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1. How did you get your start as an author?
I began technical writing decades ago, when I found that I was an unusual breed of engineer, one who could clearly convey technical information in writing. I did most of my own content, layout, formatting and editing of documents up to 250 pages. That considerably sharpened the precision of my personal writing.
As far as fiction is concerned, after some false starts in the late eighties, I began The Eagle and the Dragon in the mid-nineties. I finally finished it and published independently in 2017, along with a novella, Come, Follow Me, a Story of Pilate and Jesus.
2. Who has been most influential as far as your writing style?
Tom Clancy, our local claim to fame, for techno-thrillers; David Poyer, for contemporary and civil war historical naval fiction, Colleen McCollough for her First Man in Rome Series, along with Lindsey Davis for her Marcus Didius Falco Roman whodunits, and Jack Whyte’s Dream of Eagles and Knights Templar series.
Their influence on me has been their ability in their historical fiction to transport the reader into the past, to enable the reader to experience the past as did those who actually lived it, seeing, hearing and smelling it, without imposing modern preconceptions or judgments about the era.
3. What would be the best piece of advice you could give to those just starting to write?
My first piece of advice would be to just write. Don’t try to polish your work as you write the first draft; editing is critical thinking and anathema to creativity. Just get the story down in its entirety, then go back and make it shine like a new dime. The hardest sentence for an author to write is the first one. The second hardest is the last one. Just get to the end!
4. Let's move on to your book The Eagle and the Dragon. Can you give us a short synopsis?
The Eagle and the Dragon is a fictional account of the first Roman mission to China, set in 100AD, and modeled loosely around an actual Roman mission to China in 166AD. The story will take you on an epic journey across the Eurasian world at the dawn of the Second Century, a story of action, adventure, intrigue, and three love stories.
Like most first missions, nothing goes according to plan: Senator Aulus Aemilius Galba, tapped by Trajan to lead the envoy, expects an easy path to fame and fortune. But the Fates have other plans for him and his unlikely companions. From the storm-tossed Indian Ocean to the opulent court of Han China, from the grassy steppes north of China with the wild Xiongnu nomads, to the forbidding peaks of the Pamir Mountains guarding Central Asia, they will fight for their lives, looking for the road leading back to Rome.
5. Why history? More specifically why Rome and China?
I am an historian by hobby, but as an engineer, I am more interested in the forces acting on societies and people, and their reactions to those forces, not just the dates, people and battles. I also like to write about major events in history that have been largely overlooked by most historians.
The Eagle and the Dragon was inspired by, and modeled on, an actual Roman mission to China in 166AD, though it was apparently not the first … the emperors already knew each other by name. My reading about that mission set me to thinking what it must have been like. How would they have gotten there? What would they do for translators? Navigation? I reconstructed the missing first mission as accurately as I could, and like most first missions, nothing went as planned!
What intrigued me most about the era was the extensive contact the Romans had with “The Distant East,” the Oriens Repositus as they called it. Every year for over two centuries, 120 ships a year sailed from the Red Sea ports over the open Indian Ocean for India, loaded with gold, silver and Mediterranean wine to purchase silks, peppers, spices and artwork. Even tortoise-shell, from which they made a plastic-like, decorative waterproof finishing for wood furniture. The scale of trade was almost modern in scope, about a half-billion dollars in gold going out each year to purchase goods that would be marked up ten, twenty, thirty-fold and taxed at 25%. There were Roman interest sections, today we would call them consulates, in dozens of Indian cities, along with Roman temples. Buddhism made its way to Rome as a popular, philosophical religion… things we never heard of. Roman coins of the era have been found in Nagasaki, Roman shipping jugs have been found in Vietnam, and they even got as far east as Kattigat, somewhere in Borneo. Outside London, two Chinese skeletons were found in a Roman grave across the Thames two years ago… I know their names, they may figure in my sequel!
I just had to capture this wholly unknown side of ancient Rome, the big ships they used, how they would have defended their lucrative cargo against pirates, what they thought of the world of the East, so different from their own. I had to experience for myself what it was like to make that trip and bring that experience to my readers
6. The reviewer mentions that the characters carry the story. Are they based on historical figures? Are their personalities based on those you know?
My main characters are fictional, though they are set in the historical context with actual historical figures, the Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Trajan, the Chinese Emperor He (pronounced “Huh”), and even Gaius’ commander of the XII Fulminata (Twelfth Lightning Bolt) Legion, Lucius Julius Maximus, though not much else is known about him other than he founded a town in modern Azerbaijan. He apparently had a younger brother Tiberius, because that man also commanded a legion in 114AD, and was briefly governor of conquered Mesopotamia, before he was killed in battle. He appears in my sequel.
