COURAGE, WITH NO HOPE:  THE MEN OF RADAR LIMA SITE 85 The last North Vietnamese attack of the January Tet offensive began on March 10, 1968, when NVA soldiers scaled a cliff at Phou Pha Thi, Laos, to destroy an American radar site … Continue reading →

The Tet, February 29, 1968 The Tet attack on Huễ became the longest battle during the Tet offensive of 1968. It began when Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops stormed the citadel, or fort, of the city of Huễ on January 31, 1968, and overwhelmed … Continue reading →

On this day in 1968, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, American marines defended the assault on Khe Sanh that had begun with the Tet Offensive. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacked the marine air base with trenches and artillery in … Continue reading →

The way led down a paved road, then another mile on a rough road past a farmhouse, then off the road altogether along a rutted lane that disappeared into the woods.  Two turnings later the path stopped in a forest … Continue reading →

October 25 is St. Crispin’s Day, originally celebrated for a cobbler who was martyred by the Romans in AD 286 but in modern times known for the startling English victory over the vastly larger French army at Azincourt on October 24, 1415.  For … Continue reading →

Apart from grammar, there are few steadfast rules for writing books. Some of the most revered works tell the ending on page one, use unconventional structures such as three line paragraphs or one paragraph chapters, or employ run-on sentences that … Continue reading →

You have the story in your head. You’ve overcome the time / space conundrum so that you’re alone with your word processor at your kitchen table or, better yet, in your study. Now, all that’s left is to get started … Continue reading →

“What I find hard about writing,” Nora Ephron said, “is the writing.” There’s a difference between writing and typing. Writers produce. Typists reproduce. Okay, that’s a bit harsh. Writers believe that a story worth telling is worth telling well. Writers … Continue reading →

Good book chapters are like bad treasure maps. They will lure you in. They will lead you through uncharted territory. Yet, at the end, they will not yield the treasure—they will just make you want to continue the search. What … Continue reading →

A truth: the planning of the story continues until the last galley is ripped from your hands and the printer won’t take any more calls from the publisher, the editor, or you. It continues to the very, very end. A … Continue reading →

Readers who have some passing knowledge of literature might be startled when in reading The Three Musketeers they encounter a passage in which D’Artagnan refers to Gulliver’s Travels. The dilemma is that The Three Musketeers is set more than a hundred years before Jonathan Swift … Continue reading →

The United States declared war on Germany on April 1, 1917. Germany had offered to return Texas and the other border states to Mexico if it would join the war on Germany’s side. Germany also announced that it would resume unrestricted … Continue reading →

You may have heard the expression “writing voice” or “writer’s voice.” Perhaps an editor has even told you that you need to develop your voice as a writer. Or maybe you heard that a fresh voice can help you stand … Continue reading →

Autumn is the season when word processors develop twitches in keyboards. Writers emerge from summers abroad, agents hunger for a new voice, publishers finally release the hidden gems that will save their industry. Book reviews burst with new titles and … Continue reading →

By Judy Rose, Contributing Editor Jack Woodville London’s voice is that of a southern gentleman. Smooth. His life transitions appear to be equally smooth. For instance, his transition from writing legal briefs to creating fiction. At the memory, the longtime … Continue reading →

Very few people today know anyone who was involved in World War I.  Fewer still have heard of the French hamlet of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, rarely mentioned by name in headlines in a season in which the recapture of St. Quentin and … Continue reading →

The Corps of Engineers has a law enforcement section. While cleaning some right of way for a new project, they had to remove a small grove of trees and, unfortunately, they discovered a cemetery that was not marked on any … Continue reading →

Jack Woodville London and the American Authors Association announce the First Annual A Novel Approach Literary Contest. Please join us in this celebration of your creative writing. Here are the rules. 1. JWLBooks has published on-line the writing series A Novel … Continue reading →

I am besotted with the search for the bones of Richard III. Archeologists, working from a scrap of map dug up in a dusty file, may have pinpointed the site of the Grey Friars chapel that vanished after Henry VIII’s … Continue reading →

When I was about 10 or so I read a book, The Red Car, in which a boy in a farm town somehow manages to buy a wrecked MG, repair it, and go on to races and adventures. For the rest … Continue reading →

