Monday, July 13, 2015

The Pitch

O.K., I 'bit the bullet' and followed the advice in the writer's mags and such, and put my ideas into a business plan.  I cobbled a business plan, identified my market, listed what influenced me and talked about my 'platform'.  I did all of this to clear my mind so I could get to writing what is pitched below.  My novel in a nutshell.


                    What would it take for two farm boys to abandon their simple life and their family and put themselves in harm’s way in an army of rebellion?  This is a  coming of age tale of growing up in 17th century Ireland. The horrors of the rebellion hit home with the return of two uncles, both wounded in a battle in Ulster. The brothers are swept up in the action when they are secretly involved in stealing arms from a Scottish outpost in Sligo.  Though their involvement is not exposed, a family friend is murdered for his part in the raid.
            The boys say nothing at home, but choose to leave rather than give the family guilty knowledge of their crimes.  They intend to join the Irish rebels to avenge their friend and their uncles fighting against the royalists, but the confusing political and religious loyalties of the times find them working as draymen in the confederation army, under the leadership of royalist officers fighting for the King against Cromwell’s ‘New Model Army’.
            In the siege of Drogheda there were few survivors.  Those that did survive were sent to Barbados as slaves.  In Barbados the Irish interact with black Africans bought in Brazil and Choctaws enslaved by the Spanish and sold to the English planters.  The war between English Royalists and Parliamentarians finds its way to Barbados, and forces some planters to leave the island with some of their slaves.  Their escape leads to the American colonies where the Irish go into the forests of Alabama with the Choctaws and are assimilated into the Woodland Indian culture only to discover that the Choctaw are on the same path to destruction that Ireland experienced.

So there it is, with all the trappings of a literary historical work of fiction  Fictional characters  interacting with real people who existed in the period and sharing experiences that really happened.  (Or so it is said in some history books)

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