I'm over at Unicorn Bell today, and a comment on sexism in the writing industry

My virtual book tour for Radio Hope continues with an interview over at Unicorn Bell today. Sales have been steady but not stellar, but hey, it's only been out less than three weeks. Indie publishers have to learn patience as they build up a reputation.

Luckily, some readers are helping with that by giving me very positive reviews. Several have said they've read the book in one or two sittings. The word "inhaled" has been used more than once.

Be careful of inhaling, ladies and gents, there's a lot of nasty stuff in the atmosphere of the Toxic World! This French soldier is well kitted out for reading my novel. Make sure you are too!

Oh, and if you want to breathe some more toxic air, read this Black Gate post about the continuing mudslinging over at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America because a few female writers dared to point out the rampant sexism in the industry. Guess what happened? Yeah, the usual nonsense.

We like to pretend that the smarter sections of our society are free of sexism and racism, but that just ain't so. Just ask a female scientist, or a female doctor, or a female writer. Will things improve in the future? I hope so. Pushing down half the intellect of the human race is just not the best way forward. Please don't make my novel come true. Respect everyone!

People won't be naked in the apocalypse

That caught your attention, didn't it? I'm kicking off my virtual book tour for Radio Hope with a guest post over at Alex Cavanaugh's blog, where I'm tackling the tricky question of why in all those post-apocalyptic books and movies people won't actually be dressed in rags. In fact, the apocalypse will mean we all get to dress better.

Head on over and say hi! I'll be doing several guest posts for blogs over the month of February. Stay tuned.

This shot of the lovely "Monster Guards" hanging out at Bulgaria's Extreme Film Fest 2011 courtesy podoboq.

Guest Post: Using Real Cultures in Fantasy Fiction

Today I've invited blogger buddy A.J. Walker to talk about his new fantasy novel, The Maze of Mist. I've guest blogged for his Medieval Mondays series several times on topics such as medieval handgonnes and medieval weapons in the Civil War, so it's great to have him here. He's going to talk about using real cultures in fantasy fiction. Take it away, A.J.!

Fantasy fiction is a blend of the familiar and the strange. The familiar helps the reader construct a framework for envisioning the story. It's no surprise, then, that most high fantasy settings are reminiscent of medieval Europe. Writers usually pick medieval England, France, and the Norse region as their settings, and while I love all these cultures, I've always felt there were plenty of others that were being underused.

For my Timeless Empire series, the setting is reminiscent of medieval Spain. That makes it a little different than your typical fantasy novel, but still familiar.

I went further afield with The Maze of Mist. The protagonist, Metis Itxaron, is a mixed-race prince, the son of a goblin mother and a human father. Goblinkin culture is a mix of Native American, the peoples of the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, the prehistoric Kurgan culture, and a fair amount of my own weirdness. The human culture is medieval European. I wanted something for my reader to find familiar!

I also throw in a new race, the mysterious Amhara from beyond the Southern Sea. These explorers have solved the mystery of the Maze of Mist, a strange labyrinth of fog that has baffled navigators for all of recorded history. For this culture, I borrowed some of Sean's experience and made them Ethiopian. If you're a regular reader of Sean's travel writing you know he's a regular visitor to that ancient land and has even written a book about Ethiopian history.

So why Ethiopia? Because as an archaeologist I know this land is home to one of the oldest and most advanced civilizations in the world. Even Heroditus lists it as one of the great cultures of his time. Yet it is almost entirely ignored in Western history books.

The kingdom of Abyssinia went through several different incarnations that had several similarities. The land was made up of several tribes and held together by a ruler that did not have absolute power except in times of dire emergency such as a foreign invasion. Women enjoyed a relatively high status and compared to medieval Europe (although there weren't female warriors like I have in my novel) and studies such a geography, painting and literature were highly developed.

When my protagonist goes off with these newcomers on a diplomatic mission, he gets to sample their food and drink, learn about their world view, and generally immerse himself in their culture. He's not just journeying across an ocean, he passing from one culture to another. The ancient Abyssinian kingdoms are a perfect model for a civilization that your typical fantasy character would find both strange and alluring.

Plus they had cool swords and strong booze. You gotta have cool swords and strong booze in a fantasy novel!


Thanks, A.J.! Do you have a new release you'd like to shout about? Go to the How Can I Help You? page to learn how, well, I can help you. . .

The Apocalypse is here! Yippee!!!

