Authors Electric

The more I write about history, the more I love it. Considering my school tried everything they knew to make me hate the subject, I consider myself extremely lucky that I got there in the end. Kings and queens meant nothing to me until a history lecturer at University – the great and sainted Ian Kershaw – told me that William the Conqueror fell off his horse and burst. Now that for me, is a proper kingly way to die. The real beauty, and frustration, of history is that an extraordinary amount of it is guesswork. That's why I've always been wary of biography. Somebody spends many years examining everything recorded about a certain personage, and is confident at the end of all that they have drawn a perfect picture. Sadly, that is balderdash. I don't even know myself why I do most things that I do, and looking back on them, the problem just gets murkier. Take Nelson. One of Britain's most authentic heroes, still revered, still cited in any naval argument. Then ta...

     Dark dreams afflicted me: torn throats and treacheries beyond the heart's endurance. I saw a blur of fur and fury, a red mist of spiritual rot on the rip. I saw myself discovering the lone wolf in my heart.     You can imagine my predicament, since I don't even like wolves. I once called a wolf a thug in a hair suit and I stand by that assessment. Wolves in packs aren't any better--a step up from hyenas--though they have the sense to bounce the thugs out only for themselves. No, I don't like wolves at all and I believe Jack London was probably pure wolf himself.     Nevertheless, there I was at the end of 2012--with 4 ebooks that hadn't sold five copies and hadn't attracted too many more reviews. As I glanced about EbookLandia, I saw a frightening, icy terrain with lone wolves lording over hoards of starving beasts scrounging for crumbs. The lone wolves loved attention; and they loved reviews; and above all they loved their fat paycheck...