When Samson Collier and three sixth-grade friends witness
the bombardment of Ft. Sumter offshore from their homes, they decide that the
Yankee soldiers at the fort must have been forewarned about the attack-since no
one was killed although the structure appeared to be wrecked. They set off to
find the spy who told secrets.
During their escapades, they confront slavery (one of the
four is the son of a freedman), nativism (another of them is the daughter of a
prominent Catholic family), zealotry (a man forming a brigade to fight the
North appropriates Sam’s beloved horse) and evil (they are attacked by a
highwayman in The Devil’s Hole). Eventually, the children discover a shocking
plan to undermine their homeland.
The book is an historically accurate and action-packed
adventure/mystery.
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After his visit he headed home, slipping silently under grey Spanish Moss hanging in stringy curls from the live oaks like dead men’s beards. That’s what his friend Sidney always called them when he was telling his scary stories out at the clubhouse on the eve of All Hallows: “Dead men’s beards dancing like devils in the moonlight.” That’s what ol’ Sid said all the time.
Samson shivered a little and moved faster. It was coolish out. He left the cemetery and ran along the hard-packed dirt streets of Charleston. Even when he ran his feet were pretty quiet, so he had no trouble hearing something in the night that stopped him cold. He hunkered down in the shadow of a brick wall that ran around one of the houses coming up on Meeting Street and tried to figure out what was making the slow creaking noises that seemed to be coming down the peninsula from the direction of Calhoun Street. There was nobody around, no candles lit in any windows. Except for the creaking noises the night was ghostly silent. Even the slight breeze that made the Spanish Moss dance in the graveyard had died down.
He tried to slow his breathing; he didn’t want whatever was coming to hear him panting like a hound dog in August. His thumping heart almost stopped when he made out a quivering light in the road. It was moving slow-like, coming closer. The creaking got louder. What could it be? Samson wanted to close his eyes and sink into the bushes beside the wall he was hard up against, but he forced hisself to look at the creature that was approaching. If it was some kind a ghost from the grave, he wanted to see it before it picked him out. He didn’t believe in haints, but his leg muscles was tense anyway, ready to tear outta there.
As the noise drew near, Samson realized it was being made by a dray, a heavy work wagon, being pulled by two black mules who were straining to keep the wagon in motion. Down Meeting Street it come, going so slow that three figures were able to walk alongside it like old, tired men, shuffling along, not talking, heads down. One held a pitch torch that smoked and barely lit them enough for Samson to make them out. He was close enough to smell the burning tar of the torch but he couldn’t tell what was in the dray. He knew it had to be heavy because the animals were breathing hard and leaning into their traces. The wooden wheels squeaked as they turned.
What could the wagon be carrying through the empty city in the black of night? Samson never found out.
The procession groaned past his hiding place, going toward the harbor like a lumbering giant insect. When he reckoned it was far enough by, Samson got to his feet and crept home. Coming up on his house without anyone noticing, he nipped in with a sigh of relief. That daggum ol’ squealing wagon done put the fear of God in him, he had to admit. No one else in the house seemed concerned. They was all sleeping like babies, far as he could tell. There weren’t a sound to be heard.
Upstairs, Samson dressed for bed. He could still feel his heart fluttering and thought he’d have a hard time falling asleep after that fright on the dark street, but his eyes were gritty by then and closed the minute his head sank into the feather pillow. He was still trying to figure out what the creepy wagon was hauling when sleep overtook him.
Five hours later, a crash of thunder over White Point Battery shook the shutters against the window, waking Samson out of a sound sleep. He would a gone back to that sleep ‘cept that he figured it was about time to get up anyway since he could see a blink of the morning sun trying to rise up over the Atlantic out yonder. Since he didn’t hear any rain, what was that thunder he heard?
Samson kicked off the feather comforter and padded across the floor to the window, feeling the dry planks under his feet. When he drew open the shutters a puff of breeze ruffled the loose cotton of his nightshirt. Samson could smell jasmine and the sea. But he couldn’t see them. It was still dark out.
He squinted at a reddish glow in the sky down at the harbor as he yawned and absently scratched the tangle of curls on his head, but he realized it didn’t look like the early sun. Samson couldn’t figure out what caused the mysterious light. It was odd standing there in the cool early morning air, as though the darkness held some secret that was beyond him. He felt a little fluttering in his belly, the feeling he got right before school began each fall. Samson wasn’t afraid exactly—since nothing much had happened except that strange thunder—but he was a little nervous for some reason. The air was dry and it was too early in the year for heat lightning or summer thunderstorms; that was odd too.
He didn’t even know what time it was. Since he wasn’t too tired considering his adventure earlier in the night, Samson figured it might be right before the sun came up, even if he couldn’t see it yet. Maybe that strange light in the sky over the harbor was the sun after all. His window faced east and the water was to the east of his father’s house, he knew that much. While he was contemplating these things and standing by the open window in a sort of foggy state of mind, he heard people moving around downstairs. Maybe they knew something of what was happening outside. He yanked off his nightshirt and pulled on the clothes he wore last night.
Samson’s father was in the kitchen, dressed to go out. He was blowing across a cup of something hot and taking small sips. Tea, he assumed. His father always drank Charleston tea in the morning.
The man smiled without showing his teeth when he saw Samson and nodded. His son replied to his nod, “‘Morning, Daddy.” His daddy was not a big morning person, so that exchange was normal.
