A kind reviewer of Ense Petit Placidam correctly observed that a balance must be struck between authentic dialogue and readability in such period pieces. He might not have been as kind had he seen the first draft. Thankfully my editor, who shall remain nameless (but whose first name can be translated as "mankind") toned it down and smoothed it out.
I can't help wondering though, if earlier Americans would have had an easier time of it, even long after "thee" and "thou" had faded from the language (except of course for Quakers and such). Colonial and Victorian America was highly literate for the times, and their reading primer was the finest example of the language ever set to print - the King James Bible.
This familiarity with the KJV carried over well into the beginning of the 20th century, but is fading fast. Today, for example, we call someone a "Nimrod," perhaps because it sounds vaguely like "knucklehead" or "dimwit." We get that from re-runs of old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Thing is, Bugs was being sarcastic when he called Elmer Fudd that, and the writers at the time presumed their audience would be familiar with Nimrod, the mighty hunter of the Bible.
I know, I know, I need to get with the times, and modern English is far more efficient. My wife and I were on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, where at the end Captain Jack holds forth on the wonders of treasure and rum. I leaned over to her and whispered in reply to Jack; "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal." She looked around as if to wonder if our fellow riders might think she was escorting a mental patient...

Behold, America as seen through a Honda Civic ad:

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7fNE/2014-honda-civic-today-is-pretty-great-song-by-vintage-trouble

It begins with flashed images of an anchorman broadcasting bad news, a trash heap, and a bankruptcy court, all to the sung words, "Today is pretty sad." It then backs away from the truth with a pretty girl saying that "there are great things too." By its tenth second, we're full-auto rainbows and unicorns as zany SWPL's tell the viewer how "today is actually pretty great!"

What makes today great? "Giving back," says a girl with a clipboard looking vaguely eco-conscious. "Being accepted for who you are," says a cosplay chick while walking to ComicCon. "What about chemistry?" says some Pajama Boy with a middlingly attractive blonde who in the real world would have friendzoned him at "hi".

Give them credit for putting yards of lipstick on the swine that passes for the American economy. Sure there's ruin all around you. But today is still pretty awesome!!1! Unemployed as you Millenials are, you've lots of time to give back to the society that has pissed away your future. Maybe you can volunteer for OFA and register suckers for Obamacare. That'll fill your days.

And hey, you can be accepted for who you are. Too bad who you are hasn't any prospect of making more than your parents. But at least you can wear costumes or onesies. Embrace your inner infant. Jobs and futures are adult stuff, and you've got neither.

We're half-a-decade into a supposed recovery, and this is what passes for the good life now? This is the best we can expect? This is what makes life pretty great?

Are you kidding me? This isn't the American Dream. It's not even a consolation prize.

An artist I once knew told me how she loved it whenever she saw a mistake in a painting or drawing. The smudged charcoal or the not quite perfectly blended stroke of acrylic, she explained, was the fingerprint of the artist. It let you know someone real had created it.

I'd loved the idea of "artist's fingerprints" ever since, whether they're goofs in movies or prose. An example: Watson tells us in the first Sherlock Holmes story of how he took a Jezail bullet in the shoulder, but in a later novel he says it's his leg. How cool is that little bit of incongruity, especially in the canon of the most precise character to ever grace fiction?

Easy to forgive and even celebrate artistic fingerprints of others, though. A little harder for oneself, it turns out.

In my introductory story here at Liberty Island, "The Wreck of the Hu Jintao", our protagonist tells us, "It takes oxygen to fire a bullet. On either wrist I had sealed-system gun barrels, each capable of firing a single round." An acquaintance of mine helpfully emailed me yesterday, "Loved your story, but you can fire a gun in outer space because gunpowder contains its own oxidizer. Sorry."

After confirming this with a two second Google search, a question presented itself: email the LI editors about a correction or let the mistake stand? It'd be easy to fix. All it would take is striking the sentence about needing oxygen to fire a bullet. Most readers won't know the difference, but if it stays it'll cost me credibility with those that do. I can't think of any reason in the world to leave it in.

Except that it's a fingerprint.

I may yet change it. I probably should. But for the time being, it'll stay.

So, yesterday I came across something that made my romantic, idealistic heart break a little bit. Not because I'm actually emotionally invested in any of the players involved, but just because it was, well... uuhh. Depressing? I don't know. Anyway, the whole everything about this bugs the ever-livin' ish outta me.

It started with a pseudo open letter thingy blogish amalgamation on the Huffington Post titled, "If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It." It was written by Lynn Shepherd, another published author. In the blog post thing Shepherd pretty much blames Rowling for other writers being poor.

