By Keith
McDowell
At precious few
moments in what passes for our existence as sentient beings, we experience the
joy of completing an arduous task that has encompassed our entire attention for
countless hours and endless months. I’ve had that pleasure over the past few
days as two of my mammoth ebook projects have been uploaded without error and
accepted for self-publication by Amazon’s Kindle
Direct Publishing (KDP). Normally, such an event might not be cause for
excess celebration were it not for the additional burdens imposed by KDP and
the serious flaws and inconsistencies in their [expletive “nav.toc”
deleted] KindleGen rendering software and the accompanying documentation –
burdens that cost me an additional two months of extra work. I suppose I should
take solace and be amused at the fact that major publishing houses are having
the same experience, but then … is this progress?
I never expected
to write a novel. I’m certain that Al Kenion, my honors English professor at
Wake Forest University for four semesters, didn’t expect it either based on his
red-lining of my often wacky weekly themes. Of course, nothing has changed.
Fifty years later, I’m just as wacky as ever when it comes to content, but
minus his red-lining – not to mention my atrocious use of syntax and
punctuation.
So why write a
novel? In this day and time, content comes and goes at the speed of the
Internet – they don’t call them “browsers” for nothing – leaving little room
for growth into a classic, except maybe for the occasional cult following such
as that surrounding Game of Thrones.
And one certainly is not going to get rich in the era of micro-payments coupled
to uncontrolled pirating, although the 70% Kindle self-publishing contract is
very appealing in the hope of “winning the lottery” by going viral. And it’s a
free service!
For me, writing
the novel Never To Return was all
about turning the churn of genealogical prospecting and my curiosity about the
lives and behavior of my ancestors into an instantiation – that’s a geek word
meaning specific realization – of what they were really like based on my own
life experiences with people, my own peccadilloes, and my own interpretation of
the historical record of my ancestor’s existence. It was a challenge that I
could not pass up, especially given the boredom of being a retired person.
And so Never To Return tells the story of the
Stoner and Morgan families of Rowan County, North Carolina, beginning with the
marriage of Milas P. Morgan to Camilla Stoner prior to the Civil War and the
birth of their son, Adam, in the spring of 1861. The trials and tribulations of
their extended families in the community of Morgan Township, a community formed
mostly by German immigrants at the time of the Revolutionary War, plays out
through both the mundane and the extraordinary interplay of people dealing with
the vicissitudes of life in a time of war. It is a story of death in its many
forms, childbirth, marriage, fornication and adultery, graft and corruption,
leadership, incompetence, fear, cowardice, heroism, utter despair, and all the
other manifestations of the human condition.
Ultimately, Never To Return is a story about people,
the most interesting of all subjects. I had fun writing the novel. I hope you
get a chance to read it. You can get a free “quick look” at the Kindle online store by clicking
on the cover image and scrolling through parts of the ebook.
And for those of
you who get hooked on the real-world characters in my novel – isn’t it fun to
see an actual picture of the lecherous First Sergeant Daniel Basinger bedecked
in his Civil War uniform – and are not fully sated by the fictional story,
there is the companion ebook and massive tome entitled The Stoner Family of
Rowan County that comes complete with every court record and land deed
that you ever wanted to digest. You can
also peruse it for free at the Kindle
online store.
Oh, and for
those of you who are classics purists, Never
To Return is not a spoof of Gone with
the Wind, even though I do like to be wacky at times. I revere both
Margaret Mitchell’s book and the movie, but they portray and reveal only the
plantation aristocracy of the old South. The movie in particular is a period
piece with great acting, but whose male characters often come across as
pusillanimous nerds. Gone with the Wind
does not even remotely describe the life of a yeoman farmer in Morgan Township
and what the Civil War was about for them and their families. If you want to
know that story, read Never To Return.
I spent a great deal of time perusing modern history books about the period as
well as reading every extant issue, most of which exist, of the weekly
Salisbury newspaper, the Carolina
Watchman, from 1857 through 1868. It was a rewarding experience. And for
the curious, I chose the title Never To
Return to emphasize the death of so many men in the Civil War and their
failure to return home to their families and loved ones, not to comment on or
spoof the loss of the plantation aristocracy.
I’m one of the
lucky ones. The modern technological and information age has given to me the
most wondrous gift of providing a free medium to express myself and to bring to
fruition major projects that keep me mentally young while having fun. It
certainly beats sitting in a rocking chair on the porch at the local retirement
home. Isn’t innovation wonderful!
And don’t forget
to buy a few of my ebooks at
Amazon.com!
