Here is an article from the Knoxville News-Sentinel about one of my first events for my new novel. Carol did a nice job!
Video Book Trailer for “The Good King, A Medieval Thriller”
4,149 requests for The Good King in our Goodreads giveaway! I’m sending out 20 free copies to the winners for review this week. Discounts are still available until September 14, publication date! (15% discount code PREORDER2023): https://www.blackrosewriting.com/thrillers/thegoodking
The Good King will be released in September, and you can preorder now!
Use the promo code: PREORDER2023 to receive a 15% discount from the publisher, Black Rose Writing: https://www.blackrosewriting.com/thrillers/thegoodking
THE GOOD KING is a history-based take on the story of Duke Václav I of Bohemia, the character in the Christmas hymn “Good King Wenceslas.”
Early reviews for “The Good King”
I’ve been haunted by this hymn since I first heard it in the First Presbyterian Church in my hometown of Stuart, Florida. The concept of snow “deep and crisp and even” was enthralling and unimaginable. So, I began researching, and found his life story inspirational, but tragic. And I read that his successor, Boleslav I, was wracked with guilt over his actions
After much research, I crafted a story that incorporated many elements of the various legends and sketchy histories of a pagan land in the Dark Ages, and in the throes of becoming Christianized. It’s not an idealized story, and there are some harsh elements in it.
With the help of content reviewers in America, the UK, and in the Czech Republic, and the professional editorial review by Mary Leidig, my wife of 33 years, my manuscript was accepted by Black Rose Writing for publishing in September of 2023. A book tour is planned later this year, and I hope to have some early reviews by the date of publication. The kickoff opening of my book tours will be hosted at Union Avenue Books, near Market Square in Knoxville, TN.
I will post the cover when it is finalized, and will send out Advance Review Copies to some readers. Let me know if you would like one!
“I Jonathan” continues to sell well at each signing event at the Historic Charleston Foundation’s Museum Shop and at the Historic Charleston Market. “I Jonathan” is selling record numbers of books for events of this type, says the manager of the Foundation booth at the Market.
We leave signed copies with the stores to sell after our events.
Signing books at the Historic Charleston Market is always fun. They hosted us for four events in 2022.
I love to interact with customers. Talking with people at the Historic Charleston Market reminds me of when I worked in my store, “Old City Mercantile.”
As part of the Historic Charleston Foundation’s 75th Anniversary, I was hosted at their Museum Shop, and at the Historic Charleston Market. I enjoyed meeting all who came by, and signing copies of “I Jonathan,” which is available at those locations in Downtown Charleston’s Historic District, and at Bert’s Market on Folly Beach!
Coming to Charleston
In August or 2021 “I Jonathan” was promoted through a virtual book tour service, “Reading Addiction Book Tours,” or RABT. During this tour “Avid Reader Blogspot” had me submit answers to a Q&A form. Here is the interview:
Interview with George Scott:
Q - For those interested in exploring the subject or theme of your book, where should they start?
“I Jonathan” is literary historical fiction. It examines themes of personal responsibility and growth, and striving to understand right versus wrong. This is my attempt to look at America’s most defining period of history and ask, “How could this happen?”
“I Jonathan” is set during the American Civil War and explores love, loyalty, honor, duty, and relationships. It deals with personal tragedy and survival, as well as transcendence beyond the current day’s challenges.
I explore motivations of different levels of society, tactics of blockade runners and their pursuers, descriptions of strategic battles, technologies, and elements of social change in a great Southern city responding to the war its own actions have largely caused.
It is also a study, my take, of how a culture that calls itself “Christian” and considers itself honorable can war against its sister states to preserve slavery. That’s pretty heavy.
Q - How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?
My junior high school class stood when “Dixie” was played before our football games. When the schools were integrated that practice was stopped, but I was raised a Southerner who was taught in school that the war was about “states’ rights” and that it was primarily a war of aggression by the North. As I grew up and read more, I saw this was mostly not true.
My family toured some of the Civil War battle sites when I was a child, and I was fascinated by military tactics and strategies. I particularly remember as a 7-year-old the sight of the crater at the battlefield near Petersburg.
I had two ancestors who served the Confederacy and one in the Union cavalry, so I’ve always had some interest in how my family reconciled their differences enough to marry each other, to eventually produce me.
On a visit to Charleston on a vacation in 2000 my wife and I toured Fort Sumter, and I was very impressed to hear how the Southern defending troops survived Federal bombardment for years. That led me to read more about Charleston’s war, which was very different from the major battlefields in Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. I had not heard this history and knew I could frame a coming-of-age story around real events.
Q - What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
I wanted to explore how someone from outside of the Southern society would view the antebellum culture and what his reactions might be. So, I created Jonathan. To do this I had to take myself out of my own view and look at the South anew.