That's what I got from it, anyway. I don't know. Reading it made my head hurt. Have a headache on me (or Ms. Shepherd... or Ms. Rowling - or whoever): http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lynn-shepherd/jk-rowling-should-stop-writing_b_4829648.html

Then I went to the bottom of that post and clicked the links to Ms. Shepherd's book listings on Amazon. What I found there was equally depressing. Looks like a lot of people took issue with her admonition of Rowling and decided to give her what for in the review sections of her book listings.

It's just a whole big mess of Whaa???

What do you think? About any of it. Thoughts? Comments?

For the record, I love seeing other writers make lots of money. It means people still READ.

I have cogitated on this for a week now, and I am pleased to say that I have finally given up on chosing one favorite character. I rather like some of the characters I've written (of course), and I hope to share those with my readers. But for the nonce (see? I like using strange words) I have to admit defeat. I don't have a favorite fictional character.

That is not to say that there aren't contenders. Try: Rod Gallowglass, Thorby Baslim, Dr. Charles Forbin, Clark Fries, Matrim Cauthon, Jack Ryan, Evelyn Cyril Gordon, Spock, Chief Inspector Chen Cao, Jame Retief, Arthur Philip Dent... for a start.

The problem is that I refuse to focus. I cannot choose one favorite thing - which translates into me being passing familiar with a lot of things, and an expert at none. Well, maybe software engineering. Sort of.

At any rate, I hope to be able to discipline myself sufficiently so that I can push some reasonably entertaining fiction out through my creative port-hole, and if some of it strikes your fancy, then

Look! Something new on Drudge!!!!

Francis X. Gordon aka El Borak! This is a character invented by pulp meister Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan). Ever since grade school I've been interested in history with the British Empire and its little wars all over the world, especially exotic India and other places in the middle and far east, just the perfect playground for Howard, who also a great history buff in his time. El Borak ("the swift!") was an American adventurer in the far east who gets involved in murder plots and intrigue between empires laces with plenty of action packed sword fights. But then, Gordon was only one of several Howard characters that I dig which also include Solomon Kane, a Puritan adventurer in the seventeenth century who fights everything from French musketeers to vampires to African juju! Next is King Kull, Howard's precursor to Conan, who began as a barbarian mercenary who rose to the throne of a decadent empire much as real barbarians did in the Roman Empire.
And then there are the heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs beginning with Tarzan (do I really need to explain who he is?) then moving on to John Carter of Mars, Carson Napier of Venus, David Innes of Pellucidar (an antedeluvian world at the center of the Earth), and a number of others.
Oh! And then there's The Shadow and Captain Future and a legion of other pulp heroes...I guess what draws me to these characters is their representation of what it was meant at one time to be an American hero ie one who was sure of his God, his country, and himself. The kind of man who, when faced with a problem, solved it and didn't waste too much time agonizing over snail darters or global warming. When they saw something that needed getting done, they did it be it winning world wars or building the Panama Canal.
In film, I kind of see actor Kenneth Tobey's portrayal of Capt. Patrick Hendry in films like "The Thing" or Rex Reason as Dr. Cal Meacham in "This Island Earth" as the embodiment of this can do spirit.

This is a tough question for me. I'm not sure if I'm unusual in this, but while I write fiction, I tend to read non-fiction, so my favorite "characters" are more typically real people like Desmond Doss (if you don't know who this man is, google him now. I'll wait...) or Louie Zamperini (whose story is told so well in "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand). As I write this it strikes me that one thing both these men have in common was a sense of faith. While Doss's actions arose from a deep abiding faith, Zamperini took the long road to get to a place of similar trust in his God.

That being said, one of the most real characters I've ever read in a book was Gus McCrae in "Lonesome Dove." An engaging, brave, competent man, he was also flawed and egotistical. In other words, just like us. I loved Atticus Finch, from "To Kill a Mockingbird," especially when I was younger, but I realize now that I wanted to have that kind of understanding, idealized father for myself as a teen.

In the tradition of Robert Heinlein, The Magnificent Seven, and the glory of the first Star Wars movie, this novel delivers an unwilling team of heroes called to fight on behalf of an alien civilization in another galaxy. The logistics of how these men in their planes are pulled to another planet are not what matter. How these men react to the king and his request for help, how they team up in battle, how many obstacles the enemy throws at them - this is the stuff of great military, patriotic and historical fiction. Many of the scenes read like a World War II battle, especially the unbearable invasion and casualty count at Normandy. Our heroes are called upon to revisit earth, to steal some Nazi weaponry (and a few surprises, too) in an agonizing and prolonged case of "torture the protagonist." Be prepared to suffer as you fall in love with every character, only to see one after another fall in battle. This is a great story, perhaps marred by an occasional trope of the romance genre, Point-of-View violations, and iffy science, but David Weber is right: "It's all about the voice. A confident, strong, enthusiastic voice will hide a multitude of sins." (Sarah Hoyt, thanks for that quote.) This is a great novel, rousing, epic, inspiring and patriotic, with characters you'll never forget.