Despite the normalcy of the scene in the kitchen, something was wrong down there too, Samson could tell, even if he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was different. Maybe it was going to be one of those days when he went around not quite understanding what the world was all about.
With a little jolt of surprise, the boy realized it was the first time he could remember being in the kitchen on the morning of a school day when the room wasn’t warm. And there was no smell of bacon frying. Darlene was bent over the cookstove stoking up the fire. When she heard Samson greet his father, her shining face broke into a smile.
“I’ll have some warm milk up right quick, Master Samson.”
Before he could reply, his father said, “Don’t bother, Darlene. We’re going out. We’ll be back for breakfast at the regular time.”
“Yessir, Mr. Collier.”
Samson and the slave exchanged a glance. Both of them lifted their eyebrows, but neither spoke. Not only did Mr. Collier speak a full sentence in the early dark, but the boy and his father never left the house without breakfast. Even when the red drum was running in the harbor he ate before they went out fishing. Samson got the distinct impression this was not going to be a normal day.
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Should writers pay to play?
Paul A. Barra
The Historical Novel Society of North America, our version of the original HNS in the UK, has announced its first-ever short story contest. Your submission must be no longer than 4,000-words and must be set in or around historical Las Vegas (i.e. before 1975). Sin City is the site of the 2025 HNSNA conference.
Those are easy parameters to digest and opens the contest to everything from Wild West gunfights to mobster influence in casinos to desert life to the tragedy of gambling addiction. It promises to be a popular contest, especially since HNS is a venerable organization. The winner gets $250 plus free registration at the conference (value: $550).
A couple of things about the announcement caught my attention. One, the rising date of a story considered historical. Most book publishers want to label any fiction setting in the 1960s or earlier as historical. As we get further into the 21st century, the date will continue to rise, but the HNS may be already moving the standard up by capping their eligible submissions setting at 1975. It was not unexpected.
After all, Americans alive today who can reasonably be expected to remember 1975 in a first-hand manner would have to be at least 65 years old. That age would make them a mid-teen when the dismaying videos of the fall of Saigon showed up on our TV sets, or when Margaret Thatcher rose to political prominence in Britain. Folks who are at least 65 today probably recall the first breakfast burrito, Billy Jean King’s 6th Wimbledon title, Billy Martin’s move from punching other players to creating great havoc as a manager, or even the founding of Microsoft. Too bad hardly any of them will recall buying any Microsoft stock in those days, although their memory banks will contain many interesting tidbits about life back then.
If you writers want to mine those memories for your stories, you had better get a move on. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 55 million of those geezers are still alive. That’s 16.8% of the U.S. population. And they’re dying fast.
The second thing about the HNS announcement that interested me was the cost to enter the contest: $25. There will undoubtedly be hundreds of entries, so the organization will bring in thousands of dollars—and will award $800 in cash and attendance fees. They will also produce an anthology of the top stories and will award the writers of those published stories “a small honorarium.”
That honorarium could be your entry fee returned, or it could be 50 bucks. I could even be as much as $100. If it is $100, that would be a gratifying figure for a short story writer to earn on one story. The best mystery magazines pay twice that amount for a story, but the competition for sales in those few existing magazines is fierce. Most members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society sell their work for a wretched $25 or $50, hoping for recognition and/or evolving quality of sales in the future. It takes hours to write a 4,000-word short story, hours more to edit it and tighten the prose, hours more to rewrite portions of it and to submit it until it sells. Fiction writers don’t get paid on an hourly basis; we should know how much our work pays compared to other vocations.
But that’s the theme for another blog. What concerns me most about the HNS writing contest is that it’s a money machine for the conference; is it also a worthwhile investment for the writer?
The Historical Novel Society has many expenses, as do all writing organizations, and those organizations do a lot of good for the writers of our country. They support and defend novelists and short story writers, promote the work of their members, educate them, sometimes insure them, and offer them an opportunity for fame in their annual award presentations. Writers’ organizations are an integral part of a writer’s career path. They are supposed to support themselves by the annual dues paid by members.
Other writing conferences besides HNS make money by charging for award competitions. Crime con Killer Nashville, for instance, charges a writer $80 to enter a book for a Silver Falchion, although if he or she attends the conference itself, the award fee is included in the tuition charge. For his $80, the winning writer gets a plaque.
Promoters who organize and produce a conference deserve to make money for their efforts. That’s not the question, not for writers. The question for writers is: should I pay to have my work judged by someone?
Prestigious writing contests, such as the Edgars offered to members by the Mystery Writers of America, charge nothing to enter. Besides the Edgars, others that charge nothing include the Thriller awards from the Thriller Writers of America and the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers (North America branch). Publishers who wish to enter their authors’ works send copies of novels to the judges of a contest category. That’s it. No fee. No money-making. It’s a service.
The value of a writer’s work is marked by the awards it wins, the reviews it receives, and the money it makes. It shouldn’t rely on the writer buying a chance to win a prize. Writing fiction is a gamble where you wage your time and effort and talent; it should not be a lottery where you pay to play.
—END—
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While taking the reader through enticing mysteries, Barra
shares a sense of history and thrill in his works. Using his experiences as a
naval officer, writer, and educator, Barra brings the reader a unique
perspective on fictional mysteries in a very real and different time.
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