Today is "The World Ends How?" blogfest to celebrate Hart Johnson's latest book. More on that below. But first she's asked fellow bloggers how they think the world will end.

My answer? Slowly, painfully, and through our own ignorance. We will keep poisoning the air and seas, keep fighting each other, keep increasing our population, until it all begins to fall apart. And we won't change even then.

For more, check out my personal vision of the apocalypse. For Hart's vision, read on!

Deadliest virus in a century, or a social experiment gone awry?

Every year they warned about the flu and more often than not, it amounted to nothing. Sidney Knight, a young freelance reporter had certainly never written on it. But a trip to Lincoln City, Oregon, cut short by a beach full of dead seagulls and a panicked warning from her brother the scientist catch her attention.

This batch is different. Deadlier. And the vaccine doesn't seem to be helping. It almost looks like it's making it worse...

A Flock of Ill Omens: Part I is the first episode of A Shot in the Light, an Apocalypse Conspiracy Tale about what happens when people play God for fun and profit. There will be approximately ten episodes, each the equivalent of about 100 pages. Good Reads has a sneak peak posted. You can find the purchase link and more information about the book here. And if you want it FOR FREE, I will be offering it free on the release dates of at least the next two in the serial: September 19 and October 10.

Hart Johnson writes books from her bathtub and can be found at Confessions of a Watery Tart, though be warned. She is likely to lead you into shenanigans.

A new country, a new blog, and a guest post about castles

Hello from Oxford! Wait, wasn't I in Valencia? Why yes I was. Hard to keep up with me, isn't it? My family and I are enjoying our usual summer working vacation here in Oxford, where I'll be researching some magazine articles and writing fiction, and my wife will be working at the astronomy department. My son will be at a great daycamp he's been going to since he was three.

If you look at my blog roll, you'll see a new addition. Roads to the Great War is an excellent new blog about World War One run by the same folks that gave you the World War One website. With the centennial coming up next year they've decide to do a blog! If you like military history, check them out.

Speaking of blogs, I have another guest post up on the Black Gate blog, this one about Spanish Castles reused during the Spanish Civil War. I have two more posts in the pipeline for them, this time about an Italian castle.

Oh, and don't forget you can still get my fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence free on Smashwords. Please blog, tweet, and share!

Castles in Spain and Slovenia

I was traveling in Italy and Slovenia for the past ten days and didn't get a chance to announce that another guest post of mine is up at the Black Gate blog. It's the second in my series on Spanish castles. This time I'm talking about the castle at Chinchón near Madrid.

While I was in Slovenia I got to see plenty of castles too. The country, which is slightly smaller than New Jersey, has about 700 of them! You can read my article on Gadling about the castles in Slovenia. It's part of a new series called "Slovenia: Hikes, History, and Horseburgers."

Guest Post: Researching a Shared World Alternate History

Today we have an interesting guest post from an old writing buddy of mine from my Tucson days. I first met David Lee Summers at Tuscon, a great local f/sf/h con. I was immediately struck by his boundless enthusiasm and dedication to the fan community. He's such a nice guy I even forgave him when he rejected one of my short stories for his magazine!

He's come out with several books over the years and is here to talk about his latest.


Last year, Robert E. Vardeman asked me to write a novella in a steampunk shared world he created called Empires of Steam and Rust.  As a steampunk author who has read and admired Bob's work since before my career began, I leapt at the opportunity.

The concept of the world is that it's an alternate 1915.  Queen Victoria is still on the throne and getting younger.  The Russian Revolution failed and the Czar is still on the throne.  The Meiji Restoration never happened and there are still Samurai in Japan.  Teddy Roosevelt is still president of the United States and has ambitions of creating an American Empire.  In the meantime, holes are opening up in the fabric of reality.  Strange substances leak out of these holes, such as gasses that defy description.  In some cases, the holes serve as portals to another alternate world.  My first challenge was to decide what story to tell in this alternate world.

A few days later, I happened upon a T-shirt my wife brought me from Palomas, Mexico with a photo of Pancho Villa dressed jauntily in a pith helmet and cravat, very similar to the public domain photo shown here.  This was virtually a steampunk vision of Pancho Villa.  I realized I could tell the story of Pancho Villa in this world.

This project essentially required three stages of research.  The first stage of research involved getting to know the Pancho Villa of history.  I watched some documentaries, looked up some history on the web and at my local library.  Villa clearly was a larger-than-life figure.  He was a man who loved beautiful women and liked to overwhelm his opponents with the speed of cavalry charges.  I did my best to understand the motivations of the men who surrounded Pancho Villa such as Álvaro Obregón, Rodolfo Fierro, and John J. Pershing.


