What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing the first chapter of The Iliad of Geronimo November 7, 2018 and completed my personal edit December 6, 2019 before sending the manuscript to the publisher. The last copy edit from the publisher with my approval was on June 17, 2021. The manuscript was dormant for nearly a year at the publisher, shut down while it waited for the pandemic to pass.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? My wife and I no longer have a dining room. I’m a retired Ph.D. physicist and did writing and consulting work from my upstairs office. After rupturing an Achilles tendon four years ago making it hard to climb stairs after surgery, my wife suggested that I temporarily set up my office in the dining room while I healed from surgery and rehab. We’ve both found we like the arrangement, so my office is now in what was the dining room. I work on 80” by 40” rosewood table as a desk. I use an iMac with a 28” screen and an iPad Pro to do my writing with MS Word I get from MS Office 365. The computers sit on an adjustable height VariDesk so I can also stand and work when I want. My desk sits against a wall with a triptych of charging cavalry by Frank McCarthy. I have hanging to the left of my desk an enlarged colorized version on canvas of a photo of Geronimo taken the day before he rode in Theodore Roosevelt’s Inaugural Parade in 1905 and on other walls are signed canvas prints of Geronimo and The Second Geronimo Campaign by Howard Terpning. Also on the left side of desk is an HP laser printer. A reading recliner sits behind me and on the wall to my right are windows looking out on the Pagan River and between the windows is a two-drawer wooden filing cabinet. The entire right end of my desk is covered by books I use most often for reference and around the other walls are bookshelves filled with reference books for my other novels and works of nonfiction.
Click on the below link to visit Frank McCarthy’s website.
Click on the below link to visit Howard Terpning view What Inspired Howard Terpning.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I put in six or seven hours writing and researching every day. I begin about 11:00 a.m. after a little exercise, answering e-mail and Facebook queries, and eating a big brunch. I stop writing between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. While I’m writing I usually have a cup of coffee or Japanese green tea near at hand. I write almost exclusively on the big iMac except when on travel when I use the iPad Pro, which sits on my desk next to the big iMac and I usually use it to play a little music off YouTube late in the day and to get my e-mail. About the only time I write in pen and paper is for taking notes that are used as reminders and supplements to what I’m doing on the big screen.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. Excerpt from The Iliad of Geronimo, pp.338-342
(This scene takes place on the Devils Spine in the mountains of Sonora, one of the most rugged spots in the world, in the middle of winter. I’ve inserted explanations for who people were and things in parenthesis).
One night, deep in the Season of the Ghost Face, I slept peacefully with She-gha (Geronimo’s senior wife). Fruitful Ih-tedda (Geronimo’s youngest wife, a Mescalero woman) already carried our first child in her belly, and custom said I must not lie with her again until this child was born and she was ready to make another child.
I lay, barely awake, thinking I might ask She-gha to join me in pleasure again to make her a child, but the mules and pack burros began braying just before dawn. Faster than the flash of a thunder arrow, I was in my moccasins and grabbing my rifle and coat before I ran out into the dark. In the eastern sky, the great milk río of stars still glowed in the biting cold air. Three men ran past me to the mule and burro corral. I climbed up on a rock and tried to look over the rancheria (camp) to see anyone else moving or anything that shouldn’t be there.
Sudden flames of fire followed by cracks of thunder came from a low, nearby ridge as bullets fired too high plunged into the ground close to us, some whining as they ricocheted off rocks.
My first impulse was to yell, “Look out for the horses!” I scanned in all directions as the firing into the camp increased, and the people ran from their wickiups, their eyes wide and trying to understand what was happening. It was obvious our first need was to get away. We could always get more horses.
I yelled, “Let the horses go, and run for the río! There are soldiers and scouts on both sides and above us. Women and children run for the río; men follow.” Some had made it to the path we used to get to the río but firing from scouts drove them back toward the camp.
They looked toward me. I yelled, “Scatter! Go as you can!” Many disappeared off the edge and down the bluff through the brush, following little trails the children had made while playing. Dodging scouts and soldiers pouring more and more bullets into the camp, they slipped to the edge of the freezing cold water and waded across the río.
Most of the women and children made it across the río and up to the top of a bluff on the other side by the time the sun drove away the fog and mists. We had to leave everything behind: horses, mules, and burros, food supplies, blankets and clothes, rawhide sacks, everything.
Stunned that the Blue Coat scouts had found us, I thought, How can this happen? How can they find us in the best place to hide in these mountains? Maybe Ussen doesn’t want us in Mexico. From the brush and juniper trees on the far bluff, we watched in anger and sadness during the day as the scouts burned everything we had.
At the time of shortest shadows, I met with Naiche (Geronimo’s Chief), Chihuahua, Nana, and most of the other war leaders. We had been lucky, considering the strength of the attackers, that there were only a few minor wounds among us. Our only choices were to run or surrender. If we ran, we would go hungry and be cold until we could take food and blankets from our caches. I guessed it would take at least half a moon to gather all we needed raiding, and we would have to raid the rest of the Seasons of the Ghost Face and Little Eagles to keep from starving. Even with that, what would keep the scouts from finding us anywhere? Perhaps we could move farther south.
