historical fiction | Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

December 14, 2010

From “The Tiselly Conversion” by Rene P. Ouragan

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When Jacques-Charles Dominique de l’Arago, duc d’Tiselly, converted to the Cathar faith in 1201, it represented an enormous boon for them. As a powerful Languedoc nobleman, he brought land, troops, official institutional support, and perhaps most importantly, prestige. Conversions of Catholics in Tiselly proceeded at a highly accelerated rate, despite rumors that the duc d’Tiselly had not fully embraced the faith himself.

When the Albigensian Crusade began in 1209, the crusading armies descended on Tiselly in full force, their lords having been promised the duc’s lands if they were purged of heresy. Insinuations to the contrary aside, the duc d’Tiselly certainly fought hard enough in defense of the Cathars; while armies flowed about his lands like water, the Chateau d’Tiselly held out until 1215, falling shortly before Toulouse. All those within the chateau walls were massacred.

And the small golden casket that the duc d’Tiselly had carried with him at the time of his conversion? It was lost in the struggle, and buried beneath the detritus of savage battle.

December 13, 2010

From “Echoes of Al-Qadmuto” by Gregory T. Danielsson

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: drama, fiction, historical fiction, hospital, story, World War I |
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“I served at Al-Qadmuto and Al-Babiels,” said Garlick. The lingering scars of tropical disease caused his voice to grow more strained and gravelly the longer he spoke.

“Were…were those on the Western Front?” Samuel said.

Garlick laughed until the bandages across his chest constricted the sound into a painful rattle. “What do they teach you children in school these days? Al-Qadmuto is in Transjordan and Al-Babiels is in Iraq.”

“I’m sorry,” Samuel said. He finished changing the bandages on Garlick’s left leg and moved onto his right. “I wasn’t alive during the war, and we only learned about the Western Front in school.”

“That’s because we won the war there,” Garlick said. “Everywhere else was more or less a miserable failure or sideshow. My unit probed against the Turks in Transjordan–with the way people talk these days, it’s a wonder anyone remembers that we ever fought the Turks alongside the Germans–and got our arses handed to us. Fell back to Al-Babiels and the rutting Turks blasted us with mustard gas until we surrendered. They’d gotten it parcel post from their friends in Berlin.”

“If you surrendered,” Samuel said, “how did you defeat the enemy?”

Garlick gave another dry rattling laugh. “Defeat? We were the ones defeated, lad. My boys and I spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, and our boys didn’t get so much as a spoonful of victory on that front until Allenby.”

December 9, 2010

From “The Coakha Strategem” by Jan J. Winkleman

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: Dutch, fiction, historical fiction, Netherlands, story, World War II |
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One of the required strategies wasn’t in any of the books–hell, it may have existed only in the commandant’s head–but it was a required portion of the curriculum regardless. The Coakha Strategem was named after Eric Coakha, who according to the commandant had led Dutch troops deployed against the Germans in 1940.

Outnumbered and under heavy air attack, Coakha had been trapped on the wrong side of a blown-up dyke, which had created a water obstacle designed to be used as a defensive line. Most of the other commanders so trapped surrendered in the face of German artillery and armor, but Coakha did not. Instead, he broke his small command up into groups of 5-10 men and arranged hiding places for them while a screening force kept the Germans at bay. A native of the area, along with his men, Coakha knew of barns, haylofts, thick stands of trees, and other locations where his troops could easily conceal themselves, especially given the speed of the Germans’ advance thus far and their lack of familiarity with the Dutch countryside.

Once hidden, Coakha allowed the Germans to overrun his positions, which now appeared abandoned; the invaders moved on to attempt an assault crossing of the flooded area. On a pre-arranged signal–a triple blast from concealed artillery pieces–Coakha’s men fell upon the Germans’ rear, cutting off their contact with friendly units and pinning them between attacks from behind and the Dutch defenders still in place across the water. The Germans were annihilated, and Coakha’s survivng men crossed the floodwaters in their enemies’ captured assault boats. The line held until the next day when, intimidated by the terror bombing of Rotterdam, the Netherlands surrendered.

