connotation, Lies shows the dark side of life in Southern slave society, with people held together through deceit, bound by falsehoods: injustice, subterfuge, and outright intimidation. See synopsis.

 Yet, though the novel’s characters must live lies and live with lies, oppression can never be omnipotent. The opposite is true, in fact. This story shows that the only way we can fulfill our highest aspirations is to find the truth deep in our own hearts. It’s a battle we never stop fighting within ourselves.

In a macro sense, too, The Lies That Bind shows that a society built on falsehood and injustice is fated for an upheaval that will bring it crashing down. If you doubt that,  just look at the former Soviet Union and its puppet, East Germany, which “Bridge of Spies” presents so well. And, historically, regarding The Lies That Bind, what was the result of the slavery system? I think my novel dramatizes it pretty clearly.

See you next week. Good reading!

The Manipulative Missus French: Caïssa in Eternal Shadow

Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess player of all time, played a delightful exhibition match last week at the St. Louis Chess Club. St. Louis has become the chess capitol of the U.S., hosting the last six U.S. championships at the club’s great facility, and the World Chess Hall of Fame across the street—free of charge to visitors. The third floor Bobby Fisher exhibition is something to behold for any Fisher fan—which I have always been. Check them out when in town.  St. Louis loves you, Garry! My picture shaking hands with you sits in an honored place on my dresser.

Chess Adds Spice to My Fiction

I mention chess because it is a heavy spice I use to flavor all of my fiction. In my novel, The Lies That Bind (TouchPoint Press, to be published later this year), chess plays a large part in depicting the manipulative nature of Missus Maria Brussard French. The richest woman in the hamlet of Turkle, Mississippi, the townsfolk believe she sits in her mansion suite “playing chess against God.” Well, maybe she is—in a manner of speaking.

Despised and feared by the town, Missus French is definitely reclusive—a tendency of some chess masters—preferring to spend these years of her life sitting in the dark at her chess board, controlling the region’s bankers, lawyers and cotton brokers. There she is surrounded by her dust-covered art and gold—priceless valuables she completely ignores in deference to her chess. Pointedly, her set’s kings are female. Is she merely expressing her power...or something more?

So, too, does she manipulate her son, Devereau French (April 15 blog post), called by everyone “the loneliest person on Earth.” Why so lonely? The main reason is that Devereau and his mother share potentially fatal secrets. The two Frenches are constantly at each other’s throats, both trapped in an explosive mortal mutual enmity. As the pair quarrels, the Frenches’ deceptions unravel, lie by painful lie, secret by turgid secret, propelling many of the novel’s twists and turns. 

Know this: Missus French was once a great beauty. Now in her early sixties, even today, she’s still beautiful. Think an aging Cleopatra Yet, she chooses solitude.

Caïssa is the "patron goddess" of chess players, so named from a poem written in 1763 by English poet Sir William Jones. And Missus French is just that, a chess goddess moving people around like chess pieces—especially Devereau. And this is where her obsession with solitude hurts her more than anything. She badly needs to play chess, from which she derives unearthly pleasure. Indeed, in her youth she won handsome purses gambling on chess against wealthy gentlemen. Unfortunately, she finds it impossible to attract high-stakes gamesmen to a backwater nowhere like Turkle. And certainly not to play against a woman.

And this social gender prejudice of the time is a major source of the Frenches’ problems, as you will discover in the story—big time. Readers may not like Missus French, especially because of the way she exploits poor Devereau. However, once you have learned Missus French’s secrets, while you still may despise much that she has done to get where she is, perhaps you will a gain at least a little sympathy for her.

 Next Up:  We’ll look at a central element of the novel—the unlikely, and risky, partnership between protagonist Durk Hurst and his slave partners, led by Big Josh, and how it speaks to idealized race relations.

In a future blog: I’ll write about the game I invented, St. Louis Chess, a Suzuki-like-method to teach attack and defense strategies to novice and intermediate players. St. Louis chess advances new players’ understanding of the game quickly.

