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I am pleased to have Robert G. Pielke here at Celticlady's Reviews and he was gracious enough to answer a few questions about his book, A New Birth of Freedom: The Translators...
Tell me about your book. How did you come up with this idea?
** Faulkner said it best in Intruder in the Dust – “Every Southern boy whenever he wants...” can imagine being on the field at Gettysburg on the third day of battle, just before Longstreet gives Pickett the command to go. “It hasn’t happened yet…” and “there is still time for it not to begin.” Now, I’m not a Southern boy, but I can still imagined some scenario where it does not begin.”
How did you get interested in writing this particular genre?
How did you get interested in writing this particular genre?
** As a kid, I went to the movies every weekend to see whatever was showing. It didn’t matter what it was, I’d be there. And I always wind up ‘playing a role” from the movie– in my mind if not in reality – until the next weekend’s film. And it usually wasn’t a role from the film, it was “me” being in the reality portrayed in film. When it came to “cowboys and Indians,” I gradually became disturbed by the fact that the Indians were always “bad” and the cowboys were always “good.” A very few films – not many, to be sure, had a different take on this. I think Broken Arrow was one of them (Jimmy Stewart and Jeff Chandler as Tom Jeffers and Cochise). And I wondered why there weren’t more movies like this. Well, in the absence of any others to speak of, I began imagining new scenarios for cowboys and Indians and played out these roles in my mind. After I learned how to write…and use my mother’s Remington typewriter, I wrote a story, White Cloud, about an Indian who united all the Plains tribes along with all the Eastern tribes in the early seventeenth century to resist the European invasion. (It was 3 pages long, one paragraph and single spaced.) What I didn’t realize was that I was writing alternate history. And I’ve doing it ever since.
What kind of research did you do for this book?
**Lots! Aside from living in Gettysburg for a few years, I had made several visits to the battlefield as a kid – family, school trips, cutting school. (I lived in Baltimore…a mere hour and a half away.) With the book, however, I had to do a lot of formal research to get all the details correct. Writing good alternate history depends total accuracy of the actual history so as to make the “alternation” credible. So I’ve made several trips to Gettysburg and Washington, D.C. And I’ve read the memoirs and writings of my characters. (Expect for my protagonist and the aliens, all of them are historical.) For example, when my protagonist, Edwin Blair, is sitting at the Round Robin Bar in the Willard Hotel in DC, I had to be sure what he could see and couldn’t see from the windows. (And sitting there at the bar, I realized I had to make some corrections!)Thank you so much for being here!
A New Birth of Freedom: The Translator Book Summary:
Noam Chomsky argues that communication with aliens would be impossible. Stephen Hawking argues that it would be extremely unwise even to try. What if it were absolutely necessary to do so? This question arises with extreme urgency at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, in this time-travel, alternate-history trilogy, A New Birth of Freedom.
Excerpt Link to Prologue:
http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/chapters/ANewBirthOfFreedom_RobertPielke.shtml
Kathleen, thanks for inviting Bob to stop by and chat about the second book in his series.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure as always Nicole!! Thank you Bob!!
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