posted
I'm just getting ready to start working on my next book and I thought I'd ask a question to the crowd here before I started.
Basically, I want to writer the Untold Tales of Daniel Boone. I just think that America needs its own fantasy setting and there's something about the time before, during and just after the French-Indian War that gives a lot of room to work. It's also an era that has been a favorite study of mine. Add to that growing up in Boone's stomping grounds, and well, you get the idea.
So, how tacky or bad would it be to write about Daniel Boone in this way? Boone's descendents still live in the area I am from and while I don't intend to change the man or blackguard him in the least, it will take one of their ancestors and put him in fictional situations (tied in with his real history).
posted
Um... you've heard of Orson Scott Card, right? He's done this series about a guy named Alvin. I believe he handles historical characters in fictitious situations quite well. And all, sarcasim aside, I love the Alvin Maker books because of the way he uses history and twists it. I think it makes for an exciting read, so heck ya. Write away.
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posted
Interesting thought: will Alvin Maker become the Lord of the Rings for historical fantasy (or at least historical fantasy set in early America)? Everything that touches the genre to be seen as a derivative of it?
posted
not me, there's way too much of it and I am not up to date on it...
but definitely read at least some of it. I was amazed at how much he was able to change history, yet keep the characters true to their "selves" as we know them.
For example (very MINOR spoiler): George Washington is an English Commander but sympathetic to the colonials... so he decides the honorable thing to do is to surrender his men and turn himself in as a traitor to be executed. This isn't a plot point, but rather a legend that the characters are familiar with. It serves, however, very well as an example of how the history is totally different, yet all the players are the same.
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posted
So Alvin's this chipmunk, see? He and is over-sized chipmunk siblings are in this slave labor band for their manager/producer/father/slave driver named Dave. But Alvin and his cohorts manage to drive Dave nuts with their c-razy and wacky antics.
posted
Pick up Seventh Son. It's not a very long read, the books get a big larger as they go but the first one is quick. You will be hooked and probably blow through them all really quickly after that, expecially since you seem to already have an interest in historical fiction.
Some one help me out here, but wasn't Boone mentioned in the books also. I know Jim Bowie is in the last one but I'm having a hard time remembering about Boone.
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posted
Wouldn't surprise me, Mr. Card's spent some time up at my old Alma Mater. Dan'l's big time up around them parts.
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posted
Synopsis - Alvin is born the seventh son of a seventh son. Wicked Awsome powers come from that birth order. He's a maker, the first in a long while, and basically is set out to fight the unmaker (big nasty power that destroys stuff) and build the crystal city (a kind of utopian society).
If you know anything about the book of mormon, the series is based on the life of Joseph Smith. I know nothing about that though, but many people here are mormon and draw other meaning from the books along those lines. For me it's just a really cool historical fiction/fantasy.
Edit: Not Pocahontas, but the book of Mormon. Duh, get it right!
Since you are intending these to be "Untold Tales," you'll have to be meticulous in your attention to detail. The problem is reconciling the need to say something new with the need to stay true to character.
Since character development will be difficult, you'll have to have other driving forces. One possibility is to have a fictional character talking about his interactions with Boone. Then the fictional character can develop, and you can stay true to Boone.
posted
Whew, I had been worrying that somehow I had stumbled on an idea that would rip off our esteemed host.
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posted
A perfect example of all this, was the fact that George Washington was decapitated on the first book, Seventh Son .
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posted
I love the pastwatch book. I can't wait for the Noah book, if I recall correctly he is going to do that one next, well eventually.
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posted
oh, where can I find Atlantis? I am ashamed to admit it but I haven't read many of his short stories. If it is on the same line as Pastwatch I really want to read it, if only as a teaser to the upcoming novel.
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posted
I've been coming to this site since college and still there are parts that i have completely missed or skipped over. It took me up to this past fall to sign on the forums and now I realize there are stories right here I haven't read. Arghhhh!
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posted
Thats cool. I want to read Enchantment, The Worthing Saga, and the Home Coming series during the summer. After those, I will get to Past Watch. I'm making an "Ender's Game" comic right now, so I might not have time to get to Pastwatch before the summer ends...
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posted
well, yea. I guess your right. It's fun finding new things out about your favorite old places.
