Naughty Victorian sex could be fun to research.
The research experience is a big part of the decision, and I could see lots of happy times ahead working on that book.
I’m feeling like chopped liver, so I feel the need to point out that there was lots o’ fightin’ and stuff in the Comanche story.
And naughty Comanche sex!
(You’re never chopped liver to me, Cranky.)
No chopped liver 'round here.
I actually like the Comanche story, but I’m wondering how much info is available. There would have to be some extensive diaries and such.
Ooh! Ooh!
Do one on the French and Indian War.
We hardly ever get to hear anything about that little chapter of American history. The only example I know of is Last of the Mohicans.
How about the American Hare Krishna schools? Okay, okay, I saw it on 20/20 or some other investigative reports show, but it was really interesting (and, of course, horrifying), especially with all the abusive priests getting headlines lately. It’s nice to know child molesters come in all shapes, sizes, and positions of power in various religions.
Greg, I really liked the historical/true crime combination in Lay This Body Down. If you could find something else like that, I think it’d be another winner.
As fond of the other suggestions, including my own, as I may be, I think I’m going to go with DavidB. True crime is always a winner and your flair with history will serve you well again. And when a critic suggests it, you may want to listen. 
But that French and Indian War idea bears looking into. You have George Washington triggering not just the F&I War but the whole Seven Years War because he’s 22, leading a bunch of drunken frontiersmen, and can’t read French very well. Then he builds a fort in a really stupid place and is forced to surrender it! An auspicious beginning for a brilliant military career. :rolleyes:
Okay, that has a LOT of potential for a book. The father of our country, through his incompetence, starts both a local war and a European war. Work Sally Fairfax in for the sex and you become the next David McCollough.
I like so many of these ideas, but here’s the problem that I keep encountering: I’ve written one book in which I relied exclusively on documents (court records, old newspaper coverage, government records) because no one was alive who remembered the incident. And then I wrote another book about an incident in 1967 in which I spent a couple years interviewing real live human beings.
I greatly preferred the latter. For one thing, there’s more potential for digging up good info. You can always keep prying and asking more questions with live subjects. With records, you’re stuck with whatever still exists. And talking to people is more fun than sitting in a room by myself with a bunch of paper.
So I’m leaning more towards recent subjects, even though so many of these older ones are really cool ideas.
Anybody know a good military story that hasn’t been done yet?
“I’ve written one book in which I relied exclusively on documents (court records, old newspaper coverage, government records) because no one was alive who remembered the incident. And then I wrote another book about an incident in 1967 in which I spent a couple years interviewing real live human beings.
I greatly preferred the latter . . . With records, you’re stuck with whatever still exists. And talking to people is more fun than sitting in a room by myself with a bunch of paper.”
—Funny, I feel just the opposite. I love digging through dusty old clippings folders, reading newspaper articles and forms that no one has looked at in 50 years. Now, real, live people I find to be a pain. You have to walk on eggshells, beg for interviews, coddle them along. And someone hugely important always turns up AFTER the book’s done!
The book I’m working on now is about someone who died in 1959, so I talked to a lot of people who knew her. Exhausting! I am looking forward to diving back in time for the next project and only dealing with DEAD people.
I know what you mean, Eve, and I don’t disagree. I did enjoy the paper research on that book, for exactly the reason you describe – the thrill of holding those bits of history in my own hands and piecing together the puzzle.
I’m certainly not ruling out the idea of doing that again, but I do love sitting down with a subject and letting him tell me about that one day he’ll never forget.
It’s already a book. I have it around here somewhere, but the title and author escape me at the moment. Until your description, though, I assumed it was 100% fiction.
I found it. It’s Emmelineby Judith Rossner.
How about Henry Berry Lowry and the Lumbee (Croatoan) Indian ‘War’ during the civil war era. One book (that I know of) has been written on this: To Die Game : The Story of the Lowry Band, Indian Guerrillas of Reconstruction by William McKee Evans. This book reads more like a textbook, but it’s still pretty good (I have a copy of this SOMEWHERE).
HB Lowry at one time had one of the largest bounties on his head in the US. His sory kind of reads like a ‘Robin Hood’ type of story