Alternate history

I've always enjoyed alternate history stories.  These are an interesting take on "what might have been." I've been working on a small project that may evolve into something larger. The concept is in the genre of Weird West. One of the major points - the South won the Civil War and successfully seceded from the Union.

The victory of the Civil War is more of back-story to the project and not especially pertinent to the story. However I want to try and make it somewhat believable. This does mean a lot of research. You can say "The South won the Civil War" but there are so many factors that lead up to and happened that you have to research and modify. What lead up to the war? What happened during the war? Battles? Political intrigues? The list goes on.

An example - World War II. By all accounts the war began when Germany invaded Poland in 1937.   That is it in a nutshell. However there was a lot of buildup. Why did Germany invade Poland?  Why did Germany build up their army and Luftwaffe?  Answers go back to World War I and how that began and ended. Even then you have to back before the war to read about the tensions that caused the different alliances to have formed.

Most major events in history are like this.  Back on topic - this is a fun project, lots of research, lots of notes, and I'm having a lot of fun writing it. The first draft is almost done then I go back and start to edit it.  I've created a bunch of characters, situations, and I think it will be fun to see where it leads. I'll finish this and try to go back to some of my older projects that have been put onto the back burner.