When my maternal Great-grandparents immigrated from Denmark to Northeastern Kansas in the 1890s, they were ecstatic. For something like 200 years, their ancestors had endured a serf-like existence on a baronial estate on the Danish island of Langeland. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of like-minded Europeans immigrated …
President Trump finally did what other American presidents have failed to do: he opened a can of verbal whoop ass on the United Nations. He blasted the U.N. for funding illegal immigration to the United States and many European nations and took it to task for a litany of other …
Over the past few years, I have been a guest on several radio and podcast shows, discussing topics such as writing fiction and the craft of writing in general. I posted the first two of those interviews for the past two. Today, I am posting Part 3. I hope you …
Over the past few years, I have been a guest on several radio and podcast interviews discussing topics such as writing fiction and writing in general. I am posting those interviews as a three-part series for the next couple of days. I hope you find these posts interesting and, most …
Over the past few years, I have been a guest on several radio and podcast interviews discussing topics such as writing fiction and writing in general. I am posting those interviews as a three-part series for the next couple of days. I hope you find these posts interesting and, most …
For the past 13 years, Chicago has had the dubious distinction of being the murder capital of America. And here are a few more ominous facts about “That Toddlin’ Town:” For seven consecutive years, Chicago has had the highest murder rate among U.S. cities with more than one million people. …
During a recent “virtual book tour” with several book bloggers, I was asked what three things I learned while writing the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy. It was a good question because it prompted me to pause and reflect on the fiction-writing process in a way I had never done before. …
At a book signing during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books a while back, where I was promoting my Finding Billy Battles trilogy, I was asked several times about the research process for writing historical fiction novels. I explained that researching the first book …
I am often asked what the most significant challenges were for me as I wrote the Finding Billy Battles trilogy. The trilogy falls into the Historical Fiction genre, and believe me, the challenges when writing historical fiction are many. Addressing them all in one post would be problematic. So I …
Like hundreds of thousands of other Californians, I am about to lose representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. That will occur if voters decide this November 4 to accept Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “Election Rigging Response ” scheme to undermine California’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission and gerrymander congressional district maps …