TTAH = Time Travel Alternate History. I had a great book germinating for years about a guy like me who accidentally winds up 160+ years ago and has all kinds of historically plausible adventure romance. But I allowed my very busy life to stymie production, and I now wonder if that's in part because I never truly bought in to the TTAH device. What I really wanted to do was tell a story about our roots (some of ours), and translate modern concerns into Gold Rush California, rather than write something that would loosely be classified as science fiction.
Now I've recast the tale into historical fiction (HF) and it's become a lot more interesting to me. I can go into the things I really wanted to go into without having to worry about marketability. Of course, if it's good, who cares, and if it's not, no one cares. But intertwining my plots and characters with real events is actually more fun than extrapolating new events from my character's history-changing misadventures. Funny, that.
No worries, I have plenty of AH ideas, and I love the genre and hope to find more of it to read. But this shift I've undergone is interesting, especially as it manifests concerns I wasn't conscious of. I'm wondering if this resonates.
Now I've recast the tale into historical fiction (HF) and it's become a lot more interesting to me. I can go into the things I really wanted to go into without having to worry about marketability. Of course, if it's good, who cares, and if it's not, no one cares. But intertwining my plots and characters with real events is actually more fun than extrapolating new events from my character's history-changing misadventures. Funny, that.
No worries, I have plenty of AH ideas, and I love the genre and hope to find more of it to read. But this shift I've undergone is interesting, especially as it manifests concerns I wasn't conscious of. I'm wondering if this resonates.