Unraveling a Revolution

The book will be a big one. With a projected length of 142,000 words, it will be bigger even than River Rising and The Memory Tree, the weighty twin tomes that anchor the Carson Chronicles series.

I admit that gives me pause. Authors are strongly advised to limit their books, even historical fiction works, to 100,000 words.

I won't with this one though. Like many writers, I believe that if you have a story to tell, you should tell it. You should develop every major character and narrative thread until you can develop no more.

In The Patriots, my twenty-fourth novel, I will do just that. I will dive deep into the lives of Noah and Jake Maclean, two orphaned brothers who travel from the Philadelphia of 2024 to the one of 1776.

Like most boys, Noah, 22, and Jake, 15, will not be able to resist a dangerous temptation that calls to them from their own property. They will enter a mysterious stone shed and venture to the American Revolution, where they will meet Ben Franklin, John Adams, Peggy Shippen, and the lovely daughters of a furniture maker.

Unlike September Sky, River Rising, The Lane Betrayal, and The Fountain, the first books of my last four series, The Patriots will focus more on people than events. It will focus on the brothers; sisters Abigail (20) and Rachel (14) Ward; and Douglas Maclean, the boys' great-uncle and the patriarch of a Scottish clan that goes back centuries.

It will also lay the foundation for a trilogy that spans the length of the revolution, a conflict I am covering for the first time. It will set the stage for more action-oriented stories in books two and three.

Because of the book's length, I don't expect to finish the first draft before July. I do expect to have the finished product out by October 1.

Credit: Spirit of '76, an 1875 oil painting by American illustrator Archibald MacNeal Willard, is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.