Some Familiar Faces

A tip o' the crash helmet to friend Do-Ming, who pointed me to the following image:

Two of these gents are characters in Dixie's Land or its related short
fiction. The third guy pre-dates all of the stories (but not the timeline)
Image by James Berridge, used without permission; I hope he doesn't mind

The artist in question, James Berridge, has restored and coloured a single portrait shot of every US president who served after the invention of the photographic process but before the development of colour photography. (That's all but the first five and the most recent fourteen, by my estimate.)

There are certainly legitimate objections that could be made to the process of updating old photos in this fashion, but when it's done well it seems to me it can be done while paying real attention to telling details (one that stands out is Coolidge's red hair and freckles, something I not known about before reading Berridge's post on PetaPixel). And in turn this can make it much easier for at least some of us to relate to these gentlemen as individuals and humans with something in common with all of us.

I thought I'd mention it here because of the connection with Dixie's Land. And, really, because since first seeing Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old, I have been a little bit fascinated with the whole process of restoration/colourization.

Productivity Update

Having abandoned an SF novel recently, I decided to return to the ethos of alternate history. And I had no trouble whatever working on it, nor did I have any shortage of ideas. It was nice to be able to look forward to the morning writing sessions again.

Flag of the Republic of Texas
(1836-1839) from Wikimedia Commons

And so I'm modestly pleased to announce that I have finished the third and final draft of The Bonny Blue Flag, the sequel to Dixie's Land. There is still a bit of formatting to do, but the writing is complete. Which means I'll be serializing the new(ish) novel* starting in September, shortly after I complete the serialization of High Risk.

I have also written an outline for a third novel set in this particular timeline. There is at least one other project in the queue ahead of that story, though, so it remains at the outline stage for now.

*I wrote the first draft of this novel over twenty years ago, but stopped working on it when Dixie's Land failed to sell.