I Need Test Readers For a New Novel : "The Last Republic"
The Win Machine did well, I need your help for a second book
My first Novel, The Win Machine is doing well, with 1,072 copies sold on Amazon and 1012 on Audible.
A few people asked for a sequel, but there aren’t many places to go with it.
But readers wanted more.
I’m not really a writer, but when fans asked for it, I decided to write the kind book I wanted to read, so I wrote Warlock as a short story to see if I could write fiction and test to see if anyone would want to read it. This was the Crawl Phase.
The Win Machine was an attempt at a novel that follows the POV of one character, a hedge fund manager with a Magic-8 Ball Computer that gives him wishes that he didn’t really want. This was the Walk Phase.
Now it’s time for the Run Phase. Can I write a multi-character point-of-view book that is the kind of novel I want to read - namely Red Storm Rising, but I’m also a big fan of Harry Turtledove’s alternate history of The Civil War The Guns of The South.
What if I could do both?
Mormon pioneers arrived in Utah on July 24, 1847 and applied for statehood a few years later. They petitioned for statehood with borders that encompassed modern day Utah, Nevada and some of Arizona, California Colorado, Oregon, Wyoming and New Mexico.
But what if the Mormons turned this land of Deseret into its own country? What would it look like in 2025? How would the US deal with a theocratic republic smack in the middle of the western US? Who would be their allies? Who would be their enemies? What kind of culture would they have? When did the first McDonalds open? Would the Lakers and Jazz basketball teams still exist?
This could be the start of a multi-book technothriller series of a war between Deseret and the United States.
So I started building the world, with everything from a constitution, to a list of presidents (Mitt Romney was #15), to stats on private firearms ownership, to how their military was structured.
I started writing two months ago, and I want to make sure I’m on the right track. So I’m looking for 20 test readers who can take a look at the first 11 chapters and tell me if the novel is working.
If you’re a lawyer, I really need you to help me with a courtroom scene, so you need to imagine what legal proceedings might be like in the country, and I’ve placed a copy of the Deseret Constitution below.
I’ve also placed a copy of the timeline from 1849 to 2023 here:
UPDATE: I have all of the test readers I need. Thank you to everyone!
As a Californian, you should check out some of Californias "statehood" dreams. One of the initial proposals pushed the CA border up past Utah and basically claimed the entire Southwest. Since they happen (I assume) in similar time frames it might shift the borders. I'm also curious how it would have impacted migration routes like the Oregon trail... you can guess when I went to school lolz.
You might want to rethink the title. Book with such title already exists. It was written by the infamous Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun) and published in 1997.