Helen Hollick's Blog

A friend and fellow writer, Helen Hollick, who is much more adept at the whole blog thing than I am, has started a page where she invites guests to be featured on her blog. This month I get that honor! Check out Helen's blog here - it's fun, lots of good stuff, and an interview with me, which does not detract much from the overall quality.

Free-Bees for the Winning!

Now is your chance to win free copies of my George Washington related titles! In celebration of Washington's Birthday, the publisher, McGraw-Hill/International Marine is running a sweepstakes on their Facebook page. So check it out and enter! If you win, you get a free book. If you lose, an old pirate comes to your door and hands you a paper with a black spot on it. Then you're on your own.

More Good News...

Just heard that the new book, With Fire and Sword, has been selected as a Military Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection and a History Book Club Main Selection. That's a nice honor, and the money I get from the sub rights sale will allow me to treat my whole family to pizza with three toppings!

With Fire and Sword will be in book stores March 1.

Off to Buffalo, NY and Ann Arbor next week for research on the next book, TBA. I would like to check out some of the War of 1812 sites, but I suspect they are under fifteen feet of snow.

Adding an increasing number of Author Events to the schedule for this year. You can check it out on my web site (which needs some serious work, and will get it, one of these days).

Another SIB

Here's one I made for my wife, Lisa, for her birthday. It's her and me sailing on the boat I owned when we met, a Newport 27. It is supposed to depict our first sail together. I wasn't sure she would like it - we have a lot of ships in bottles - but she cried when she saw what it was, which is always the reaction you want (as long as it's tears with something like, "Oh, honey, that's so romantic!" as opposed to "Oh! You cheap SOB, what I said I wanted was...").

Anyway, I was very happy with the reaction.

SIBs

That's Ships in Bottles. I've found a little time to pursue an old, favorite hobby, the traditional sailors' art of ships in bottles (a good activity when your entire world is buried in snow). Here's a Gloucester fishing schooner of pretty recent vintage. (SIBs are notoriously hard to photograph).