The commandant liked that story for two reasons. First, it showed the mischief a canny commander familiar with the lay of the land could wreak even when outnumbered. And second, it showed that even a convincing victory could be hollow in the larger scheme of things.

November 27, 2010

From “Varta River Symphony” by Tobias Engelbert

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, historical fiction, music, mystery, story |
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Imię Nazwisko was obviously not the man’s real name, but the one that had been used to publish and record his music in Wilhelmine Germany. Rave reviews of concerts had appeared in music publications before the war, but the number of surviving works by Nazwisko was vanishingly small due to the tumultuous 20th century history of the region in which he lived and worked. Most of his sheet music was burned during the battles for Poland, leaving just a few player piano rolls, wax cylinders, and gramophone records that had been shipped to audiophiles elsewhere.

Orris had painstakingly tracked down and transcribed–by ear–all Nazwisko’s surviving recordings save one. He’d also digitally reproduced and distributed what recordings he could, on the grounds that Nazwisko had unfairly been denied a place in musical history due to the privations of history. But that last recording…

The Vartafluß Symphonie had been recorded in Posen in October 1918 for distribution on gramophone record. Due to the war, only a handful of master copies were made with an eye toward postwar distribution, but the dismembering of Germany after the war and Nazwisko’s death or disappearance after 1919 meant that this never came to pass. The composer had carried the sheet music with him to an uncertain fate, leaving just a single copy of the work: a master belonging to a reclusive audio antiquarian.

Orris was determined to see it recovered, pirated, and shared with the world. Even if it meant bending the law.

November 24, 2010

From “Kubinka” by Glennis D’Arbo

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: drama, fiction, historical fiction, Kubinka, psychic, science fiction, story, tank |
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As the attendant gave Jeremy his ticket and the change from his thousand-ruble note, his hand brushed the cash register. A vision sprang into his head, clear as day: an employee slyly opening the till and pocketing a stack of bills.

Jeremy sighed, and pulled his glove back on. “Always something bad,” he muttered, and pushed through the turnstile into the museum proper.

Bypassing the indoor exhibits, he strolled outside, where an impressive array of armored tanks and fighting vehicles were arrayed along a semicircular path. This was Kubinka, the great tank museum of Russia and the former Soviet Union, and every vehicle here had a story to tell.

“And they’ll all be tragic, horrible, wretched things,” Jeremy muttered. Military things always were. He recalled a visit to the Smithsonian, pressing his palm against the Enola Gay and witnessing a blinding flash and ever-expanding fireball.

There was nothing for it, though. Jeremy reached into his pocket and produced a dog-eared sheaf of photocopies. An article on the top detailed the tragic fate of one Jeroen Schoenborn, accused of disabling his tank at Kursk in an act of cowardice, later tried and executed for the same. Painstaking research had led his grandson to Kubinka, where most survivors of that great battle could be found.

And he’d touch them all, regardless of the pain it’d cause, to learn the truth.

November 18, 2010

From “Maryann of the Pillars” by Cam Devonshire

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: desert, fiction, France, historical fiction, New York, Persia, Rome, story, war |
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It might seem an odd thing that Maryann Steinman was the last heir to the long-dead city of Iram of the Pillars, but as is so often the case what seems odd at first appears less so on further examination.

Iram of the Pillars had been the key oasis that made travel across the vast Rub’ al Khali desert possible. But as more trade came and went, the water table had fallen and the spring collapsed in 190 AD, leaving the vast and unforgiving desert with no water to sustain travel. The royal family and all those who could do so fled north to Parthian Ctesiphon, for they had long been vassals of the king there. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Severus of Rome had sacked the city. The king of Iram and all his sons died in the defense of the city, with his daughter carried off to Rome in chains.