Naples, the most bombed city in Italy, is flanked by Salerno on one side, Anzio on the other. Texas’ 36th Infantry Division was the first American unit to land on mainland Fortress Europe, wading ashore under fire. After months in … Continue reading →

“We sailed away from there with heavy hearts and reached the country of the Cyclopes…” From the Odyssey. As the plane banked around Mount Aetna and began to descend toward Catania I wondered whether my odyssey would have any semblance … Continue reading →

Over the five day period surrounding Mothers’ Day 2012 my first novel, French Letters: Virginia’s War, rose to Number One on Amazon Kindle downloads in the category of war fiction, an astonishing compliment to an anti-war novel set on the home … Continue reading →

On the second Sunday of this month we honor our mothers. On the last Monday we honor our fellow citizens who gave their lives in our military service. Few realize how much these two special days have in common. Our … Continue reading →

Better still, ‘Hold a Soldier.’ I was one of the very lucky ones. When I was in the Army I had pretty safe assignments. I was never to my knowledge shot at, at least not by the enemy, and my … Continue reading →

In anticipation of Veterans Day, or Armistice Day as we once named it and Remembrance Day as it still is known in some countries, we proposed a writing competition on the subject of patriotism, a trait all too often claimed … Continue reading →

In this anniversary month of the commencement of the Civil War, of the battles to capture Italy and the liberation of concentration camps in Germany, it does well to reflect on the thoughts that occupied the minds of those who … Continue reading →

On this day in April, 1941, Libya was on fire. General Rommel had begun to counterattack. British troops were about to become trapped at Tobruk. It would be another two more years of desert war before Libya was safe and would … Continue reading →

In the 1940’s, American production not only succeeded in building tanks and bombers, it brought life to the desert. During World War II the United States Army’s Preventive Medicine Service brought penicillin to Libya and, with it, survival against common … Continue reading →

Remember Great Expectations from high school English (if you were born before 1960) or the movie (Gwyneth Paltrow, Ethan Hawke, (if you were born later)? Pip, the humble farm lad, Miss Favesham, the conniving spinster, and Pip’s Uncle Joe, the … Continue reading →

Charles Dickens was the master of using coincidence as a literary device to portray social horrors. Oliver Twist condemned to the workhouse by greedy guardians, Sydney Carton making up for his wasted life by volunteering for a guillotine manned by … Continue reading →

Sometimes I need to step down from my perch as author of historical novels, as lawyer and traveler, and just be me. That is when I think about history as it unfolds. Today it unfolds as flames of war in … Continue reading →

You know from my blog, or my reviews, or my Facebook postings, or my e-mails, that I have, shall we say, an eclectic taste in reading.    My fiction list, posted December 30, included stories about a murderous Filipino doctor, a 14th … Continue reading →

Let’s start with fiction.  To be blunt, there just isn’t enough  good fiction.  There is some rumble afoot that my next novel, due out whenever, should be named The Da Vinci Girl Who Kicked Harry Potter’s Vampire.  Pay attention here … Continue reading →

  What’s the perfect gift?  That is the question, isn’t it, especially if it is better to give than to receive.  But what’s the answer?  Where to begin?  What to do?  So, I began with ‘Where to go to shop? — … Continue reading →

Have you ever stumbled into something that is too good to be true, but turns out to be true? Several years ago I needed a special doctor to explain an MRI, a film that showed where a brain tumor in … Continue reading →

I just had the good fortune to have been invited by Stewart Vanderwilt to a lunch presentation by General Montgomery Meigs. He is a retired Army general, twice commander of US troops in Bosnia during that war and most recently head … Continue reading →

“Maybe Africa should never have been called the Dark Continent; I find it nice here and wish you could see the wild flowers.”  An artillery soldier in April 1943, during the drive to capture Tunisia.   “To hear their piteous crys for … Continue reading →

Soldiers have written home to comfort and console their loved ones since Plutarch wrote to Timoxena during the wars of Alexander the Great. Their letters tell us of their lives, their thoughts, their fears and hopes — a window into … Continue reading →

