Uther Pendragon: Blog

Honey Bee is the first-written story of the God Joined Together universe and the first occurring in story time. The story is set in the early 1960s.

We meet Craig and Sandy as teens. Their fellow characters will only meet them as adults.

When you're writing a fictional story that involves some real people, it is only fair to say which they are. I've appended a short justification of the process of the war after Gettysburg as I have imagined it.

These are real people. Most activities, thoughts, or words I attribute to them, of course, are fictional.

USA = United States of America. CSA = Confederate States of America. The positions I list are the positions in real history.

Lee, Robert E., General, CSA

Meade, George Gordon, Major General, USA

Lincoln, Abraham, President, USA

Pickett, George E., Major General, CSA

Hunt, Henry J., Major General, USA

Grant, Ulysses Simpson, Lieutenant General, USA

Banks, Nathaniel P., Major General, USA

Davis, Jefferson, President, CSA

Rosecrans, William S., Major General, USA

Burnside, Ambrose E., Major General, USA

Bragg, Braxton, Lieutenant General, CSA

Johnston, Joseph E., General, CSA

Sherman, William Tecumseh, Major General, USA

Booth, John Wilkes, noted actor, assassin of Lincoln

Chase, Simon P., Secretary of Treasury (and other notable positions), USA

Wade, Benjamin, Senator from Ohio, USA

Hamlin, Hannibal, Vice President, USA

Farragut, David Glasgow, Admiral, USA

Forrest, Nathan Bedford, Major General, CSA

Stephens, Alexander H., Vice President, CSA

The US Army had fought the Mexican War with no unit larger than a brigade. Both Confederate and US armies began the war with the same organization. Divisions and corps came later.

While the CSA promoted 5 men to full general -- and others to lieutenant general -- early in the war, the USA only promoted one man to lieutenant general, Grant after July 1863.

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Richmond could not be held without Petersburg; The food was coming in through the smaller town, and precious little food even then. I figure that with the much smaller army that Davis could supply those forces with the Army of Northern Virginia captured, they would try to hold each city. That would mean the capture of Petersburg and the fall of both.

Montgomery had been the first capital, and a quite unsatisfactory one, too. I don't think that they had much choice but to return. Montgomery has one advantage; it is so deep in the Confederacy's interior that supplying a siege from north of the city would have put the Union army at the mercy of guerrilla raiders for a thousand miles. Taking Mobile first is obvious.

Just what Grant was doing between taking Chattanooga and taking Selma, I do not pretend to imagine.

In general, I have the Union doing after the fall of Richmond, mostly what they did in our history, but doing it earlier. That's not particularly likely; the situation being different, they would have seen opportunities in different places.

On the other hand, it is probably the most likely situation that a fiction-writer can imagine. Then too, I can get description of those places then, and Civil-War buffs will recognize those names.

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The Civil War was fought with what the modern military would think of as a very-compressed command structure at the lower levels. A regiment would contain 10 companies, 12 for cavalry, and a company started out with 100 men. There were no squads, platoons, or battalions. (A Civil-War "battalion" was a unit organized like a regiment but with not enough companies.)

The God joined together universe consists of several couples who ultimately join in a church couples group. When they talk about what works and what doesn't, they will flash back on the pasts of each couple. What I've written so far is mostly those pasts. It will still suffice for 2 substantial chapters a week for the rest of the year.

There are at least 3 dimensions of this group of stories:
1) Time, of course.
2) The relations between the two members of the couple,
3) The relation with the other couples.

Posting, however, can be in only one dimension. I'm handling this by giving the story of mostly the same events from the perspectives of the 2 members of the couple in the same set of weeks - one posted Monday morning, and the other posted Thursday night. I reserve the right to vary this for my needs and the story's needs.

I use both real places and institutions and fictitious ones. The people, except for public persons in the background, are fictitious. The congregations in which the action is shown are fictitious, although they are sometimes based on observation. ::

What would happen if ?

That's a question imbedded in our consciousness from soon after we learned to talk. It is really one of the roots of fiction, and lots of fiction is based on that question applied to history. What would happen if the US had lost WW II? The Man in the High Castle.

These stories immediately raise questions like, "HOW did the US lose WWII?" There are turning points in history which you can easily see going s different way, but I can't identify one that would have led to a Nazi victory.

I can't see one that would have led to a Confederate victory in the US Civil War, either. (But see the end of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom for a professional historian's take on that.)

There were points in that war at which small changes could have had big consequences but none of them would have resulted in a Confederate victory.

In The General's Store, I start with one such possible change, show how it would play out, what some consequences of that might be, and then what some possible effects there would be on the private lives of some persons.

Tuesdays and Fridays for 4 weeks, starting last Tuesday.

Just like historical fiction, Alternate History has real people interacting with fictional ones.

Informed by several previous system crashes (perhaps more of them than a cleverer man would have taken to inform him) I have my drafts and stories on flash drives. So, I have all sorts of accessible stories in all sorts of states of preparation.

Since the old computer crashed and the replacement computer came with a glitch, however, I have limited access to a place for processing them.

So, Merry Christmas; Happy New Year. I will have some new stories for you -- if nothing else goes wrong -- in 2019.