Purchased by a wealthy family, she was eventually emancipated and married into a powerful family of freedmen and Christian converts. They ran afoul of the later emperor Diocletian, who ordered the family wiped out in 305 AD. Only a single child survived the massacre, hidden by family friends and eventually smuggled to Gaul, where he raised a small family in an isolated village. In time, the village came to be part of France, but during the Great War it was totally razed; those that survived suffered terribly from dysentery and typhus. In the end, the entire town perished–save one man, Marcel Durand, who had left for Paris and later emigrated to New York City.

Before perishing in a typhoid outbreak, Durand managed to conceive a child, to the scandal of many, with one Gloria Feldman in the Bronx. Marrying George Steinman provided some stability for the child, who grew to father one child of his own before a heart attack felled him: Maryann.

A long path, yes, and one beset by the tragedies great and small which determine the fate of all peoples. But it led, inexorably, to Maryann.

October 30, 2010

From “Gravedigger Perkins and the Legend of Evans’ Gold” by Russ Fowler

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: cowboy, fiction, historical fiction, story, western |
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The announcer’s voice, warbled by the distance of the WQEH transmitter, breathlessly ran through the series’ back story:

“It’s time once again for the adventures of ‘Gravedigger’ Perkins, the only lawman of the West to earn that grim moniker through his tireless pursuit of law and justice…and his pursuit of evildoers to their graves! But Gravedigger Perkins isn’t tangling with any old small-time thugs, is he cowpokes?”

“No!” cried Sandy.

“That’s right, he’s got two of the meanest outlaws in the West to bring their eternal justice! Daniel ‘Thinker’ Evans, a mastermind of planning and execution! The godfather of crime out West! The Moriarty of the Mojave! And Thinker Evans’ sinister sidekick Robert ‘Shooter’ Dawson! The murderous yin to his boss’s yang, a hardened killer with the second-most skillful gun west of the Mississippi! With Gravedigger Perkins on their trail, it’s anyone’s guess where the adventure will lead!”

October 14, 2010

From “The 80-Year Box” by Tomáš Ventluka

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, fiction, historical fiction, humor, mystery, story, war, World War I, World War II |
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Erniesum Onestone, a barrister of Italian-Czech extraction, had devoted his entire life to the law, first for Austria-Hungary and later for the newly-independent nation of Czechoslovakia. He’d consulted on the drafting of the nation’s constitution as well as numerous pieces of civil law, learning the enormously complex system from square one. An inveterate practical jokester and fervent nationalist, Onestone delighted in tweaking the system and those within it precisely within the bounds he’d helped establish, though never to an extend which might harm his beloved nation.

Such a life didn’t lend itself to starting a family, and all of his immediate family had died during the war, leaving Onestone to seek other ways to make his mark as he lay dying of lung cancer in 1927. Months of work in his law office resulted in an enormously detailed will that became a national sensation when it was read upon his death. One hundred and twenty-seven clauses contained instructions for the dispersal of an estate swollen with sixty years of legal fees.

A million-koruna mansion to two barristers who were both spendthrifts and notorious enemies.

A cash prize equal to twenty years’ wages to the woman in Prague who bore the most legitimate children over the next five years.

A fully-paid membership in a prominent upper-crust social club for a notorious Bratislava pimp.

And, most mysteriously, a professionally made safebox with instructions not to open it for 80 years–protected by a generous endowment for a family to guard it (invalidated by premature opening).

Distant relatives fought Onestone’s bequests in court, but the wily old barrister had known what he was doing and the will stood as was, unaltered. The rival barristers put up with each other for five years before agreeing, through intermediaries, to sell the property and split the proceeds. Three Prague women won the baby race with a fourth given a consolation price, each tied at five children apiece.

As for the sealed strongbox…it vanished from history. Most of the relevant records were destroyed in the accidental firebombing of Prague in 1945, while the family Onestone had subsidized to look after his treasure vanished in the maelstrom of war. The box was lost to history.

Until now.

October 9, 2010

From “Prosperity Falls” by C. Alton Parker

Posted by alexp01 under Blog Chain | Tags: drama, fiction, historical fiction, mask, masquerade, party, story, western |
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This post is part of the October Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s theme is masquerades.

