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Interview #976: Talking With Tom: A Conversation Between Tom Doherty and Harriet McDougal, Entry #10
Tom Doherty
The first Robert Jordan novel Harriet published personally, we did as a joint venture under the imprint and the company Popham Press. Popham is her maiden name.
Harriet McDougal
Well, it was distributed by Ace.
Tom Doherty
It was distributed by it, yes. I was Publisher of Ace at the time.
Irene Gallo
What was the title of that book?
Harriet McDougal
His first published book is called The Fallon Blood . It’s a novel that covers the American Revolution in the South. At the time, I thought: “If I have to look at one more book about the Civil War, I’ll just throw up. I’ve had it with crinoline. There are too many. Margaret Mitchell did it once and for all. Let’s go for the Revolution instead.” So he did—the revolution in Charleston, South Carolina, in particular.
He followed that with The Fallon Pride , which covered the War of 1812, and The Fallon Legacy , which took the Fallons into the brand new Republic of Texas. At that point distribution dried up, otherwise he could have just gone on. He had a dream in which a man is holding Michael Fallon’s sword, standing next to the grave of the Fallon who has died in the Vietnam conflict, and I thought, oh, boy. Anyway, with those books he wanted to write the Southern sweep of American history, in the way that John Jakes wrote the Northern sweep. Taking people across the continent. And they were good.
Tom Doherty
They were.
Harriet McDougal
I would like to the point out something to the fans. Every single book Robert Jordan wrote begins with the wind. “The English wind blew the dust into Michael Fallon’s face on his Irish road.” That was the beginning of The Fallon Blood . The Fallon Pride begins, “The August winds scorched across Tripoli harbor.” There is always a wind. I think it was very conscious that he was breathing life into his characters. Breath and wind have the same root, I think, at least in Hebrew.
Irene Gallo
That’s wonderful.
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