This may seem odd to friends in the UK, but the book launch for Funeral Games is Saturday, March 20th at Bakka Phoenix Books, 697 Queens St West, Toronto (Canada). All are welcome. I'll do a reading from Funeral Games, and with sufficient encouragement, I might do a reading from Killer of Men, the first book in the Long War/Persian Wars series out next August.
Why do my books come out three months later in Canada? I have no idea! But I do promise a slice of Dufflet's cake to all attendees. If you don't know Dufflets, you probably live too far away to attend, anyway...
Authors are not supposed to react to reviews--much less the reviews we receive on internet sites. But I read them all--even on Amazon. Sometimes, I even agree with the criticisms expressed there--or here on my forums.
But there's a thread there that I have to speak against. This is not a personal attack--it's a combination of beliefs that I want to set straight.
First--I write novels. I read Classical Greek and Latin, and I know the sources, and I do some pretty meticulous research. But I am a novelist, and if dropping a month from the Siege of Rhodes makes a character work, I'll do it. (I didn't, but you get the idea). Patrick O'Brian, who I view as the best of the "Boy's Own" writers since Dumas, played with history in profound--but meaningless--ways, and so do I. So what if the year 1813 happens twice? His shipboard life is perfectly accurate. Right?
More importantly, however, there are no "facts" when dealing with Classical Antiquity (except those which can be dug from the ground, and even those are open to questions!), and when someone alleges that I have missed the "facts" in the conduct of a campaign--whether Alexander's Jaxartes Campaign or the Gaza campaign--I object. There is not a single first-hand account of either. All the accounts of these campaigns which we have date from tens, and sometimes hundreds of years after the fact, some based on sources which may have been contemporary, some not, and almost all of them propagandistic. Friends, I may make stuff up--but it is ALWAYS within the strict bounds of the available evidence. I feel that I need to remind the world that an Osprey campaign history is neither serious scholarship nor a primary source. Wargames guides are often wrong--often very wrong indeed, compared to reading the primary sources in their original languages. In many cases, honest historians have to admit that we aren't sure in exactly what year a battle took place--or whether some of these important battles took place AT ALL.
There--I feel better. And I encourage every one of you who loves these periods to read Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Xenophon and Thucydides, Plutarch, Cornelius Nepo, Arrian and Curtius Rufus in the original languages--or even in the extant English editions--and then, and only then, look into secondary sources.
Hey--I'm just the author and my titles seldom survive contact with my excellent editor, but Helepolis is what Demetrios (the besieger) called his enormous war machine. 50 cubits on a side, 9 stories tall, fifty internal war engines, bolt throwers and torsion engines.
The siege of Rhodes was probably the climactic event of the wars of the Successors. It lasted eight months to a year, and this is the longest book I've yet written. It's not easy maintaining tension through sixty-five separate military actions. Nor would I recommend that readers become too deeply attached to characters.
But I'm proud as a peacock of it. And it is done. 4 naval actions, 6 major assaults, war machines, ships, tides, storms, romance, disease, starvation, boredom, and meticulous equipment repair...
Now, tell me that doesn't appeal.
Perhaps no exclamation point is required, but Funeral Games is out in stores in the UK and Amazon is filling their orders--in fact, they're already out of stock. I'm on page 450 of the Tyrant novel about the siege of Rhodes and it is--well, I like to think it's excellent, but only time and your opinion will tell. But I do guarantee a new level in giant war machines...
I have just learned that Funeral Games, my Tyrant series release for 2010, is delayed. So if you pre-ordered, it won't be out Jan 21st, but Feb 4th, instead. This is purely a publishing issue and there will be no further delays... I deliver on time! Ask my editor.
It appears that both of the major reenacting events that I'm shepherding along--Ft. George Ontario in 2010 and the Battle of Marathon in Greece in 2011--are moving forward. ft. George promises to deliver over a thousand reenactors of the American Revolution--probably the biggest event of its kind this year in Canada, perhaps in North America. And Marathon--well, stand by for further announcements. The Minister of Culture in Greece is discussing it this week.
I've taken to recommending books and reenacting groups in this space; this week I'd like to recommend Douglas Cubbison's two latest books; "The Artillery Never Gained More Honor" (Purple Mountain Press) about the Royal artillery on the Burgoyne Expedition, and "The American Northern Theater Army in 1776, The Ruin and Reconstruction of the Continental Army" (McFarland Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina, 2009). It's not at all about ancient Greece, actually... Both are excellent studies of the Northern campaigns of the American Revolution.
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