Jackson Speed and the Fugitive Slaves now available

Posted on April 23, 2016 by robpeecher

Jackson Speed and the Fugitive Slaves is now available on Kindle.

The fifth book in the Jackson Speed Memoirs series is now available on Kindle!

This novella finds our rascally hero in the unlikely role of conductor on the Underground Railroad. And you’ll know it was a woman who led him down this improbable path.

I’m excited about getting this story written in part because it explores a time in Speed’s life that I’ve only touched on in the past.

In my mind, Speed’s life divides into four distinct periods.

The first is what I think of as the Mexico and California years – his service in the Mexican-American War and his adventures in the California Gold Rush. Obviously, the first book in the series takes up a portion of this time of his life.

The second period in Speed’s life is roughly the 1850s – the decade between the Gold Rush and the Civil War. This is a strange time in America’s history and an equally strange time in Speed’s life. Bizarre events, little known today, occurred on a national scale during this time, and Speed will eventually be involved in a fair number of them.

The third period in his life is the Civil War, and most of the Jackson Speed novels, so far, are all about this period of his life. Of course, this was the defining time of anyone who lived through it, so it’s right and proper that three of the first four novels are set during or just before the American Civil War. And there are more to come.

The fourth period of Speed’s life is the post-war period. I’ve written nothing about this time yet, but those stories will come, too.

This fifth book – Jackson Speed and the Fugitive Slaves – is set in 1853, so takes place during that second period. The only other thing I’ve written in this time period is the short story Jackson Speed and the Da Ponte Diamond (found at the front of Jackson Speed on the Orange Turnpike).

I am simultaneously writing about the California Gold Rush and writing other shorter novellas that fall around the same time period as Jackson Speed and the Fugitive Slaves, and I’m hoping in the next few months there will be a lot more Jackson Speed stories out there. And, if you’ve been following the blog, you know I am also working on a re-brand of the books. I’ve finished changing out the covers for all the Kindle books, but I still haven’t finished changing the print versions yet.

As always, if you enjoy the story, please give it a review on Amazon.com and feel free to reach out to me. I love hearing from readers!

Jackson Speed: Not really like other historical novels

Posted on April 12, 2016 by robpeecher

Billy Oates, Alabama governor, Confederate colonel who led his men up Little Round Top on the second day of Gettysburg. Some of the humor of the Jackson Speed novels comes from putting a character like Ol’ Speedy next to a man like Billy Oates.

A few years ago, when I wrote the first Jackson Speed novel, I was talking to a buddy of mine and trying to describe the book to him.

It’s easy if someone is familiar with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman Papers, because then I can just say, “Well, Jackson Speed is similar to an American Flashman.”

But my friend wasn’t familiar with Flashman.

“Is it like Shaara’s books?” he asked.

“Um,” I hesitated. “Not really.”

Of course, Jackson Speed is almost nothing like the historical fiction of Jeff and Michael Shaara.

The father and son writers do a magnificent job of interpreting history through their stories, and if you have an interest in the Civil War and that time period, I highly recommend them. I’ve also enjoyed reading Bernard Cornwell’s Starbuck series (although I like his Sharpe series better).

Jackson Speed also isn’t much like Horatio Hornblower or Jack Aubrey.

These are all great historical novels well worth reading.

The history in them ranges from precisely accurate to complete fiction, but they are all wonderful novels that tell really entertaining tales and, for the most part, offer readers mini-lessons in history.

I hope that Jackson Speed also entertains, and I know that there are history lessons hidden within the fiction. But with the exception of Fraser’s Flashman, all of these books take a pretty stoic view of history. Their heroes are heroic. Even when these authors allow their protagonists to be flawed, the flaws are overcome and the heroes find redemption.

Jackson Speed is without redemption, and his flaws run deep, but the thing that drives me when I write these stories is a desire to not take any of it too seriously. I write about horrible times and terrible events, but what I like about Speed is that so long as he escapes it, none of it matters much to him.

When he sees a man shot in the gut in battle and the guy is dying a slow death with his intestines leaking out on the battlefield, Speed is just thankful it wasn’t him who was shot.

When he is forced to give a thought to the institution of slavery, he’s ambivalent because he ain’t in chains.

Of course he’s also horrified by all of it, and scared to death. Part of what makes Jackson Speed so awful as a person is his willingness to succumb to his fear. While the brave men he meets (typically real people from history) charge into battle or do the duty, Speed is crouched behind a tree trunk praying for safety. I love the juxtaposition of Jackson Speed and, for instance, William Oates of the Fifteenth Alabama on the side of Little Round Top on the second day at Gettysburg.

Oates – both the Oates in Jackson Speed at the High Tide and the real Oates of history – was a tough and fearless man, and the men of the Fifteenth Alabama only left that hill when they were nearly out of ammunition and exhausted from terrible fighting, a 20-mile march and climbing up the side of Round Top. And then there’s Jackson Speed, and you’ll know how he escaped that ferocious battle in the woods on the side of that famous hill.

