Old Stuff Found On My Desk

In clearing the cubic yards of paper from my office, I came across this intro page to a really old version of The Wife of Freedom.  (Back when the book was called The Whore of Freedom.) I don't know why I cut it, but I really wish I'd remembered it was there when I went to publish the book.

Excerpt from the Lectures of Jack Alwyn on the History of Acton:

When you think on it, the Acton Revolution was inevitable.  Our grievances merely set the time.  There's nothing the king or anyone could have done about it.  Revolution was set deep into our blood.  You need only look at hte population to know it.

Philip the Fourth could have made a difference, perhaps, when he invaded old Acteron.  He executed or enslaved everyone important in that civilization, and then he did the same to those who followed them.  Anyone with any sense of loyalty and order was gone.  And who was left?  Those who weren't fond of following orders.  Those who were least settled and civilized.  He thought he had depopulated the place, but he'd only cleared out the non-revolutionaries.

And then, with the religious wars up in Orlit and Disten, his son cleared the lands and sent us all the Plain and subborn followers of Owles and Tyrrelle and Minter.  People who refused to bow to anyone on the pain of any kind of punishment at all.  And that's the basis of most of our population right there.  The wild, suspicious and stubborn.  And not much Agrit blood in the bunch at all.  And you expect loyalty from us?

And over the years you've sent us all your exiled nobles and your troublesome peasants.  At least until you realized the value of their labor if sold elsewhere, and the value of our land if exploited properly.  But we weren't up for exploitation.  Not that it mattered.  As I said, we'd have rebelled no matter how you treated us.  It was in our nature.

And that's how it was with Mary, too, much as she tried to be otherwise....

I actually think this sets up the story quite well.  But maybe that's only because I know the story.  But I can't imagine why I cut it... unless I had written it separately and never put it in the main manuscript, and then forgot it.

(If it does get you interested in the story, here are the purchase links: Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Deisel, Kobo, and Smashwords.  Also, Amazon International: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan. Some of these stores still have it for free.  Also Smashwords has very large samples and nearly every ebook format.)


See you in the funny papers.