The Lies That Bind:
Published by TouchPoint Press
Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency
www.edprotzel.com
Release date to be announced soon!

Ed Protzel’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone. Blog copyrighted by Ed Protzel © 2015.

Introducing Durksen Hurst, main protagonist in Ed Protzel’s novel, The Lies that Bind

Welcome to my blog. Over time, I’ll be introducing you to the world inhabited by the characters of my upcoming historical novel, The Lies that Bind, a darkly ironic antebellum mystery/drama set in Turkle, Mississippi, 1859-61, where no one is who they pretend to be and more than anyone can imagine. The novel has been acquired by TouchPoint Press and is due to be published this year. I can’t wait! 

The story revolves around a cast of outsiders trying to find their humanity during a dark time in our nation’s history, just before the Civil War. It deals with issues of class, race, and gender, with people enslaved and seemingly free—all seeking love and respect. 

As the story’s tangled webs of deceit unravel, each startling plot twist and cathartic revelation shines a fresh light on what it means to be a man, a woman, free or enslaved—indeed, what it means to be human. My website tells you more about it. 

But first, let me introduce you to Durksen Hurst, aka “Dark Horse,” the primary protagonist in The Lies that Bind. (I say “primary” because one of the novel’s unique features is two competing, but sympathetic, main characters.) It’s 1859 when we first meet Durk Hurst who is being pursued on his roan horse through a Mississippi swamp—and not for the first time—his fancy Memphis-bought suit mud-splattered and torn, his body and mind past exhaustion. 

Naturally, he is despondent. This visionary hustler believed his most recent scheme would have helped dirt-poor farmers throughout the South—and, of course, made him rich in the process. But here he is at forty, at a dead end, having “fallen into the pit where all his sky-high dreams and clever plans, his fine-figuring and fast-talking inevitably left him broke, desperate, and alone.” 

In the swamp, Durk encounters a dozen slaves, stranded, whose safest course may be to sink his body into the bayou. But, alas, Durk has a plan for all of them; one based on an “imaginary” plantation, a potentially fatal partnership made possible by his private disgust with slavery. Naturally, his future “partners” are skeptical. When they accuse him of being a charlatan, he replies that, yes, he’s “had to play the charlatan, though always an honest one,” one who’s “never told a lie I didn’t believe in myself.”  

Now which of us wouldn’t trust this man with our life? Well, they were so desperate, they had no choice. Incredibly, a number of Durk’s magnificent scams turn that plantation idea into a real employee-owned enterprise. 

Durk Hurst never has fit in anywhere; doesn’t even look like other people. He’s half Seminole. Nor do his attitudes toward society fit in either. And his imagination, well, his imagination could be his undoing.  

Unfortunately, the ambitious scamp is never satisfied. His uncontrollable dreams lead to further wild schemes that put the partners’ lives in jeopardy. And their peril only increases dramatically when the advent of the Civil War throws a monkey wrench into their biggest scam yet. Still a lonely visionary with a mind of his own, Durk has the temerity to oppose the town’s rabid rush to war, which gets him branded a traitor.  

Whoa, can he get himself out of this one? 

Come along with Durk in The Lies that Bind as he and his partners pull off one glorious gambit after another in the hamlet of Turkle, Mississippi, more a microcosm of our own world than we’d care to admit. See this interloper take on the wealthy and powerful French family, some of the strangest protagonists in literature, who are concealing their own fatal charades. Experience the drama, irony, humor, and terror as the facades of both sides unravel—one a clue at a time. 

Publication date to be announced soon!
Next Up: Meet Durk’s nemesis, Devereau French 

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Watch for publication of Ed’s novel, The Lies that Bind (TouchPoint Press, 2015), a darkly ironic antebellum mystery/drama set in Turkle, Mississippi, 1859-61. Ed Protzel’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone. Blog copyrighted by Ed Protzel © 2015.