That's a pretty good overview of Franklin and his work.
He bases most of his stuff in a reality, and takes it from there. For example, the "Mad Mick" is based on one of his acquaintances, and the Mad Mick's compound is an actual place, about 8 miles or so from here, that was once a coal mine maintenance depot before the mining industry got collapsed by the Wokies.
"The Borrowed World" is set in "The Valley", which is an actual place called Elk Garden and Green Valley. He takes some liberties with actual geography, but in the main I can recognize landmarks and the area from personal knowledge of that area. The character of Hugh lives alone in a trailer hidden in the woods way up above The Valley on the side of Clinch Mountain.
He takes that grounding in reality, that foundation, and extrapolates via human nature into rip-roaring tales. Franklin uses his experience of people in this area, and it's history of preparedness and refusal to rely on an unreliable government for simple survival basics, and shows how it's done here in the hills.
His "crossover" between The Borrowed World and the Mad Mick series was well received, but he told me that it was such a headache that he would likely never do it again. Meshing the differing agendas and lifestyles between the two series was a lot of work, perhaps more than was necessary, to merge the two into a single narrative.
Still, his books taken as a whole give one a good insight into the prepper mindset, and what's more, the mindset of those who neglected to prepare and find themselves in extremis after a collapse. It's good insight into human nature, psychology, and social interactions after a fall, and the dynamics between the two very different sets of people - preppers and not-preppers.
Just as in the real world, people die. Sometimes good people who die from the stupidity of others. It's not a predictable thing. I used to joke with him about when he was going to kill off Hugh, but that character became surprisingly popular among his fan base, and so may live on to fight another day. He's said that in an upcoming book, he's going to expand on the background of Hugh, which is something I look forward to, being as how that character was inspired by me. It'll be interesting to see the direction he takes it in.
05-25-2023, 05:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-25-2023, 06:03 PM by Ninurta.)
(05-25-2023, 09:21 AM)Bally002 Wrote: This was great. I'll certainly look into more of Horton's vids and check out his books. Never heard of the man but then I'm downunder.
Kind regards,
Bally)
His dad and my mom went to high school together. His family settled on Horton's Ridge, which is the ridge directly west on my house - when I step outside and look west, I'm staring directly at the broad side of Horton's Ridge. My family cemetery is on the crest of that ridge, about 1100 meters from where I sit right now, and my ma was raised in a house about 2/3 of the way up a holler in the ridge, the mouth of which opens right here at my current house, just across the road.
When I moved back home, his dad was the first person I went to see. He was an instructor at a local community college at the time, and dabbled in local politics, so he had a good finger on the pulse of the area such that I could get good advice and pointers from him on which way to proceed after all the changes that a 30 year absence engendered.
Franklin was also a student at Virginia Intermont College during the time I got kicked out of that stalwart institution. There was a lot of drinking and brainstorming that went on in his dorm room prior to that expulsion. We worked together at a local radio station as announcers (WLRV) many moons ago, in the early 1980's.
It's not surprising that you've never heard of him before, being half way around the world and all. His story is a story of a "local boy who did good", and I can't quite wrap my head around it myself - he's always been, and will likely always be, Franklin to me, rather than Horton the Author.