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posted
I would put Pastwatch in front of the Homecoming Series. It was good but not my favorite. But that's just my opinion.
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posted
In addion you can find lots of tall tales, if you look in historical tale preservation type places, along with Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan and Abe Lincoln.
Disney has already fictionalized Davy Crockett, not to mention the Alamo movie. While slightly later in time, you might be able to get away whit more liberties with Davy than with Dan'l. But you would be playing against preconcieved ideas with both of them.
And you definitely definitely need to read Alvin first.
posted
Does it infringe upon copyrights held by OSC?
This is the only thread that might not derail me from my purpose in logging on, which is to get an update on boon.
Sop: Chronologically, Alvin Maker starts about 1804 ish, maybe. So assuming Boone is a young man in the French and Indian war, that should be fine. He's an established legend by the era in which Alvin Maker is shaking and moving.
If you are serious about writing this book, I'd recommend just write it and don't read the Alvin Maker serires. Everyone says there are striking similarities between Ender's game and Battleship troopers and Card just refuses to read BT. Though the similarities are fairly superficial IMO.
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posted
Not even vaguely. There are a whole host of alternate histories: the most famous being WardMoore's Come the Jubilee in which the South has won the CivilWar; and PhilipKDick's Man in the High Castle in which Japan and Germany have won WWII,
Then there is the category of fictionalized history, ala GeorgeMacDonaldFrazier's Flashman series which I highly recommend for a fun read, and exposure to very interesting history that most Americans are unaware of.
Any careful reading of history makes one think of the quasiDragnet disclaimer: The names, dates, and places that you are about to see are true. Only the events have been changed to protect the guilty.
posted
What aspectre said. Plus some bonus commentary:
There's no worries about overlapping with OSC unless you use some of the stuff that's particular to him -- knacks, the specific political make-up of his alternate history, etc.
But you aren't even suggesting that.
I suggest you do read several alternate history works. It's a field that's become a little more popular in the past two decades.
And I think Daniel Boone is a better subject for this type of project than Davy Crockett. He's less known (outside of Appalachia) due to the aforementioned Disney thing.
The big question is how you approach this. Are you going to make it a "true" alternate history where events have diverged sometime in the past from "history" and you end up with a "different" America. Or is this going to simply be "tales set in 'real' history that are the type of thing that Daniel Boone could have experienced." The former is probably more marketable than the latter.
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posted
Daniel Boone was a man. Yes a big man. With an eye like an eagle and as tall as a mountain was he. Daniel Boone was a man. Yes a big man. He was brave, he was fearless and as tough as a mighty oak tree.
From the coonskin cap on the top of ol Dan to the heel of his rawhide shoe The rippin'est roarin'est fightin'est man the frontier ever knew.
Daniel Boone was a man. Yes a big man. And he fought for America to make all Americans free. What a boon, what a doer, what a dream comer truer was he.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I'm not sure what I will be pursuing will be alternate history in truth. But here's where it started from.
A while back my regular gaming group was struggling with the idea of doing something new and different. It just sort of popped out that I would like to run a D and D game set in the time just before the French and Indian War and set it in the frontier areas of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Folklore would develop into the magic found in most D and D games. Strangely enough, everything translated pretty well. Rangers were the long hunters (and the only ones who could start with a Pennsylvania Long Rifle (later called the Kentucky Long Rifle), clerics became parsons, wizards were now scientists of a sort, druids translated into Indian medicine men. Heck, even British officers made good Paladins (British uniform red coats equal splint mail -- there has to be some reason for wearing them).
It worked remarkably well and I could blend a lifetime of growing up in the Appalachians with the idea of old-style adventure gaming.
The first adventure started with the discovery of empty cabins that had been raided up along the Watauga. Ohio Indians looked like the villains but it later turned out to be a group of French trappers that had picked up a form of lycanthropy in the Far East that turned them into wererats. The French had sent them to this area as a prelude to the conflict that was to come.
And from there, it just went and went.
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He's done this series about a guy named Alvin. I believe he handles historical characters in fictitious situations quite well. And all, sarcasim aside, I love the Alvin Maker books because of the way he uses history and twists it. I think it makes for an exciting read, so heck ya. Write away.
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