History and the Series

When writing an alternate history series, a writer starts with some point in history or pre-history and then changes something, assuming that the first change will snowball into more changes in the future. It would not make much of a book or series if the change agent gets killed by a rhinoceros in the first chapter and never makes any changes. So, the change agent has to interact with history. Writers are all brilliant and alternate history writers are all meticulous scholars of history. Just ask any one of us. (And pay no attention to the errors, of course. We can hardly be held accountable for what further research reveals, now can we?) The problem comes up that some readers may not have spent hours and hours or even years and years researching a historical period before reading our oh-so-well-researched volumes of fiction. So, we writers shine our works to show the brilliance of our erudition, only to find our work has fallen flat because not only does the reader not know about this abstruse point that our geekiness has led us to highlight, but these readers really don’t care. Well, who can blame the reader? Writers are supposed to be writing these things for the readers, not for themselves. (Yeah, right. Vanity, thy name is writer.) Still, some point may be important or interesting for the reader as history interacts with the writing. So, below are a few explanations related to the Hidden Angels Series where readers have brought to my attention that they have no idea what is happening here or why it was included.

Notes on History

The Prophecy of the Popes

Names, Surnames, and Traditions

World Population