The second stage of research involved getting to know the alternate world Bob Vardeman had developed.  Bob, with input from several of the Empires of Steam and Rust authors, including Steve Sullivan assembled a "bible" explaining what was going on in different parts of the world.  The bible mentioned two things of interest to my story.  The United States had invaded Mexico and no one had yet invented airplanes.  Only airships had been developed.  I knew that Pancho Villa would seize any opportunity he could to create a "cavalry of the air" to go after invading American airships.  Of course, I also read Bob Vardmeman's novella Gateway to Rust and Ruin and Stephen D. Sullivan's novella Heart of Steam and Rust, both set in this alternate world to understand the world better.


Finally, I decided to set a large portion of the conflict on the U.S./Mexican border at the towns of Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Mexico, a place Pancho Villa was known to have been.  One of the landmarks of Douglas is the Hotel Gadsden.  It was a classic old hotel used by ranchers in the area at the time of Pancho Villa.  I was fortunate enough to be invited down for a book signing in Douglas at the hotel, which allowed me to do the third stage of research, which was a visit to the location of the story.

Inside the lobby of the Hotel Gadsden is a beautiful marble staircase.  There are two chips in the marble halfway up the first flight.  In the photo, you see my daughters posing with the chips in question.  A sign in the lobby claims the chips were made when Pancho Villa rode his horse up the staircase.  Later research has since cast some doubt on whether this really happened, particularly since the Hotel Gadsden suffered a bad fire after Pancho Villa died.  The hotel owners claim the staircase survived the fire.  Whatever the truth, it was too good a story not to use in my novella, especially since I had a scene that would allow Pancho Villa to ride up the staircase, guns blazing!

For me, part of the fun of writing alternate history is to gain new insights into the people and places of history by imagining them in circumstances that weren't the same as the ones we're familiar with.  Even though the events are different than those of history, it still means getting to know the characters involved well enough that you can imagine how they would react in new circumstances.

My novella of Pancho Villa in an alternate 1915 is Revolution of Air and Rust.  I'd love to hear what you think of this alternate Pancho Villa and his comrades.  The novella is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Guest blogging about Spanish castles over at Black Gate

I've done another guest post for the blog of Black Gate fantasy magazine. It's the first in a series about Spanish castles; this one is about the Alcázar in Segovia.

Not only is it a fascinating castle, but it has an excellent collection of medieval artillery that helped me when I was writing my book Medieval Handgonnes: the first Black Powder Infantry Weapons.

For more on that subject, you might also want to look at a guest post I did over at Genre Author on the accuracy of Medieval handgonnes.

Two Popular Military History Guest Posts over at Black Gate

As you know, I often do guest posts, especially for the Black Gate and Osprey Publishing blogs.

Black gate just came out with its top 50 most popular posts for March, and two of my posts were in the top ten, #3 and #10 to be precise! They were about a pair of fascinating dioramas I discovered in the American Legation museum in Tangier. Built by master modeller Edward Suren of London, these battle scenes are incredibly detailed. They include the Battle of the Three Kings (1578) and the Battle of Tondibi (1591). I've included lots of pictures and background about both battles.

Moroccan battles in miniature

Here's one for my wargamer readers. I've just done two guest blogs for Black Gate about a pair of fascinating dioramas I discovered in the American Legation museum in Tangier. Built by master modeller Edward Suren of London, these battle scenes are incredibly detailed. They include the Battle of the Three Kings (1578) and the Battle of Tondibi (1591). I've included lots of pictures and background about both battles.

Guest blogging about my time in Iraq

Yesterday I was over at the Post Modern Pulp blog talking about my time with the various armed forces during my trip to Iraq. I also have a post on the Osprey Publishing blog today about some curious Ottoman artillery I saw in Baghdad. There are plenty of interesting photos in both of these posts.

So check them out, or my buddy here will level his machine gun at you. Also check out my Iraq travel series on Gadling.

Military history of Tangier, Morocco

So much has been going on this past week I forgot to mention that I did a guest post over at the Black Gate blog about Exploring the Defenses of Tangier. You'll see lots of pictures and info that didn't make it into my Tangier travel series I did for Gadling. Head on over and check it out!

Tangier was an inspiring place with a lot going on. I'm thinking of taking a solo trip there later this year to work on a writing project. See you back here tomorrow with Wild West Photo Friday!