The easier choice was to surrender and hope that Nant’an Lpah (General George Crook) would send us back to the reservation. I wanted us to keep going, but Naiche and Chihuahua had had enough of trying to live in the mountains, and I was ready to rest for a while. Naiche wanted to talk to the leader of the scouts who had attacked us and ask his surrender terms, believing that was the best choice.
He was chief. I didn’t argue. My soldier glasses showed it was Captain Crawford who was agent at San Carlos when we accepted Nant’an Lpah’s terms to return to the reservation three harvests earlier. Crawford had always been fair with us. Maybe now was the best time to surrender.
I called Lozen, a warrior woman of great Power and sister of Victorio. She had hard, strong eyes with a no-nonsense squint, and her face with its square jaw could easily be the face of a man, but the bulges under her shirt where her breasts lay told a different story. She was in Nana’s band, a Chihenne, but she carried no anger against me for what had happened to Loco’s people at Aliso Creek.
I said, “Ho, Lozen. Nana says he will accept me speaking with you. Naiche and his leaders ask that you cross back over the río and carry a message to Blue Coat Captain Crawford, whose scouts now burn our things in our camp. Say to Crawford that Naiche and his leaders want to meet with him.”
Her eyes never blinked as she stared at me and then nodded. “I go now?”
I said, “Go now. You speak good Spanish. Make the interpreters use that tongue. That way you have no misunderstanding of your words or theirs. I watch for you to return.”
She wrapped her blanket around her and over a shoulder the way our women wore them and then tied a white strip of cloth to a yucca stalk before working her way down the bluff to the río. I watched her and the scouts and soldiers on the far side with my soldier glasses. I saw several scouts watching her but making no threatening moves with their rifles. She pulled up and held her skirt between her knees and held the yucca stalk high as she forded the río and started up the other side.
After some banter back and forth with two or three of the scouts, who had surrounded her as she came out of the cold water, they pointed to the top of the bluff and then followed her up the trail to the top where Captain Crawford had his fire and was talking to his officers, packers, and scout sergeants.
I saw Crawford stand and acknowledge her when she appeared at the fire. Lozen spoke to Crawford through a chief of scouts named Horn. Horn spoke Apache, but his Spanish was much better. She told me later that she spoke Spanish, as I had told her, and that Crawford tried not to smile when he glanced at his officers and said he would meet with us at the río the next day. He had a pack frame mounted on a mule, and loaded it with food, knowing we would also eat the mule. Handing her the mule’s lead rope, he let her return to us with his answer.
Naiche and Chihuahua were glad that Crawford had agreed to sit in council with us. He knew we were all hungry, and they liked his generosity in sending us food. I didn’t like the thought of surrendering, but without great suffering by our people, there was no other way to survive the Ghost Face.
I hoped we wouldn’t be sorry for doing it. I wanted to die like Victorio, fighting to the last bullet and then stabbing myself in the heart. If I believed a vision from Ussen, that would never happen. That night, we ate all we could before lying together as families under pine needles and brush to stay warm, while the sentries kept a close eye on the direction of the bluffs across the río and our old camp.
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Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? The excerpt I’ve included was sad to write, but it gave me a sense of relief that the Geronimo war was coming to an end––the killing would come to an end, and the Apache women and children would no longer be running from Mexicans and Anglos all over the Sierra Madre. As the Apaches would say, “Life would be smooth again.” Geronimo had believed that he and the Apaches with him were camped where no one could find them, and that they were safe for a while from the awful day-after-day fight-run-hide-fight cycle.
But, even in the most rugged, inaccessible mountains in Sonora, they had been found and attacked. As a result, in the middle of winter, they had to leave behind everything to escape––clothes, animals, blankets, food–– everything except weapons.
The next night they had to sleep close together under pine needles in the freezing cold, and they had eaten that day only because Captain Crawford had sent them food. Geronimo knew it was the beginning of the end of their wild and free life. There was no place to hide in Mexico from the Blue Coat army and their Apache scouts.
The next day Crawford, who had let his scouts take what they wanted from Geronimo’s camp and burn the rest, was killed by Tarahumara Indians. They were led by Mexican paramilitary, looking for Apache scalps to make money. The mountains weren’t nearly as safe as Geronimo had thought.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. The rough draft deletions were few and far between in this excerpt. Most edits had to do with format errors. A photo from a draft page is attached.
I use a personal editor before I send a manuscript to a publisher. For this manuscript she indicated relatively few rewrites. In an earlier novel, Blood of the Devil, she made rewrite one of the chapters three times, but it got better each time.
Click on the below link to purchase Blood of the Devil from Amazon
Click on the below link to visit W. Michael Farmer’s website
Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html