Emmeran: Blog

/diatribe on

It's easy to write around slavery in a story, it's easy to pretend that it simply didn't/doesn't exist. However my story tries to follow actual history as close as possible and Deus Ex Machina is simply another way of saying "Lazy writer".

Slavery was legal and heavily practiced in the State of Missouri in 1822 America. It was also legal and heavily practiced in the nearby Indian Territories where our intrepid band has set up homestead. The Natives practiced slavery and slave trading just as happily as the Vikings, Romans and Egyptians did.

The price for failing to defend your home and family was your death and your family being enslaved and that has been the rule for tens of thousands of years across every society and civilization. Literally every single human alive today is the descendant of both slaver and slave at some point in their family tree. Yes, if descendancy is culpability we are all guilty.

However in the late 1700's a great change started to sweep across much of the greater human society and slavery became frowned upon and even outlawed step by step. Sadly this process hasn't finished yet and we still have slavery happening today.

To ignore these facts and try to deny them out of existence is simply another way to ignore the slavery that is still occurring. To deny the reality that helps bring full understanding of all the different types of slavery and push for the elimination of the remains of this stain upon the earth.

I embrace the reality of slavery in my story, it's used in different ways as a method to save those stuck in slavery. You can't just ride in with guns a blazing and end slavery in Missouri in 1822, at least not in my story. Instead you work with what you have, acquire slaves and release them into your homestead/township. But you have to be wise.

"If some asshole comes around act all slavish again, got it?"
"Yup"
"See you at dinner tonight? Cards after?"
"Yup, I'll bring the beer."

So when my hero visits a slave auction I'll reference actual slave auctions from that period and our hero will do what he can; he'll even kill a few bad guys once in a while. But it is 1822.

We could go on about skin color and such but I'll just say one thing: "My son has polka dots and he rapidly changes color if exposed to direct sunlight." Beat that for being different.

-Emmeran

/diatribe off

Chapters 77 & 77.5 drop starting tomorrow, like all my '.5' chapters 77.5 contains explicit and sometimes questionable sex. Of course 77.5 will be a side story and not part of the series at this point. The slavery question in 77 is a great topic of discussion if you've got a bottle and a few dozen hours to spend delving into the topic of pricing a human life.

I'm not a big fan of the sort of sex you will read in 77.5, I like the kind with laughter and happiness much better. If rough sex and light S&M offends you just go ahead and skip this chapter. There is nothing vitally important to the plot in there.

My favorite sex chapters by far are still "Ch. 0.5 Downfall" and "Ch. 16.5 Fun in Flagstaff". But the story writes itself and I just transpose it for us to read, I can't wait to see how he integrates these folks into the homestead backdown in Rulo.

I'm hoping the next sex chapter is titillating and fun, we'll find out when it get's here.

Happy reading,

-Emmeran

Hand out a free bonus cookie on top of the scheduled chapters and suddenly everyone has a complaint or insult to lob in your general vicinity.

I did the foolish, rookie thing and let it throw me off my concentration for a few hours during my prime early morning writing time. Childish error on my part.

Early into this project I posted a Blog entry explaining the how, what and why of what I'm doing; it's still there. Go read it.

More Cowbell! Constant calls for more cowbell, suggestions of better ways for me to write the story. I even have people wanting me to put down what folks said and what they meant when they said it. More cowbell.

Now when I have my summer parties the guys will all gather at one fire and tell their stories and they sound a lot like what I'm doing here. The ladies have their own fire and they relate their stories by reciting word for word exactly what was said and the emotional impact of it even if the event was two decades ago. The ladies have a lot more cowbell in their stories, we have a lot more laughter in ours.

Well look, that's enough bellyaching from me. I'm going to get back to discovering what Night Terrors stalk our intrepid PTSD enhanced hero and see what his solution is to getting back home with an infected wound in his ass cheek. I have the rest of the fever terror interlude to write as well as the daily full chapter which will still be published.

-Emmeran

As luck would have it and this being New England and not Texas. I'm the only house in my area without power. So my neighbors were able to step up and help me out with my dilemma to a certain extent.

We got hit by single digit temperatures, which is no big deal this time of year, and a high-speed windstorm at the same time. Resulting in sub-zero temperatures in the sustained range of -25°F late last night. The Storm Gods were having their way with us, and it was pretty brutal throughout the area; there was no complimentary reach around from this storm. This was a shingle testing storm, if you find shingles in your yard the next morning you know you need to reshingle your roof.

In the end, up here on our hill, my house got the brunt of it. No major damage but our power pole snapped somewhere around midnight. Luck ran in my favor and it fell away from my house but it did rip the power feed line running to my house right out. Only I lost power.

Cue in wood stoves, propane space heaters, emergency lamps, etc. and I ain't dead yet. Not a problem except, I work on-line. OK, projected repair time is Noon, cool.
Not cool, they figure out it's a major repair and it's a single household outage so until they fix the multi-household outages I have to hold my water.

I'm betting on Thursday if I'm lucky, until then I'm borrowing electricity a bucket at a time from my neighbor and enjoying the internet at almost modem level speeds. I do have a few chapters currently queued here so you guys will keep getting fed and hopefully I'll be back full tilt by the end of the week.

March did indeed "Roar in like a Lion" in Podunk, New England this year.

-Emmeran

No heat, no internet, no writing.

Supposed to come back tomorrow.

-Emmeran