PartOne_Time

"Debut novelist Sedmak has written a grandiose saga reminiscent of those sprawling Hollywood dramas set in America's frontier lands in the 19th century...

...recreations of 19th century America are evocative and have a ring of authenticity and once the novel grabs you it holds the attention until the end, leaving the reader wanting more (which will come in part two)."

Excerpt from the unabridged review of HEARTLAND On the Side of Angels by Troy Lennon at The Daily Telegraph, 11.08.11.

HEARTLAND readers tell me that they really feel like they are right there with the characters.

It is mandatory that after months and years of researching an era and creating a world that very few if any people left alive on the planet can remember, that the reader can enter into it and feel not only part of it, but that it rings true for them. That is the point of the historical novel.

Back in the day, nobody whips out their cell phone to warn their beloved that danger is on the way; no one alerts their favourite social media network that their world is about to go to hell in a hand basket. Nobody googles anything.

Back in the day, people do everything the long way. Hard to imagine now, isn't it? The historical novelist imagines it for you. Brings it to life in the context of fiction, so you can have your old-time adventure and romance and then text a friend about it.

Back in the day, people are inventive, adaptive, not old-fashioned or devoid of know-how or ideas. In fact, the era in which The Legends is set, the Gilded Age, is one of the most inventive periods in all of history. But everything in history is connected; there is no one era that could exist without the milennia that came before it.

Human beings are on a journey through time. Whether we study the past to make sense of this journey, or image the future in an effort to steer our way, it is our story, our very own narrative. It doesn't get any more fascinating than this.

There is no room or excuse any longer for isolationist thinking on this journey. Once, maybe. But time and ingenuity has brought us to this point, and we know each other so well that there is absolutely no escaping the bonds we share. With all living things. We are a planet of billions and billions of creatures, both human and animal, all connected to time and the journey.

And we don't all feel at peace in this familiarity. We don't like our sameness and we don't like our differences. We just don't like each other much at all. Get back to where you came from and take your alien ways with you... that's how we feel about each other. The fact is, there is no 'where you came from' any longer. We are all from 'the world, the earth, the milky way, the universe'. Do you remember writing that as your address as a child?

Everyone needs to do what they can to keep this earth spinning smoothly through time and space. 

Today, for me, the world feels like it's going to hell in a hand basket. And no amount of technological wizzardry is going to make me feel any better. Is that why I write historical fiction, to escape the present and the way of the future? Or am I hoping that somewhere in my imagination I can re-route history away from despair and disaffection to the hope that it will all work out tomorrow, the next day, in the end?