My wife Karen, who is also an author, says that we take dictation from our characters, and we don’t spend a lot of time structuring them aside from a broad background. Gaius is an officer, with high integrity and decisiveness, Antonius is like any other senior sergeant or chief petty officer I have worked with in my Navy career, a hard taskmaster who takes care of his people. Ibrahim is a thief, but with a sense of integrity, in search of friends that his life denies him. Marcia is an abused woman who stole my heart and gained strength and endurance from that abuse to rise to become a powerful woman and the proud wife of Antonius.
Ibrahim is an interesting character, a pirate, but at the same time a leader, planner, self-educated, with a sense of scruples: he does not want to kill anyone who does not need killing. His life has denied him any close friends that he could trust because few in his trade have such scruples.
The Xiongnu warrior woman Hina began as just a background character, an Amazon-like warrior woman in a culture where that could happen. But then she demanded that I tell her story, why she chose that life, her challenges, and she became a very complex character, a perfect partner for the mysterious Galosga, and key to the evolution of Marcia.
7. How long did it take you to write this book? How long to edit it?
I started this book in 1995, after reading about that first Roman mission in 166AD, finally finishing it in 2015, and publishing it in 2017 after 2 years of editing. My wife Karen likes to remind me that there was an intervening thirteen years when a demanding second job as an intelligence analyst virtually precluded creative writing. That job, however, left me with a pretty good grasp of Central Asia.
8. What's on your agenda next?
In the very near future, March 2022 in fact, my next book Take Charge and Move Out, the Founding Fathers of TACAMO will be published by Casemate. TACAMO (TACK-a-moe) is the Navy’s airborne strategic communications supporting the nation’s nuclear deterrent forces, established in 1965. Despite its importance, for the first ten years of its existence, it was not a viable career for officers, and it was considered professional suicide for an officer to take a second tour in the community. This book is an interesting format, an anthology of autobiographies of myself and ten other “True Believers” who bet our careers that we could change that, and how we built that community from scratch over the next half-century into what it is today. The foreword is by VADM Nora Tyson, our most senior alumna. She started in my first Navy squadron just ten years after I did, but what a different world it was for her already. She went on to command that squadron fifteen years later, then finally to command the US Navy Third Fleet, all Navy forces from the West Coast to the International Dateline.
I have a completed book on the Theory of Special Relativity, the end result of a half-century quest to truly understand what Einstein’s Theory is telling us. Sorry, the speed of light is still the apparent limit, but at least I can explain why. It is very readable, especially if you know nothing about it. It has all the equations, which really are not very hard, high school algebra and trig, but I have developed a unique graphical solution common to all the problems that allow you to see what the equations are telling you. It is complete, formatted, and I am going to self-publish it this year.
And I have a sequel to The Eagle and the Dragon, tentatively titled The Long Road Back to Rome, about 80% finished with the first draft. These are the same ten characters from that book, ten years on. Life has happened to them, and in 114AD they are scattered from Mongolia to China, the Middle East to Italy. But they are all being drawn into the maelstrom of Trajan’s invasion of Mesopotamia. That was an operation on the same scale as Iraqi Freedom, and like that campaign, an insurrection ensued that forced their withdrawal almost immediately after Trajan died in 117AD.
I like to end with fun questions.
9. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
Quite a few! I have one on the Cherokee a thousand years ago, when they lived in New York state with their fellow Iroquois, and have an encounter with Vikings. I got about ten or so chapters in before I got lost. But it is still on the hard drive, dated 1994.
I started another more recently, about a solar flare that wipes out all electronics and communications on Earth. There was such a flare in 1859, called the Carrington Event. But the only electrical things around were telegraphs. The electrical charge on their keys shocked the operators, sparks set fire to alcohol-impregnated copy pads, and telegraphs chattered on even with no batteries connected. But that was the extent of the damage. What would today’s world look like with total collapse and destruction of the internet, satellite communications and navigation? It won’t look pretty.
But I have a lot of irons in the fire.
10. Are there any authors you disliked at first but grew to enjoy? Who?
There are only a few authors I strongly disliked. One I remember was Thomas Pynchon who wrote Gravity’s Rainbow. I started that in the 70’s and got partway through before setting it aside. I may go back and try it again, perhaps I mellowed some over the years.
11. What's your favorite treat to have while writing?
A hot cup of hazelnut coffee.
12. Would you rather have a fire on a cold day or a pool on a hot day?
That’s a toughie! Since they are mutually exclusive, I am going to say both, and I actually do enjoy them.
