There is much to talk about this week so I won’t waste too much space here. After a long break I and many others will be heading back into the office this week as the traditional summer holiday season comes to an end here in Australia. I have a new job and a new challenge. I haven’t the faintest idea what I’ll be doing but hopefully it will be interesting.
I’d like to welcome my new subscribers, especially those who won last month’s Reader Views giveaway. Copies of my award winning book, Ghost of Timor, are in the mail and will be with you soon. If anyone is looking for a new read, click on the link below and you will be in the running to win any of the books featured, including mine, at the end of February.
In other news, two of my books, Patagonian Affair and Girls, Interrupted are in the running for a Golden Pigtail Award. These are annual awards hosted by Alexa Sommers for writers in the genre. If you click the link below you can vote and maybe I’ll make it into the semi-finals. Fingers crossed.
Recommended – The End of Everything by Victor Davis Hanson
Last week I completed my reading of Victor Davis Hanson’s most recent book, The End of Everything. VDH is quite one of my favourite historians, authors and commentators and the chance to read more of his work after completing his excellent, Carnage and Culture, was an opportunity to good to miss.
In The End of Everything, VDH narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary listeners to heed the lessons of obliteration lest they blunder into catastrophe once again.
VDH’s books are painstakingly researched and a narrative treat to read. In both End and Carnage, he sets the scene of each chapter painting the final moments of each encounter. Always the victim is in extremis just as the victor moves in for the kill. We are then left to ask the question, “How did it come to this?” As always, Hanson gives us all the answers.
On Writing
This week I wanted to show you a short video I found about story structure. Whether you enjoy South Park or not, the two writers, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, lay out how to write a good story. Be it a book, TV or a movie scenes should happen for a reason. A story is not just linear series of events. Each moment should only exist because it has to, not because the writer needs it to.
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