I've got several irons in the writing fire, so stay tuned for news.
In the meantime, I want to share some of the books I've read recently. One of my teaching mantras is: "If you want to be a writer, then you'd better be a reader." Fortunately, as a writing instructor I found that my students were avid readers and well-versed in their genre. Mostly. Although I write fiction, I've always read non-fiction for inspiration and to better appreciate the world we live in.
What drew me to In the Garden of Beasts were that the author, Eric Larsen, is one of my favorite writers, having penned The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake, and the story covers a period of history that I especially enjoy studying, the years leading to World War Two. The narrative is told through William L. Dodd, the American ambassador to Germany. We learn about the personal machinations inside the US State Department, often driven by petty concerns, the Dodd family dynamics, how his very social daughter cultivated dalliances with social climbers of various nationalities to include a Gestapo officer and a Soviet spy, and how Hitler and the Nazis seized power through terror and murder. The city of Berlin is a character in itself: cosmopolitan, modern, splendid, and it pained me knowing that this remarkable place would be blasted to apocalyptic ruin.
In this country, one of the driving references in our culture is the American Revolution. Like most of you, I'm aware of the events in broad strokes and what hooked me to read this book was the title: Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution by H.W. Brands. Violent revolutions are in fact civil wars, pitting the new against the status quo. In our history, we see our revolution as a fight against the Redcoats when there was a large contingent of colonists who felt they would be better off as subjects of the British Crown. This narrative was primarily a character study, mostly about George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, although with plenty of other personalities given time on center stage. My takeaways: George Washington deserves his accolades as father of this country. The sacrifices of the Continental Army and the militias were brutally punishing. I can't imagine winter combat in the clothing of that period. What deepened this examination of history were the often overlooked contributions of Native Americans and the slaves pulled into the conflict.
During the year, I contribute a monthly post to the blog Type M for Murder. Most recently: