I AM HOUSTON is now officially on submission to numbers of publishers. It's both exciting and strange, and we are keeping our fingers crossed.
I didn’t set out to write a novel about Sam Houston, especially about his life before Texas, but the story, once I learned of it, would not leave me in peace.
I will soon begin blogging about the lives of the characters populating this novel (all but a few were real people), paying particular attention to the Cherokee, who have been all but forgotten. Delving into their lives was like learning a foreign language, a language that I was very sad to see forgotten by our country. These persons gave so much to our freedoms and were not kindly repaid. Before going to Texas, Houston lived the despair and anguish of seeing what his tribe went through despite the promises. I believe it changed him for the better and helped form him so that, in later years, he would never vote against his conscious despite what his constituents wanted. Yes, he was a Southerner and bowed to the laws, but he was also different. He championed both Indians and slaves. He fought against the expansion of slavery, even to the point of losing his US Senate seat because of it. He also resigned from being Governor of Texas, instead of acknowledging the vote of the people to secede from the US before the Civil War, which he knew would be a blood bath.
My great aunt gave me the lineage of my ancestors including our pipe-smoking, non-roll ancestress, Sarah Elizabeth Mhoon. She told how the Cherokee assimilated with home, dress, and habit, but were still made to remove, though not all on the most infamous Trail of Tears. She told of Sally Hughes, a famous Cherokee who ran a successful river crossing and later joined in the lawsuits against Jackson, but was removed anyway, twice, and how she was at least paid money for holdings. This was a thing of great power to a wide-eyed young girl. Of course, it also sounded like utter nonsense, and I’m sorry I didn’t believe it, until I found evidence of Sam Houston’s tribe’s multiple moves and the assimilation of famous Cherokee leaders.
So, I'll tell their stories here, as I hope for a publisher for #IAMHOUSTON, a come of age, adventurous and romantic political tale of a man who, despite many losses, learned to stand up for a people and stand on his own two feet. I can definitely see it being a Netflix series that will both entertain and shed light on some forgotten, but very important, American people.
Hope you'll join me in wishing this book luck in the publishing world.
