… even if you find the same story written in many places. You’ll all have heard the quote from Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” It doesn’t even have to be a lie. If people believe something, they…
I’m one of those people who believes that when you write about real historical events, it isn’t your place to change facts. For example, unless you’re writing alternative history, you can’t move the Battle of Waterloo from 1815 to 1820, or 1795 simply because it suits your story better. In my novel, I’ve stuck to…
Have you ever wondered about how easy it is to cut off somebody’s head with one blow of a sword? No, I hadn’t either until I wrote ‘To Die a Dry Death’. It’s one of the most famous of the many murders, often quoted, how with just one blow with a sword, one of the…
Many books have been written about the infamous events surrounding the wreck of the Dutch merchantman Batavia in 1629. My novel, To Die a Dry Death, is just another one. But I believe I’ve given a different slant on events. Having grown up in Western Australia, I heard about the Batavia and the other Dutch…