How can I help you?

I like helping out fellow creatives, probably because I've received so little help of my own and so I know how hard this life is. If you're a follower of this blog, I'd be happy to have you as a guest blogger.

I've had several guest posts in the past and they generally get a large readership. I'm getting an average of 300 hits a day now and I announce every post on Facebook and Twitter. This blog is focused on the Civil War and the Wild West, with occasional posts about travel and history in general. If you have something you think might fit, I'd be happy to host you. If your book doesn't fit, I'm happy to take posts on writing as well, although I don't want to do too many of those since I want this blog to be outside the Indie Authors' Echo Chamber.

You don't even need to be a writer! Have you visited an interesting historic site and want to write it up? Are you are photographer? Wargamer? Reenactor? As long as it's related to the focus of this blog, I'm listening.

If you just want to make an announcement, drop me a line at the email in the lefthand column and I'll include it in my semiregular Reader News posts. I'm working on one for early next week if you have anything you'd like to share. It can be about writing, history, archaeology, adventure travel, etc.Book announcements are most welcome, but don't limit yourself to just those!

Interview with men's adventure author Hank Brown

Today we're chatting with action author Hank Brown, who is doing a blog tour for his most recent release, Tier Zero. Hank has come out with several novels and short stories in the men's adventure genre, a genre that was in the doldrums before the current publishing revolution. So with no further ado. . .

Checking out your list of publications, one that jumped to my attention was Radical Times, a Civil War story. Actually it's a Reconstruction story set in Arkansas right after the war. What made you pick a setting well away from the epic drama of the major battles?

Mostly it was because of history and my exposure to it. In school I had only learned the superficial facts about the Civil War...North, South, slaves, Abraham Lincoln...that was about it. Public school taught us even less about Reconstruction, which is to say: nothing.

Then about a year or two before I wrote Radical Times, I checked out a book from the library about that historic period. It blew me away how much I didn't know about it. And when that happens I'm compelled to set off on a researching spree. It annoys me how the truth of this tumultuous period are ignored, at best; or censored, at worst. Our present political dynamic depends on that ignorance (or censorship). Anyway, as all this information was floating around in my mind I began conceiving characters (as often happens). The story grew out of all that.

You served in the Armed Forces. Beyond the obvious, what are the main differences between warfare in the 1860s and the modern day? How is the soldier's experience different? Are there any similarities?

Beyond the obvious, I'd say it's the officers and men themselves that are most different, followed by the command doctrine. The US armed forces have become extremely top-heavy organizations, with a cumbersome bureaucracy only slightly less inept than the non-uniformed government institutions. The technology which enables unprecedented micromanaging runs the risk of turning fighting men into robots. The technological advantages and overwhelming air support our troops have enjoyed since WWII glosses over the chinks in our armor, of which I believe this is an example.

When Von Steuben was drilling Washington's troops to fight the British he remarked on what made the American soldier unique: You couldn't just institute a policy and expect Americans to follow it, without first explaining its purpose. That does not seem to be the case any longer. Once when training with some soldiers from the Mother Country, after Desert Storm, I remember the ironic moment when one of the Brits cried out in frustration about all the suffocating regulations he had to abide by while attached to the US Army. Holy historic role-reversal, Uncle Sam!

Guest blogging and headed to Estonia

Yesterday I was over at Alex Cavanaugh's blog doing a guest post about that greatest of challenges for the adventure traveler--the squat toilet. Head on over and learn how to handle this tricky device.

I should have posted about this yesterday but I was crazy busy. One thing I had to do was arrange my next trip, and next series for Gadling. In mid February I'm headed to Estonia. That's right, I'm hanging out for five days in one of the Baltic States to cover their annual ice sculpture festival. It will be my first trip to the region. Should be fun!

Photo of Tallinn courtesy Wikimedia Commons. My own photos coming next month!

GUEST POST: Civil War Mystery: Objects in photographs are closer than they appear

Today I have an interesting guest post by Kathryn Hohmann, author of the Civil War novel Soldiers Rest, which like my own novel features photography as a central theme. She offers some tips on writing historical fiction. You can learn more about her on her webpage and Goodreads page. Thanks for coming, Kathryn!

Like a resident of a coastal town who rarely gets to the beach, I was surrounded by hallowed ground but never visited the Civil War battlefields of central Maryland. On weekend bicycle trips, I was more worried about the hilly terrain than the interpretive markers along the route. Although I sensed that the landscape possessed some eerie quality, I gave the matter little consideration.