The main character is a young and naïve Bostonian, suddenly impoverished, who has dropped into Charleston, South Carolina, just as that stable world is about to collapse.
Like a volcanic island that renews itself after an explosion that wipes it clean of life, we see how Jonathan develops his thoughts on slavery, commerce, loyalty to nation and friends, and his thoughts on war itself.
Q - Anything you would like to say to your readers and fans?
I invite readers to come to the story with an open mind. It is not just a military review, a romance, a civil rights treatise, an adventure, nor a study of slavery and voodoo, though it does contain elements of each of these.
Explore each of the elements of the novel as they appear, without assumption, and I think you will see many relatable themes.
Q - What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
I loved the research, finding interesting details that I worked into the story. This includes elements of technology of that period related to lighting, transportation, communication, and entertainment and music of the period. A few actual people and events are in the story that Jonathan could have met in Boston, Paris or Charleston, or learned of through newspapers or word of mouth.
I created characters that interested me, many adapted from traits of people I know. There’s an inventor, a spy, musicians, slaves, free blacks, a minister and a “root doctor.” There are some people you would expect in a novel of the period, but I’ve made them deeper than stock characters you might see in movies. I hope the reader will believe they have souls.
There’s humor in the story, though it is not a comedy. Some of this results from Jonathan finding himself in unexpected situations.
Q - Can you tell us a little bit about your next books or what you have planned for the future?
I have more books planned than I can ever write. One involves early legal work in my home town, as told me by my father and sister. Another is my grandfather’s experience as a homesteading pioneer in Florida and his service in the First World War. I have a concept for a series of YA books based on a fantasy voyage up the Intercoastal Waterway in a sailboat.
The book I’m currently writing is a new take on the story of St. Wenceslas and Bohemia of the period around 1000 AD. I’m elbow deep in academic research on the Czechs and the tensions between the Slavic pagan religions and the two Christian traditions.
I’m working to develop realistic characters that bear on the story that involves Wenceslas but is primarily about another character from his life and his development.
Q - How long have you been writing?
I wrote my first stories beyond school when I was about 13. I wrote several short stories, and won an award when I was 15. Since then, I have been involved in other work including my current video production business. In 2004 I wrote a memoir, “Growing Up In Eden,” about my childhood in an idyllic South Florida town. My visit to Charleston in 2000 led me to begin the research for “I Jonathan,” when I decided I would write for the rest of my life.
Q - Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in “I Jonathan?”
The main character is an 18-year-old returning from Europe for his father’s funeral in Boston. His ship is delayed by storm, and he lands in Charleston where he is shattered to learn his intended wife has left him. He’s educated but naïve, unskilled, friendless and suddenly broke.
Jonathan’s love interest is Isabella, another Northern expatriate, from Chicago. She has been abandoned by her husband and is working as a servant to a wealthy plantation class family.
Jacob Johnson is a free Black, literate and ambitious, with hopes for his family’s future as he buys them from slavery. He owns an active masonry business in Charleston. His kindness toward Jonathan helps him make his way in the strange city.
Tyrone is a red-headed Scots-Irish merchant dealing in guano, carpets, wines, rice … whatever he thinks can sell to turn a profit. He hires Jonathan as a delivery cart driver.
Sergeant Kerry is an Irish policeman who becomes indebted to Jonathan.
Charles is of the plantation class, a third son, and is an engineer and inventor. He and Jonathan have several adventures together, including running the blockade of Federal ships.
Abe is a musician and confidant of Jonathan. He is of the Charleston Jewish community and has his own personal romantic strife.
Martin and Jenny are engaged lovers, also of the ruling class. He is a Citadel cadet called to war. She does volunteer work with a military doctor. Jonathan unexpectedly becomes bound up in their lives.
Zeke is a slave whose owner has left him master of a mountain estate for the war’s duration. He gives Jonathan advice, which frees him from his anguish.
Other characters include “Rhythm Tommy,” the spy Mrs. Trent, three cadets sworn to a blood oath – William, Louis and Kit. There is the Reverend Poste, Agur the witch doctor, Private Denis, Aunt Peggy and her poodle Pierre, a Mexican named Ricardo, and other sailors, slaves, soldiers, and citizens whose lives were bound up in and about the city that sparked the American Civil War.
Q - If you could spend the day with one of the characters from “I Jonathan” who would it be? Please tell us why you chose this particular character, where you would go and what you would do.
Charles is an educated and creative thinker. He tinkers in mechanics and chemistry, and has lively and unorthodox political views. He loves his city but will not go to war. He can see where the cards will fall and prepares to help his community recover when the war is over.
