SEAN BELA

HARRIET: Goddess of War

Speculative Fiction [Science Fantasy]

Cover is Tentative/Conceptual

2018-2019

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Coming in late 2018 or early 2019 is my first stand-alone novel which has a black protagonist and is tentatively titled "Harriet: Goddess of War." This is an alternate history novel that incorporates a time-traveling Harriet Tubman who is a former Lieutenant Commander of the US Navy - retired for a rare form of spontaneous narcolepsy that renders her unconscious after extreme exertion - a story arc that even my publisher admits is insane and might bomb.

 

It takes place simultaneously in the far future of Upstate New York and near the end of the Civil War of 1865 as the main character, a 28-year old fictitious Harriet Tubman, who now works as a secret agent and directly reports to Abraham Lincoln, must alter the course of history to avoid an even greater catastrophe for black people in America.

 

She and a small band of abolitionists, a teenage Haitian pirate, and a witch doctor, travel South to wreak havoc on unsuspecting slaveowners, free key captured black Union troops, destabilize the Confederate Army; led by General Hunter Kane [a psychopathic white supremacist] and help bring the war to an end before Abraham Lincoln is assassinated. Her only weapons are Betsy - a state of the art and monstrous 14-inch Ka-Bar combat knife from the future with all sorts of unorthodox uses and Tommy - an electrical whip that is much worse than Betsy.

 

There's a lot going on in this story and much of it won't be very pretty to read/is violent, which is just how I write and is the unfortunate reality of warfare, but I will respect the character of the greatest abolitionist heroine of all time in my story - no puppy punting.