Writing and History Blog

This is a bit of an experiment for me. I haven’t always been a writer, in fact as a kid I absolutely hated writing and if you had told me back then that I would love writing I would have laughed in your face. But then I started dabbling in writing and have come a long way in the process. I first attempted to write a book when I was in 7th grade but it never really went anywhere and I didn’t get beyond 30 pages. Despite this short and ultimately fruitless foray into the writing world though, writing had begun to take its hold on me

A few years later, when I was in high school and college, I returned to my attempts to write a book but this time with a different subject in mind. More than almost anything, I love learning about history and in particular, military history. Whether the topic is the Battle of Kadesh, the oldest recorded battle that can be accurately recreated, or the more recent Iraq War, chances are I can tell you anything you might want to know about them and then some. They say write about what you love so I decided that, for my first truly serious attempt to write a book, I would write about the Eastern Front of WWII. WWII has held a particular fascination for me in my life, but it wasn’t until I was older and discovered more about the conflict between the USSR and Nazi Germany that I realized how little I actually knew about the subject. Having found a new area of history to explore, I resolved to write a comprehensive history of the conflict, writing down what I learned of it more or less as I learned about it through my research. In the process I created a manuscript that was over 400 pages long but of somewhat uneven quality.

While I immensely enjoyed my work on this project, however, as I was going through college, my thoughts started to drift more towards practical matters. I reasoned that, although my book might eventually be made into something that could succeed as a work of history, works of history themselves are not necessarily overwhelmingly financially successful. It therefore occurred to me that, if I wanted to make my writing more than just a hobby or passion project, I should turn my focus to creative writing. I therefore resolved to put my history of the Eastern Front on hold and start focusing on a new science fiction series instead. Despite the fictional nature of this new project, however, I still wanted to include my passion for history in this effort and it is for this reason I decided to make the series a sort of history itself. I decided to use my knowledge of history as the basis for creating the world and the story itself in order to create what I hope will be a very meaningful exploration of themes that have been present throughout the course of human history and which will surely have an impact on humanity’s future among the stars.

But what about the purpose of this blog? When I first created this blog back in college, I didn’t really have much of an idea of what I wanted to do with it. I more or less had only held out hopes that I could post essays that I had written for my college classes there and possibly garner some interest for them from the internet that might translate into interest for my book on the Eastern Front once it was completed. The pieces I wrote at that time can still be found under the “Old Stuff” tab but more recently I returned to this old blog, intent to find a new purpose for it. Rather than just posting whatever material I had from college, I will now be focused on creating new, original content specifically intended for this blog on a variety of historical topics, that I hope will be interesting to anyone looking to learn a little more about history. That said, this is not necessarily an overly serious effort on my part. This project more represents an outlet for my passion for history that I can tap into whenever I’m not focused on my science fiction writing. If all this sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to give everything a look and let me know what you think in the comments section. Similarly, if you should have any questions about the content you find on here, I am more than happy to answer them to the best of my abilities. Happy reading!