General and Concise Thoughts, Comments, and Updates from the Author.
PBS is currently running a new three-part documentary about Ernest Hemingway by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick which explores the famous author’s own image-making. In the documentary, we see Hemingway as a “man’s man–” a battle-hardened war veteran, a big game hunter, a deep-sea fisherman, a brawler, a boozer, a … Read more…
I posted the following commentary in 2018 when the Chicago Tribune moved out of Tribune Tower and into the One Prudential Plaza building a few blocks south of the Chicago River. I wasn’t there for the move, but it was nevertheless dispiriting and disheartening for me because in that building … Read more…
(NOTE: Tomorrow and Thursday I invite you to join me as I relive the last 24 frantic hours in Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops on April 29-30, 1975–an event I covered for the Chicago Tribune in 1975. I hope you will stop by) Forty-five years ago … Read more…
Two years ago Clare Hollingworth, one of the toughest, most determined, and inexhaustible war correspondents who ever lived passed away in her Hong Kong home. I posted on her passing at the time, but because she was such a unique and iconic journalist, I feel compelled to post my story … Read more…
Along with a few hundred other authors, I attended the 2019 Chanticleer International Book Awards Conference which took place April 26-28 at the luxurious Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Washington. As with some 275 other authors from around the world, I was a semi-finalist in one of 16 divisions from which … Read more…
(Periodically, I post stories I wrote while working as a foreign correspondent. Following is a story I wrote about Bangkok’s network of canals (klong). Many have already disappeared under concrete roads, but life goes on along those that remain.) Some 150 years ago, when Anna Leonowens, the prim English governess who has … Read more…
I’m sharing a little good news today. ‘The Lost Years of Billy Battles‘ has been named an “Official Selection” in the HISTORICAL FICTION category of the Fifth Annual New Apple Literary Awards. The Lost Years of Billy Battles is the final book in the award-winning Finding Billy Battles Trilogy. It was published … Read more…
Today, I am reposting a recent article by author and actor Michael Knowles, who also hosts the Daily Wire’s The Michael Knowles Show. In his article, Knowles discusses how sadly ill-informed American Millennials are when it comes to such critical topics as economics, socialism, capitalism, and America’s system of representative … Read more…
The link below will take you to a podcast/radio interview I did a while back with C. P. Lesley of the New Books Network about writing historical fiction. Ms. Lesley is herself the author of six historical fiction novels set in 16th Century Russia during the reign of Ivan the … Read more…
At least once every year I find it useful to take a look at the late Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. It is sage advice from a master. Every writer should read these rules and remember them. I’m doing my part by posting them here at the beginning of … Read more…