Then I relocated to Montana and on a backcountry outing, I broke my leg and ended up bed-ridden and bored. I rented The Civil War by Ken Burns and found myself engrossed. As the series comes to an end, Burns touches on the years after the war. To illustrate how Americans turned away from memories of the conflict, he includes a remarkable image of glass plate negatives of Civil War photographs, scrapped and salvaged for the silver emulsions on their surfaces and recycled into glass panes for solariums.

These photographs –our collective heritage from the Civil War– dulled by years of sunlight and rain, were the inspiration for my historical novel, Soldiers Rest. The years spent writing my book and becoming conversant in a slice of the Civil War taught me a few lessons that I’d like to share.   

Hit the books – hard. Readers of historical fiction will spot your blunders. Study up, seek help and don’t be afraid to make revisions, especially if you’re in the e-book space. Read, research and read some more.

Take a small bite. History of any period is a sweeping canvas and unless you’re a Civil War scholar, you may want to consider limiting yourself to a small space of geography and time. I chose to concentrate on the aftermath of a single overlooked conflict, the Battle of South Mountain, part of the 1862 Maryland campaign. The event rarely gets the attention it deserves, overshadowed as it is by Antietam. The Battle of South Mountain was small enough to be a good candidate for my story, and focused enough so that when it came time for annual commemorations, the events were intimate and engaging, and there was little chance I would be lost in the crowd, as I might have been at Shiloh or Gettysburg.

Guest blogging over at Bookish Whimsy

Today I'm guest blogging over at Bookish Whimsy, a very cool blog dedicated to books. I'm talking a little bit about the Civil War in Missouri and my Civil War novel. I'm also including an excerpt you won't get from Amazon's "look inside this book". Hop on over and check it out!

Guest Post. Meredith Stoddard on Researching for Content and Context

Today we have a guest post from Meredith Stoddard. Meredith is a writer and fiber artist living in Central VA. She studied literature and folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before working as a corporate trainer and instructional designer for 10 years. She now devotes her energy to fiction and creative non-fiction.

Last summer my husband and I went to see Cowboys vs. Aliens and surprisingly came out of the movie with very different opinions. I had been ambivalent about the movie based on the sheer ridiculousness of the title, but was willing to overlook that given the cast and his excitement about it. So, I reluctantly agreed to see it.

What I saw was a fun, campy, far-fetched adventure with plenty of eye candy. What he saw was not only far-fetched but impossible, inconsistent, and stupid. It took some discussion in the car on the way home to figure out what the problem was. My husband is a sci-fi nerd. As a sci-fi nerd he was bothered by the inconsistencies in the apparent "science" behind how the alien ships and weapons worked.

Once I thought about it for a bit, I realized that a history nerd like me might have a similar problem. I flashed back almost ten years to when I saw Gods and Generals. In case you haven't seen it, it follows Stonewall Jackson through the battles in Fredericksburg, VA, and the surrounding areas. Since I'm a history nerd who grew up living about halfway between the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville battlefields, I know a thing or two about these battles. Gods and Generals is an outstanding movie, but much like my husband, I was bothered by some inconsistencies that I saw.

For example, I thought the film makers didn't quite capture the dramatic slope of Marye's Heights and its view of the Rappahannock, nor did they sufficiently portray the complete idiocy of Union generals choosing to cross the Rappahannock at Chatham. So like a true nerd, I let some minor inconsistencies (And I'm being easy on them. Check out the Goofs list on IMDB to see some real nitpicking.) color my opinion of an otherwise good movie.

Much like sci-fi writers, those of us who choose to write historical fiction have to be aware of the tendencies of our informed readers to pick apart even the minutest details of our writing. Therefore research becomes one of our most important tasks. Luckily for most of us we write historical fiction because we love history. Research in that case isn't such a trial.

I tend to divide researching for historical fiction in two categories.

General Period Research
This is research about what it was like to live in whatever time period you're writing about. This is essential to drawing your reader into the correct time and keeping them there. There is nothing more jarring than having a character use a common 20th century expression like "OK" in a story that is set in the 19th century or earlier. Everyday details may not have a lot of bearing on your plot, but they help the reader see the world that you're creating and believe it.
   

What did people eat? How did they play? How did they talk? What were the social customs of the day like? How did they dress? There are resources out there where you can read this information, however I've always found it more compelling to see these kind of things first-hand.

