my journey as a civil war novel writer

As I am from Europe a fascination with the American civil war may not be the most logical thing. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and as we did not have that many tv channels then I devoured many American series on tv. And during those years many good historical series were made. I learned about history through watching tv. It was not until much late that I started reading books to verify that what I had learnt was the truth or learning the real truth. Series like Centennial and Roots remained with me throughout my life and made me cry at the injustice people inflict on each other. The civil war fascination really started with the blue and the gray and that was because my favourite actor during those days Gregory Peck had a small part in it. He played Abraham Lincoln. I was hooked.  When I had to chose a topic for my history paper in secondary school I did not have to think very long and picked the American civil war. I hit the library [no internet i...

So I finished the first draft of part of my novel. Now it comes to an important decision, am I writing only for myself or will I share it with others?  I have had a hard time lately with stress and I don't deal too well with negativity at the moment. If I share it with others and they don't like it would that hurt too much at the moment? And would people judge me for the subject of my story? A confederate general. Can we still write about his in these woke times?  I see the viewing of history is becoming problematic. The taking down of statues in the US is one example. Also thinking about people from history with today's knowledge. We judge people by our current standards. And that is a problem. Now I am not saying that there was not a problem in the 19th century. I am reading widely on the time period and I can't understand how one man can see another as inferior no better than an animal. Even then. That was wrong, insane. Slavery is insane. One person holding another ...

My last entry here was over 12 years ago wow! I feel like a different person now. I am not going to summarize the last 12 years but I have changed the title of this blog and it will be mostly about my journey to become a writer. There will also be posts about my life and travels and my 2.5 cats. The one on the right is my book guardian called shadow. My other cat is called Bella. And the 0.5 cat is called Lucki who lives two doors down but comes to visit every day. They are much loved and the masters of the house and the books.  

These days I pay more attention to my professional blog. Study and clients don't leave me much time for personal blogging. But there are occasions that I feel I have to write something. Last week someone destroyed the Glastonbury thorn on Wearyall Hill. Glastonbury is my all time favorite place in the world. I come there as often as I can as it has a very special admosphere. Glastonbury is one of those few places in the world that is im portant to more than one religion. It is important to christians and to pagans. To christians it was the site of the very first christian church above ground. When christians in Rome were still coming together in secret, here people could gather together in a church. Today the remains of the abbey built on the foundations of that church can still be seen. But Glastonbury is also very important to pagans. The Tor hill is said to be one of the gateways to th e ohterworld. And when you walk in town you can feel the energy in the town. So who would wan...

Had a very nice weekend break in Limburg with some friends and Nina the dog. We went to at tend the Elf fantasy fair in Arcen. It 's the second year it's been held in Arcen as well, before it only used to be in April in Haarzuilen. We arrived at the cottage Friday evening, rented in Landal green parc Roekenbosch which was close to Arcen. It is indeed a very nice location. T he castle gardens are well worth a visit ev en when there is no festival going on, I can really recommend th em. The reason that we went all this way were the lectures of Prof. Rotherham . This time the lecture was on woodland creatures. Very entertaining as always and learned some new things as well. Then for a few hours we wandered around the terrain , taking in the beautifull surroundings and of course admiring all the beautifull costumes. Some people come up with something new and wonderful for every fair, and by now there are a few around the year in the Netherlands. The grounds were so large that we b...

One of the interresting things in Lithuania was meeting the local people and seeing life not as a tourist. A lot of people living in the flats in Vilnius have a small summr cottage in what they call the garden. It is outside Vilnius and the last part to getting there is a very bad dirt road. One reason you don't want to be go ing there in the winter. On there are mostly small houses with a garden for vegetables, f ruit and flowers and often a small outside sauna. On the saturday evening we went to meet my friend's mother there. She is a very nice lady, does not speak anything but Lithuanian and Russian so direct communication was impossible. And yet she made me feel so welco me! I was fed homemade cake and tea from leaves in the garden and it was wonderful tea! Prett y soon the arcordeon came out and I was treated to her playing and singing traditio nal music. These are the things you just don't get to see when you stay on the tourist track. The generosity and kindness of ...

Two days of the trip to Lithuania were spend in Latvia. Now they are in the European union there are no bordercontrols anymore. But the roads are pretty bad, so it took us 4 hours to travel the 300 km from Vilnius to Riga. Riga has a very different feel from Vilnius. As it is situated on the coast it was one of the medieval hanse cities. With a lot of German influence, therefor the medieva l houses have much more of a west european feel to it. A very beautifull city, but not as different as Vilnius is. We did spend a lovely day there going into a few of the houses and looking at it all from the outside. Amongst the highlights were the cats house famous for two cat castiron statues on the roof and in the new part of town the very big russian church. Unfortunately I could not take pictures in there as it was fascinating . And very busy as well. We drove back to just over the border were we spend the night in Lithuania. Getting to Birzai was an adven ture as well, we had to travel ove...