The Prosperity Masquerade was the social event of the early autumn season, and invitation in hand Virginia was going to make her presence known, wearing the family’s hand-me down costume as befit any son or daughter of Marshals Vincent and Patricia MacNeil. Prosperity Ranger or not.

When she arrived, whispers ran throughout the crowd, about the scandal of an ex-Ranger appearing at a Prosperity Masquerade and young master Sullivan’s motives for the invitation. Partly out of a mean-spirited desire to see how far those flames could be fanned and partly out of a need to express her gratitude in person, Virginia sought her host out, given a wide berth by everyone that recognized her.

Jacob stood at the center of the crowd, visibly ill at ease. He was dressed as a motley jester–the very costume two generations of Sullivans had worn before him–but the front hung open, revealing the young man’s mud-spattered Ranger uniform and gun belt, and the three-pronged hat was in his hands rather than on his head. Virginia was drawn closer to Jacob as revelers moved about him like river waves, and moments later they were face to face.

“Virginia…I was hoping you might come,” Jacob said when he spied her.

At a loss for how to respond, Virginia bit her lip. “How have you been?”

“Nothing’s been right since…then,” Jacob muttered. “Nightmares, rumors, the Ide on the warpath after all they did for me…everything’s unraveling.”

“What do you mean?

“I…I can’t explain it,” said Jacob. He waved Virginia away. “I need to get out of here. I’m suffocating. Please, enjoy the ball.” Before she could protest, he had slipped away, shedding his costume piece by piece and leaving each on the floor as he went.

“What are you doing here, MacNeil?” someone barked. It was Ellen Strasser, resplendent in a dress of eastern silk and wearing a Venetian mask. “Only Prosperity Rangers and their invited guests are allowed to attend! ‘Washout’ doesn’t qualify.”

“Jacob invited me,” Virginia said, spinning her invitation between two fingers. “If you’ve got a problem, take it up with him.”

Suddenly Virginia was up against the wall with Strasser’s arm across her throat. “Don’t you even think of dragging the young Mr. Sullivan’s name through the mud with your presence here,” Strasser hissed. “Isn’t almost getting him killed enough?”

“It got me an invitation,” Virginia said. “Maybe you should try almost getting Jacob killed next time. Then you can be his guest instead of just being here because you’re a Ranger.”

Strasser drew a derringer from her bustle. “Invitation or no, you are leaving. Now.”

The widow Sullivan appeared behind them, dressed all in white and speckled with crepe paper snowflakes. “Is there a problem here, Strasser? As a Ranger you ought to know that firearms are prohibited at town events.” A Colt Army glistened in the holster at her side.

September 18, 2010

From “The Icons of Mistra” by Basil C. Palaeologus

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The fortress in Mistra heard of the fall of Constantinople and the death of their Emperor in battle during the sixth month of the siege. The Turks gave them the news under a flag of truce, from the lips of a captured and bloodied Byzantine official dragged there for that purpose. No doubt they thought that the fortress would surrender honorably if this fact was known by the men at arm garrisoned there. Not a day later a message arrived by ship from the Venetians, saying that there would be no reinforcement and no rescue; the Turks allowed that messenger safe passage as well.

At a council of war, the commander asked his subordinates what should be done: with no emperor, he held their oaths absolved and was willing to surrender if they willed it. Not a single one advocated the position.

Instead, the surviving men at arms who could fight donned their armor and unfurled their flags. The relics were spread among the sick and injured for safekeeping. And, at dawn, the fortress gate was opened.

The commander and his men marched out resplendent, to the tune of a Greek march played by a few of the more able wounded on the ramparts. Weapons and armor glistening from a night of spit and polish, the defenders hurled themselves at the Turkish lines, ignoring the cannons and tens upon thousands of men arrayed against them.

They were slaughtered to a man, though the ferocious battle took many of the besiegers with it–far greater casualties than had been anticipated if the walls had been breached and the stronghold stormed. In retaliation, the men remaining within the fortress were slaughtered, with only the few women and children inside spared.

The icons were lost in the ensuing melee, and have never been recovered.

Excerpts From Nonexistent Books