Living in Virginia, I am lucky. We have terrific living history parks such as; the Henricus Historical Park, Colonial Williamsburg and the Frontier Culture Museum where you can learn what life was like in the very first colonies, at the dawn of the revolution and as pioneers moved west. Many areas across the country will have similar museums that make a wonderful daytrip when you're looking for information or just to get the feel of a time period.
   

Specific Research
This is research into the specific events or people that you are writing about. My latest foray into historical fiction is actually based on a true story. Although it is not a widely known story, in the town where it takes place it is a much loved local legend. Naturally, I wanted to get the facts about the actual events straight in my fictionalized version. No matter how gripping my story might be, there will always be the local history buff who will find even the smallest mistake that could spoil it for them. With that in mind I spent many hours researching the people involved in my story. Here are some of the resources that I found helpful.

Local resources: Luckily for me, there is a local historian in the town where my story is set who does a great job of cataloguing the history of Beaufort, NC. Almost every city or county in the country has a local historical society, and they will probably be happy to help a writer looking to write about their area. Look for local historical societies and/or bloggers who know the area well, and can likely help with some of the lesser known aspects of the area's history.

Google Books: This is a terrific resource for out-of-print books and books that may be harder to get. I like to write about what some people call micro-history. These are historical events that are often not recorded in text books. They're not any less compelling for not being famous, but it can be a bit harder to find detailed historical accounts. I have often found books or collections of letters on Google Books that I doubt I would have been able to find even at my local university library.

Census Records: Because my story involves the inner workings of a particular family, I used census records and other historical documents to identify family members and their correct ages and relationships. You can even use these documents to find information about their neighbors.

Guest Post: Looking through the Eyes of the Dead

Today we have a guest post from G.R. Yeates, author of several horror novels set in World War One. I have an abiding interest in that war and have a couple of my own ideas for fiction set in the period, so this is an especially interesting post for me.

The First World War has been a passion of mine since my high school English teacher, Mrs. Bury, introduced me to the poetry of Wilfred Owen. I later read the works of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves in the school library (I was never one for the football pitch when there was all that knowledge to hand - as an aside, I find it ironic now that the librarian used to chuck me out at lunchtimes - punishing a student for actually wanting to read and to learn).

So when it came to researching the period for my trilogy, The Vetala Cycle, it was much less daunting, though I had no great desire to spend hours doing historical research my passion for the subject stopped the time from dragging. As my initial introduction to the First World War had been through poetry that evoked the place and time, I decided that I would focus upon reading the diaries and personal accounts of the people rather than the dry specifics of dates and stratagems. Though I did study the latter to ensure there was a certain amount of verisimilitude between fiction and fact, I did not slave myself to the details because the average soldier was not concerned with them either. Generals planted numbered flags and moved outlines of terrain across desktops whilst the Tommies in the trenches were more worried about their feet rotting in their boots or being shot in the head by snipers sitting in the bunkers on the higher ground of Passchendaele.

In a similar vein, I wanted to ensure the view of the war was balanced, which is why I moved the action in The Eyes of the Dead out of the trenches to show the equal horror of the aftermath in the field hospitals where the wounded were treated for gas gangrene in surgeries that became almost medieval in the butchery necessary to save lives.

In Shapes in the Mist, I researched the home front and, in particular, the effect of the zeppelin raids. Noting that these air-borne monstrosities did far more psychological than actual damage, this planted the seed that led to me resurrecting Jack the Ripper in that time period as a spectre feeding off the fear of the people.

In Hell's Teeth (to be released this month), which closes the trilogy, I took the story forward because I wanted to show the consequences of the war not only for the veterans but also for the world they then grew old in - night-terrors afflicted many of these men for the rest of their lives. This persistence of the horror of the war came up again and again as I studied the period and I think this stands alone as testament to how terrifying the First World War was for those who experienced it. Historians may note how the memory can cheat and inaccuracies can be created by constant reminiscence but I would say that they are failing to realise this--the First World War was the stuff of nightmares and that fact should have been enough to warn us never to do this to ourselves, to each other, ever again.


G.R. Yeates can be found on his website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Guest blogging over at Osprey Publishing

As my regular readers know, one of my many writing hats is as a military historian for Osprey Publishing. Regular readers will also know that I recently wrote a travel series about Greece. Well, I've put one hat atop the other and write a guest post for the Osprey blog about Oddities from the Athens War Museum. Head on over and check it out!