Has Anyone Seen Me?

Hi folks! Boy, I’m a little embarrassed at having fallen off the radar for so long. I had finals that took a week of research and about 4 days of writing. That’s done.

I’ve been working on another project that has taken a lot of my time. I’m researching and writing a historical fiction autobiography about a Confederate cavalry soldier who rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest during the US Civil War. The project has gone surprisingly fast. I’m in chapter 3, about 46 pages or 13,000 words. I believe I can complete the book in 10 chapters, roughly 170 to 200 pages (60,000 words). I hope to be done with it in 6 months or so.

The book is in the rough stages. I haven’t had time to polish it. I’m busy with the story and research. I am going to hire an editor to help with that part.

Here is an excerpt from an action scene.

I spurred my horse out of a particularly crowded area. I did not want to be shot in the back and could not make heads or tails of anything with so much commotion going on around me. As I turned my steed and spurred him toward the fighting, I felt a terrible crash and was thrown a clear 10 feet through the air. A panicked, riderless horse, blinded by fear and confusion, ran into my own. I lay flat on the ground for only a second, out of breath from the fall, with a bad pain in my left shoulder. My revolver was lost in the tumble and I searched frantically for it. Directly a Federal soldier approached me, seeing that I was unarmed, walked toward me menacingly, rifle out in front, firmly gripped in both hands, just as he was taught in drill. I unsheathed my sabre and displayed it, hoping the sight of it would change the mind of my enemy. He kept coming forward, with that same look of determination, holding that rifle of his. Directly he brought it up, the bayonet extended four feet from his body, and diced the air with it as if he was considering what parts to carve from me.

He slashed once at my head, and lunged quickly with it center of my chest. The sudden rush caused me to trip over a stump. The pain in my shoulder made me howl in agony but not before I slashed a piece of flesh from his forearm with my sabre. He dropped his gun but instead of picking it up, he jumped atop of me and pummeled me with his still one good arm. We fought and rolled, and my shoulder felt shattered. My sabre lay next to my useless arm. I searched by my boot and felt the handle of my Bowie knife, and sank the blade deep into his back. He screamed just inches from my face. I could smell his breath. His eyes went wide and bulged from their sockets. Immediately, he wore a ghostly pale. He rolled off of me and flopped on the ground like he had been splashed with scalding water. “You didn’t have to do that! You didn’t have to stab me!” He moaned. “You killed me. You killed me.” He said through tears. I scooted away from him as if he were contagious. The horror of it sobered me. Killing man as you dart by on a horse is one thing. Killing a man who is so close you can see the expression in his face change the second the blade enteres, changes you forever.

“Now you lay still, Yank!” I told him.

“You killed me. You didn’t have to do that.” He kept saying. The lady he mentioned there at the last, Claire, I am sure was his wife.

“Now just lie still there!” Was all I could think to say. He was a dead man and we both knew it. It was torturous for the both of us waiting for the fact to catch up to the circumstance. Directly he never said another word again.