This is a hard photograph to look at, but please do. It’s about us. One of the most blistering comments made about a recent president was that he was born on third base and grew up thinking he had hit … Continue reading →

In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved, … Continue reading →

Fist. Club. Rock. Sword. Spear. Arrow. Gun. Cannon. Tank. Bomb. Mushroom cloud.Mushroom. Glade. Hollow. Grave. Tomb. Tombstone. Cemetery. Arlington. Colleville. Army. Navy. Marines. Air Force. Reserve. Mothers. Fathers. Wives. Daughters. Sons.Gone to flowers, every one.God bless those who, knowing that … Continue reading →

Major Thomas Howie used a field telephone to tell his commanding officer that his battalion of the 116th regiment would not quit until Howie would “See you in St. Lo,” the critical French crossroads market town defended by Germany and … Continue reading →

Flee, yes, but where? After more than two thousand years of doing laundry in their quiet streams, a thousand years after William the Conqueror left Normandy for England, after four years of being conquered by German occupation, and a few … Continue reading →

Flee, yes, but … where? The laundry women may first have heard the sound of war twenty or thirty miles away at the landing beaches, but they would not have known that the war coming to them until this notice fluttered … Continue reading →

Rivers not only brought boat loads of wine, grain, fruit, and construction materials (and Norsemen), they also brought people together. Every village in France had a place along the river for women to gather. In a European equivalent of the … Continue reading →

Rivers were the roads of France since before Caesar led the Romans into Gaul. Towns were built on rivers for trade but, as the French learned, the rivers also brought disaster: the Vikings drove deep into France on the Seine … Continue reading →

January 1, 2010, was the first New Years Day that I woke up without calling my friend Marty. Marty was my Army pilot, my Spurs buddy, and one of the Best Men at my and Alice’s wedding. Marty made me laugh, taught … Continue reading →

Alice called me during a book festival signing last Saturday and asked a rather pointed question — “Are you bringing home more books than you took to sell?” Her concern, driven by the need for more bookshelves, neither began nor … Continue reading →

My friend Mitchell, in charge of machine guns for Colt Firearms, was the first civilian flown to Pearl Harbor, arriving late on December 8, 1941. Hours before the President announced to the country that the Japanese had attacked, the Army had hustled … Continue reading →

…how did Clarke Kent’s mother make his costume? It took me over four years to write French Letters: Virginia’s War. Why? It’s not that long and compared to, say, War and Peace or Harry Potter, not all that complicated. Answer: … Continue reading →

In the mid 1600’s, days of quill pens and before there was a single paved road in America, France built the Canal du Midi, connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean with a waterway that runs up and over mountain ranges and … Continue reading →

Where I write….When I signed French Letters at Hastings Book Store in Amarillo a week or two ago one proud owner of a signed first edition looked at my illegible scrawl and said ‘Well, I hope you can type –you … Continue reading →

Colleville sur Mer, France(Photograph taken by Ian and Wendy) The American military cemetery at Colleville is humbling, a vast, quiet, immaculate resting place for thousands of young men. Alice and I went to Colleville, to Ste. Mere Eglise, and to … Continue reading →

“I do want to let you know that those planes were a welcome sight to us. We watched them on their way toward Germany and later, on their way back toward England, the stragglers which obviously had been hit and … Continue reading →

My wife, Alice, is a graduate of Sophie Newcomb college, adjunct to Tulane University. We had plans to meet with her Newcomb and Tulane friends the Labor Day weekend of 2005 but, unfortunately, by Labor Day there was no Sophie Newcomb … Continue reading →

She floats! Thank you for such a wonderful launch party! Book People ran out of space for people to stand and ran out of copies for me to sign. Mindy Reed slipped out during the signing and came up with … Continue reading →

The launch : February 13, 2009, at Book People, in Austin, Texas. What’s in a name?All my life I have been asked about my name: “Are you related to the author?” “Are you Jack London?” When Editor Mindy reed and I began … Continue reading →

Book Launch February 13, 2009 Welcome to French Letters, The Novels. I hope you will enjoy reading about the books and the people who have helped to bring them to publication. This blog is for you to share those stories and to … Continue reading →