The Gray Ship

Начало книги

A story begins with an idea, which then develops into a concept that eventually becomes the story. Like most of my work, this book began with conversations with my wife, Lynda. I have always been a Civil War buff, fascinated by its grandeur and its horror. The idea of a modern warship in the Civil War popped into my mind during one of those conversations. To pull that off, of course, I knew that the book would be based on the science fiction sub-genre of time travel. That’s the only way I could get a nuclear powered cruiser to 1861. I enjoyed The Final Countdown by Martin Caidan, the 1980 novel about the USS Nimitz getting caught in a time portal during a freak electric storm and time travelling to Pearl Harbor on the eve of the attack. Lynda and I talked for hours about the captain and his (or her) character. Ashley Patterson became part of the concept.

This is a work of fiction, and any similarity between a character and a living person is a coincidence. There are, however, historical figures in the book, including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and President Barack Obama. Although these are real people, the scenes in which they appear came out of my head.

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