Charles and I could tour Charleston and talk about the cotton steam press, plans for the new train station, the public lighting system, the shifting political scene, and the brighter future of the doomed city.
We might stop in at Murphy’s Tavern for a dram, especially if Abe is at the piano. You can always find lively conversation at Murphy’s.
Years of research and study gave me a timeline of events for Charleston during the Civil War. With this as a canvas and background I created characters who grow and develop, with hopes both realized and shattered, and of a society forced to change.
In this 21st century, our America is still living the change.
About the Author
George WB Scott is an East Tennessee video producer and videographer with a life-long interest in the causes and events of the Civil War. His years of research on this topic are the basis of a story of Jonathan's personal journey through one of the most interesting and important regions of the South. Scott was born in Stuart, Florida, and is a cum laude graduate of Appalachian State University. He lives with his wife Mary Leidig in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Other Books by Author: "Growing Up In Eden"
Where Souls Heal
Since our early release of the novel, we have received many good reviews. Here is a sample of some of them:
From MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW: "Critique: A deftly crafted, inherently engaging, and entertainingly riveting novel that clearly showcases author George W. B. Scott's impressive flair for originality combined with an informative attention to historical detail, "I Jonathan, A Charleston Tale of the Rebellion" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to community library Historical Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "I Jonathan, A Charleston Tale of the Rebellion" is also readily available in a digital book format "
From GOODREADS:
Stanley McShane’s Reviews: This is a magnificent civil war saga…I was particularly intrigued by the blockade running enterprise of some of the traders.
The relationships of the inhabitants and their struggles are a rewarding infusion of knowledge. The tale is an immersion into another time and place.
Whispering Stories Book Reviews: I am grateful to George W.B. Scott who has expertly used his protagonist, Jonathan Vander, to give us a close up story of the effects of the war on Charleston, its surroundings and their people.
The book is easy to read and easy to follow…I can thoroughly recommend I Jonathan which will entertain and educate. I have awarded five stars.
Rita: It was a pleasure to read. It is hard to believe this is his first novel. It was well researched and written. His characters felt real. You could feel their emotions.
Scott J. Pearson: This story concretizes the intricacies of the American South in detailing the complex social relations. Scott shows his literary skill in portraying these stories’ nuance.
More people should read tales like this – stories combining the people and the politics – to understand American history…I recommend this novel for those who seek to understand the American South. It ties together history, religion, love relationships, race, and the human condition.
Jean: I found so many fascinating points of history that I did not know before - well researched for the South & the North.....Written in a very interesting way!!!
From AMAZON:
Sam Sattler: Bottom Line: The beauty of I Jonathan is in the evolution of the way its main character sees the fatal mistake that the South has made.
The reader gets a sense of what it may have been like in one of the South’s major cities and ports as the war progressed. If you are interested in historical fiction of this period, do take a look at the haunting I Jonathan.
Lilyana: I Jonathan is a well-researched interesting story. His inner dialogue is quite compelling,..I found I didn't want to put it down I was so wrapped up in it.
Homer Fisher: I Jonathan is a masterful and thoroughly researched accounting of the impact of the Civil War upon the City of Charleston, South Carolina. George WB Scott's depiction of events throughout the War and their impact upon the people and the culture is realistic, moving and informative.
I cannot overstate my gratitude to Mr. Scott for providing a great reading experience.
“Verified Purchase”: I found I Jonathan an easy read and hard to put down. The author's extensive research of the historical locations, use of time period language and detail almost made me feel at times I was there witnessing the action and adventures of Jonathan. I would highly recommend this novel to readers who enjoy historical fiction.
From FACEBOOK:
David Hunter: George Scott has written an epic novel of historical fiction. Aside from the theme of this book that captivated me, it is a treasure chest of historical detail.
Scott's eye for detail is amazing and much of his research is about real people and places - including parts of Scott's own family history, seen from a personal point of view -- and his research was phenomenal. Fans of the Civil War will find Jonathan's story intriguing and entertaining. It is history brought to life.
Jonathan shared a “celebration” with an unexpected host, then found himself in a most unusual situation.
Sharing the Front Page with Dolly!
Read Reviews on GoodReads!
In 2022 Readers’ Favorite Book Reviews awarded “I Jonathan” Five Stars
Buy “I Jonathan” here
August 27, 2020
Itasca Books has my book up and for sale in its online bookstore.
Follow this link to order:
https://itascabooks.com/i-jonathan-a-charleston-tale-of-the-rebellion/
Remember to tell the person who suggested the book that you have bought it, and use the promo code for a discount!
Thanks, and if you like the book, please post a review on GoodReads, Amazon, and your other favorite sites.
-George WB Scott
