I have spent this weekend putting together two Pinterest boards to provide a visual element for my newest book, Yankee Reconstructed. One of them contains some random images of various topics that arise in the unravelling of the story. Among them are political cartoons and pictures of early Ku Klux Klanners, a map of the Low Country, pictures of the Marsh Tackies being raised by two of the characters, some odd pieces of 1870's furniture from the Charleston Museum, and several views of the Old Sheldon Church whose ruins play a crucial part in the story.

The other board is set up to help you imagine what the characters might have looked like. Some of them, of course, are real people: Robert Smalls, Wade Hampton, Laura Towne, and Rufus Saxton all have their own portraits here. The other characters are fictional, but I found it useful to have concrete images in mind. So as I wrote, I looked for pictures of real people from the same time period -- people who looked the way I thought my characters might look. Their clothing and hairstyles are authentic. Some of them even bear a slight family resemblance to one another. They are as close as I can come to bringing my fictional characters to life.

I hope you'll enjoy taking a virtual trip into the setting of Yankee Reconstructed. Click on the button below to be whisked to the Pinterest boards.

 

Here are some crucial dates that may help readers make sense of the early Ku Klux Klan organization as it appears in “Yankee Reconstructed.”

 

Winter 1865 –1866:  The Ku Klux Klan was organized in Pulaski, TN, by a group of six  Confederate veterans. Its original intent was as a purely social organization or a secret fraternity. Its name was taken from the Greek word for “circle” combined with the Scottish idea of “clan.”  Its early members wore masks of various sorts to conceal their real identities.

 

Summer, 1867: They held a convention in Nashville. The presiding officer was Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was given the title of the “Grand Wizard.” This meeting defined the role of the organization as “The Invisible Empire of the South.”

 

1868: During the presidential election of 1868, Klan members unanimously supported the Democratic candidate, Horatio Seymour, who favored a return to white supremacy.  They, along with other such quasi-military organizations, began a campaign of violence to keep black Republicans from voting for Ulysses S. Grant. Their goals included the destruction of congressional acts of Reconstruction and the re-establishment of white supremacy.  Their methods included intimidation, beatings, lynchings, and murder. They failed to win the election, but they had effectively become the terrorist branch of the Democratic party.

1869: The organization began to spread throughout the southern states, attracting former Confederate soldiers, judges, cotton magnates, and others who wished for a return to the pre-war old South. Grant’s administration reacted by supporting the 15th Amendment, which gave the vote to black men in every state, and the First Reconstruction Act of 1867, which placed harsher restrictions on the South and closely regulated the formation of their new governments.

1870-1871: The Republican-dominated Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, which made it a crime for anyone to attempt to prevent a black man from registering to vote, casting his vote, holding an elected office, or serving on a jury.

 

1871: Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which gave the federal government the power to act against terrorist organizations. Under its provisions, several thousand Klansmen were arrested and tried. Although it proved to be hard to get convictions, the publicity effectively put a stop to many of the Klan activities and scared off those who did not want their membership revealed.

 

1872. Congress declared the KKK Act unconstitutional, but by then the organization was effectively destroyed.  Their goals remained unchanged, but they would find new ways to bring them about.

 

1915: William J. Simmons, a former Methodist preacher, organized a new Klan in Stone Mountain, Georgia as a patriotic, fraternal society. This new Klan directed its activity against not just blacks, but immigrants, Jews, and Roman Catholics.  It is this second organization that most people think of today, when they hear the term Ku Klux Klan.

 

If there's something all authors HATE to do, it's pleading for their readers to say something nice about a new book. But for many of us, how our most dedicated readers react makes the difference between success for a book and total failure.  So here's my yearly plea for my readers. If you read my books and enjoy them, please don't wait until you see me and then whisper in my ear that you LOVED the book.  That may make me feel good for a second or two, but it's not helpful.  Authors -- and particularly independent, self-publishing authors like me --  need three things from you:

1. Buy the book. Don't wait for it to show up for free (it won't!) or for the paper version to end up in a used book store. Buy the book. It doesn't matter whether you get the paper version or the electronic version. My profit is about the same (and don't ask how unfair that is!)  Readers need to understand that indie authors do not get an advance, and they don't have publishers who are paying the bills.  When I write a book, everything comes out of my own pocket -- 18 months of work, travel expenses to do research, registering with the Library of Congress, registering the copyright, paying the editor, hiring a cover designer, paying the layout and formatting costs, and purchasing copies to send to big-name reviewers and book contests.  And then I wait to see whether my eventual royalty checks will come close to covering the initial costs. And royalties can be skimpy in some cases. If CreateSpace sells a copy of my book to a brick and mortar bookstore, and the store then sells it to their customer, I get a royalty check of about $0.18. (Yes, that's eighteen cents.) I've got to sell a lot of books at that rate.  So buy the book.  It'll last at least as long as that double latte from Starbucks and stay with you for a lot longer.

2.. Tell the people you know about the book. Tell them that you're reading it -- that you're enjoying it -- that you're anxious for the next one to come out. Mention it on Facebook and Twitter and anyplace else you hang out. Name recognition is an author's life-blood.   How many times do you say things like this to people you know?  "Had a great sandwich at that new shop the other day."  "Have you ever tried . . ." "The department store has a good sale going on." "The grocery store just stocked my favorite brand."  "Check out the new movie theater."  It's no harder to say, "I just read a good book."

3. And then, WRITE A REVIEW! I'm not asking for a book report like the ones you had to do in school. Amazon only requires 20 words or more.  Short, pithy comments are great.  And you don't have to give the book five stars, either.  In fact, when I see a book that has received nothing but five-star ratings, I am immediately suspicious. That usually means that the author has paid a company to put up a bunch of fake reviews from people who write the reviews for a living.  I won't do that.  I'd rather have honest ratings of three or four stars than fake ones. Not everyone likes the same kinds of books. So it's OK to say you didn't like the way the story ended, or you're not much into history, or you wish  the book had more detail about . . ." 

Study after study has proved that the more reviews a book gets, the more copies it sells.  Readers are sometimes herd animals. We all want to read the books that everybody else is reading.  That's what Best Seller lists are all about. So if a potential book buyer goes to Amazon and looks up my latest book, he's almost certain to look to see how the reviews are. (Come on. I do this when I'm ordering almost anything on-line. I'm not going to order a pair of shoes that no one else has bought!) Even a really bad review makes other people want to read!

Thank you.