This is how it all started, with a post from Eric Flint to the “Authors” conference in Baen’s Bar. This was before there was such a thing as a “1632 Tech Manual” conference, and the proposed title was “Fire in the Hole” (later changed to 1632). Topic: Fire in the Hole (1 of 353), Read 501 times Conf: Authors From: Eric Flint Date: Tuesday, March 02, 1999 09:00 AM I’m posting a new topic in a shameless bid to enlist aid and assistance in my next book. Y’all understand this is a serious and solemn project and there’ll be none of the usual badinage, disrespect, wild-eyed-opinion-spouting, surly remarks and the other stuff that routinely transpires in the Bar. (Yeah, sure. And pigs will fly.) OK, here’s the problem. The novel I’m starting on, Fire in the Hole, requires a wide range of knowledge to write properly. Some of that I have (the history of the period, for instance). Some I can get, from friends. But some of it requires me to scramble like a monkey. Any help I can get will be appreciated. The setting of the novel is as follows: For reasons I won’t go into here (read the book when it comes out, heh heh), a small town in West Virginia finds itself transposed in time and place into Germany in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The time is spring/summer of l630 AD. The place is Thuringia, in central Germany. The Americans are in the middle of one of history’s worst wars and they have to survive (and hopefully, prosper). In order to do that, they have the resources available to them which would be in any small town in the area. I’m going to be leaving in three days to spend some time there (I used to live in the area — near Fairmont and Morgantown — but it was twenty years ago; things change).…