Among other things, dealing with its so-called Manifest Destiny and that “trifling little scuffle” called the Civil War, the United States missed the First Industrial Revolution and was almost late for the Second. But it soon made up for lost time, by the early 20th century becoming the leading industrial nation in the world. Prior,
Birth of the Steampunks, New Orleans Style Read More »
On the pleasant, bird-chirping morning of 24 April 1862 alarm bells suddenly rang across the city of New Orleans, announcing the Old South was over and the New South had arrived quicker than a hummingbird’s eyeblink. Admiral David “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” Farragut and his armada had broken through the last lines of
Gilded-Age New Orleans Was Not “The Big Easy” Read More »
In my recently released historical novel, Soldier in Germany, I show a small contingent of U.S. airmen, stationed in 1972 West Germany, who have been given the singular and most wonderful task of helping to prepare the Western allies for a nuclear war with the only other (at the time) world superpower, the Soviet Union.
Doing the Cold-War Armageddon Shuffle, or It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again Read More »
Origin of a novel: AMERICAN WARRIOR American Warrior, my coming-of-age, David Copperfield-meets-Fight Club homage to one young man’s introduction to this unknowable journey we call life, began from two distinct encounters in my own life, fathoms of time and experience apart, and as amazing to me at the time as they were unforgettable. The first
Origins of Three Novels Read More »
Suppose you have a beta reader. (In my experience, all beta readers are invaluable. Some throw you straight fastballs, some curveballs, some changeups or sliders, some sweepers or screwballs. Doesn’t matter. They’re all priceless in their own way.) In this case, a reader who absorbs your latest tome and opines about the novel’s main female
Girl Next Door or Deadly Vixen? In Pursuit of My Femme Fatale Fox Read More »
Those we knew before, faded now from our present lives, but not our memory. Faces, personalities, living spirits still so vivid in our minds they could step before us in the next instant without causing a second glance, a single eyeblink: “Oh, there your are. You’ve been gone awhile, but now you’re back, as if
Ghost Faces of the Past Meeting Imagined Ones of the Present Read More »
The Cold War novels I’ve read (you know the ones I mean: with their Ivy League and Oxford spies and nondescript moles, with their black or tangerine or whatever color ops, and with that endless line of flirty girls with their red-painted lips and brass-and-leather-strapped suitcases slipping behind East German or Soviet lines to work
SOLDIER IN GERMANY: Sleeping With Armageddon in Cold War Europe Read More »