After years of planned neglect, a revised copy of the book Some Damn Fool Thing will soon be released on this blog in serial fashion at no charge to readers. Stay tuned for further announcements. This release will coincide with the republication of this work with a different publisher providing the reader access to this book at a much more reasonable price. Even more exciting this release will begin the […]
Any portrayal of France in the first decades of the Twentieth Century often shows societal divisions enhanced by the often bitter consequences of Gallic passion. Since politics is a primary vehicle to arbitrate disagreement, life in these often turbulent times can be better understood through an understanding of the Third Republic which provided the governmental framework for the French to quarrel- a practice for which they are widely famous. The […]
Readers of William Whitaker’s Some Damn Fool Thing have been introduced to the events of March 31, 1905 in its first chapters, but from the perspective of over one hundred years it is difficult to appreciate the the basis and extent of the reaction that a speech by Kaiser Wilhelm elicited that day. The seeds for the dramatic response provoked by Wilhelm had been first sown some forty years previously […]
Readers surmise that fiction writers start a book with a blank page of limitless options. In reality every writer is constrained by past experience and predilection; nowhere are the limits more severe than in writing fiction based on history. To craft such a narrative, past events not only demand a fixed time setting but also a cast of characters integral to the historic events. More importantly the sum of their […]
In recent years I have often asked myself what is a man well into the autumn of his life doing writing historical fiction. It certainly isn’t for notoriety or fortune. I have spent the greater part of my life analysing probabilities, first as a cardiologist and more recently as an investor in fledgling companies, and from that experience I understand the probability of any writer gaining either is a mathematical […]