And then, because we see all of this action through Jackson Speed’s memory, these stalwart men of history are viewed as maniacs and imbeciles. And that just amuses me to no end.

So if you’re looking for historical fiction that casts these characters in a stoic and properly respectful attitude, there are some great books out there that I highly recommend.

But if you think you’d like a little humor in your historical fiction, a little coward in your hero, some pinched nipples and slapped butt cheeks, then you might want to give Ol’ Speedy a read.

Is it farcical? Yes.

Is it absurd? Sometimes.

Is it interesting and informative? Absolutely.

Is it like most other historial novels? Um. Not really.

Typical Jackson Speed readers are Flashman fans

Posted on April 10, 2016 by robpeecher

Jackson Speed

The Jackson Speed novels often get compared to George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series.

I am a fan of the Flashman novels, and I readily admit that Speed was significantly influenced by Flashman. Many of the emails I receive from readers of the Speed novels or the reviews that readers leave on Amazon refer back to Flashman.

It was never really my intention to court fans of the Flashman novels, but I think it’s accurate to say that the typical reader of the Jackson Speed Memoirs is a fan of Fraser’s Flashman novels. Probably he has read all the Flashman novels twice, and he’s looking for books similar to the Flashman novels – books that are historically accurate and feature a comical anti-hero rather than the archetypal hero who is bold and daring.

My goal, when I started writing the series, was to write novels set in 19^th Century America that I expected would appeal to an American audience. I wanted to write accurate portrayals of historical events and include in them a scoundrel, a cowardly womanizer whose motives are never glory or honor but purely selfish. I wanted to create a character in the Flashman mold but put him in the period and place of history I am most familiar with.

In my research, I look hard to find the obscure stories from American history where I can insert my roving rascal, and my expectation is that even a lot of well-versed armchair historians will learn something.

Whether you’re a fan of the Flashman novels and you’re looking for a character similar to Fraser’s cad Flashman, or you just enjoy humorous historical fiction, I’m just thrilled that every month it seems new readers are discovering and enjoying the Jackson Speed novels! I don’t get a lot of reviews on the books, and I only occasionally hear from readers with an email, but the fact that all four of the books continue to sell consistently suggests to me that people are enjoying the books, and I’m grateful that are!

Help a brother out, leave a Jackson Speed review

Posted on April 7, 2016 by robpeecher

Help a brother out … please leave a review if you’ve enjoyed a book.

If you have read and enjoyed any of my books, I would really appreciate a short review on Amazon. Reviews help sell books. Even if I handed you a copy and you didn’t buy it from Amazon, you can still go to Amazon and leave a review.

It doesn’t have to be long or thought out or grammatically correct. A word or two: “Fun read!” or “Enjoyed it!” would be very helpful to me. One of the best reviews I’ve received was from someone who said the book was so funny “I cried and almost pee my underwear.” Do I care that her pee is present-tense and her tears are past-tense? Not at all. I’m just glad she’s soaking wet from top to bottom.

Or, if you’re a bit more verbose, a longer review is always very helpful, too. If you can describe the book or what you enjoyed about it – even what could have been improved – all of these things are worthwhile and helpful to other readers who are considering reading the book.

Obviously, if you were ambivalent about the book (3 stars) then that’s not going to help me, and if you absolutely hated it (1 star or 2 stars) then I’d prefer you keep your opinion to yourself. But if you hated the book so much that you feel compelled to leave a one star review, I do hope you’ll be specific about why you hated it and give other potential readers an honest accounting of your opinion.

But I think I’d rather have an honest 1 star review than a fake 5 star review.

I know people are enjoying the Jackson Speed books because sales of all four of the Jackson Speed novels are consistent. Clearly folks are reading a book and coming back for the next book in the series.

I was recently lamenting the lack of reviews to a friend of mine. I told him that I’ve had more people email me through my blog to tell me they enjoyed the books than have posted a review on Amazon – and that’s something I don’t understand. Especially when Kindle readers get a prompt to post a review when they finish the book. For someone to email me through the blog requires at least another step or two.

It might be that people get to the end of a Jackson Speed book but never get the prompt because they don’t reach the last page after the endnotes. It may be that the endnotes are dooming me from getting reviews.

Based on my sales reports from 2015, it looks like I picked up somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 new readers in the United Kingdom and another 30 new readers in the United States who read all four of the Jackson Speed novels just in 2015. There were others, too, who read some but not all of the books. That doesn’t include the folks who bought books in 2014 (and we won’t talk about 2012 and 2013 when my sales were so poor I thought about never writing another novel again).

If half of those people who bought all four books in 2015 (and presumably did so because they enjoyed them) would leave a review, it would help me out so much. Instead, I only received one review on a Jackson Speed book in all of 2015.

All the conventional wisdom on novel writing tells me that reviews will improve my sales. Someone recently told me that Amazon has an algorithm that kicks in when a book reaches 50 reviews, and writers find it difficult to get traction before they have those 50 reviews. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be dead and gone before my books start getting traction.

