About Writing, and Sheer Terror

Today, once work slowed down a bit

(We had a visit from a high muckety-muck, and were supposed to answer the phone in four rings or less. Therefore, I, who was the primary cashier and thus unable to look up callers' books or go find books on the shelf, ended up answering call after call and then pleading with the people on the floor to pick up the lines. Feh.)

I took a copy of CLOAKED IN SHADOW and showed my story to people. They were so... impressed. They really seemed to think it was special (probably more special than it really is).

It's awfully nice to get praise once in a while.

Sheer terror: I'm about to get copies made of TRIBULATION'S WAR. Final copies. And send them to Jeff. Who has lunch with a major editor on Wednesday, and wants to hand deliver her a copy.

I am so scared.

What if everybody rejects TW? Is that the sound of my career, stillborn?

What if it gets published as fantasy and then none of the Civil War fans find it, and it tanks?

(Teeny-bopper booksellers stripping my novel, and laughing.)

Real, serious editors are going to see this thing, and I'm getting sweaty palms just thinking about it.

OK. So, about Gettysburg.

I'm doing research for a novel about Ace -- his experiences with the Texas Brigade and then his life in Galveston, some of which orkshoppers will already have read -- and in the process I'm reading Harry Pfanz' indispensable Gettysburg: The Second Day. Bear in mind, I was *in* Gettysburg in September. I was finding Ace sharpshooter positions in Devil's Den; I was looking up at Little Round Top.

And despite that, I continue to find the topography of the battle incomprehensible. Maps, descriptions and having been there notwithstanding, I still cudgel my brain to understand what direction my guys should be going in. After long work I can comprehend it on a micro-level (Devil's Den and Little Round Top are very close together) but the overall terrain still just... loses me. "Culp's Hill is WHERE from here??" It's a vortex of confusion. The Pennsylvania Triangle.

I did not have any particularly imagination-haunted moments at Gettysburg, unlike at Sharpsburg, about which more another day. The sheer weight of marble monuments channels the past, keeps it at bay. But, looking out of the Seminary Ridge woods up to Cemetery Hill, I felt blind. Blank. I could not see. I could not tell what was up on that hill or in the slight dip that it seemed obvious must lie beyond the rise. I can't imagine ordering an attack into a blindness such as that.

And yet they charged.