I am deeply grateful to everyone who has read a Jackson Speed book and come back for a second one. Those people who have read all four of the books are the people who keep me writing. I love you folks more than I love my dogs (and you come in very close behind my children, and on some days you’ve got them beat, too). You can’t understand the feeling I get when I see a copy of El Teneria sell and a few days later I see a Blood Tubs sell and then an Orange Turnpike and then a High Tide. It’s like I can watch someone enjoying the Speed books (and yes, I realize, it may not necessarily be the same person, but I like to imagine it is).

So please don’t misunderstand me begging for reviews to think I’m not grateful. Every time I look at a sales report and see that people are reading my books, I am humbled and so very thankful.

But I really need some reviews, too.

Seriously, me begging for reviews is so much better than me begging for spare change on the side of the road. Help a brother out.

Exciting stuff in the Jackson Speed universe

Posted on April 7, 2016 by robpeecher

The cover for Jackson Speed and the Fugitive Slaves.

I’ve got some exciting stuff going on in the Jackson Speed universe.

Speed fans will be glad to know their favorite 19^th Century rascal will soon be making a new appearance. Jackson Speed and the Fugitive Slaves, a novella, will be released April 22, and it will be followed closely by a second novella in which Speed meets for the first time famed detective Allan Pinkerton. Speed fans will know that Pinkerton is a recurrent (and favorite) character in the Speed universe, but I’ve not yet explored how the two came to be friends.

More noticeably, to followers on Facebook and readers of my blog, I’m also re-branding the books. As part of the re-brand, I’ve designed new covers for most of the books (I’m keeping the Alex McArdell cover of High Tide, but changing the rest of them). I wanted a more consistent look to the book covers and something that would allow me to more quickly publish Jackson Speed stories.

In the past, I’ve been frustrated by the rate at which I released novels. I’m getting about one novel written each year, and I’d like to publish Speed stories faster than that.

To improve my novel publishing rate, I’ve decided to release shorter novellas – stories that hit somewhere around the 30,000 word mark that I can write and publish every four to six months. My plan is to release two or three or four novellas a year. I will release the novellas only as Kindle e-books, and when I have three or four I will combine them together for a full novel to be released as both e-books and paperbacks.

I may not have a thousands of fans out there, but I know what it’s like to be engaged in a series of books and eager for the next one to be published and waiting on an author who is too, too slow. All the evidence is that I’m picking up more readers every month, and I’d like to be more accommodating to the folks who enjoy these stories.

So in between the full-length novels, I’ll publish novellas, and that should mean three to five new Speed stories will be out every year so long as I can keep coming up with historical events from the 19^th Century that deserve to have a scoundrel inserted among them.

Hopefully, too, the novellas can serve as an entry-point for new readers who don’t necessarily want to invest in a novel-length book but want to see if Speed is the sort of character they’ll love to hate.

As readers know, I jump from point to point in Speed’s life, so the books and stories do not have to be read in chronological order or even in the order I released them. About the only ones that should be read back-to-back are Orange Turnpike followed by High Tide because one leads directly into the other.

If you’re among those people who enjoy a Jackson Speed novel, thank you so much! I’m grateful to everyone who buys a book or reads a book through Kindle Unlimited. If you enjoy the books, please give a thought to leaving a review at amazon.com. Reviews are especially helpful to readers who are trying to decide whether or not to give a new indie-author a try.

And let me know what you think of the new covers! Leave a comment or shoot me a message through the blog.

Who likes pretty stuff?

Posted on April 5, 2016 by robpeecher

Stained glass "wine bar"

Typically I use my blog for the sole purpose of promoting my books, but I’m going to do a little bragging on my wife today.

When we both found ourselves unemployed a year ago, I asked Jean what she would do if she could do anything. She said, “I want to be the female Indiana Jones.”

We shortly ruled that out, and as a second option she said she wanted to start doing stained glass art again.

When we were still newlyweds and living in Carrollton, Georgia, Jean learned from her father how to make stained glass art. For about a year she had a studio and she created pieces that she sold on consignment and at craft fairs, and she did a few commissioned pieces.

Then we left Carrollton and she lost her studio space and life started getting in the way. She had a job, she was pregnant again and suddenly we went from having one son to two and then three, and little shards of glass and lead don’t mix real well with little kids, and 18 years later, Jean hadn’t done stained glass in 18 years.

So we started from scratch a year ago. The boys and I cleaned out a workshop at our house that we were just using for storage. We bought the equipment she needed. My dad built her some tables to work on. And within a week or so, Jean was making stained glass again.

Almost a year later, and she’s built a pretty good business that is continuing to get bigger all the time. She’s doing a lot of commissioned pieces and she’s working right now on her first window for a home builder.

She has an etsy store that she can’t keep stocked and a list of orders from customers as long as your arm.

And the work she does is GORGEOUS!

Most of it gets posted to her Facebook page, so I’d encourage you to go check that out if you like pretty stuff.

robertpeecher

If Ashley Franks hadn't tempted me with her peach cobbler

Monthly Archives: April 2016