Flashback Fridays #3

This week’s look into the past was originally published on April 9, 2020. I skipped over about a week of posts that were mainly about how the Island of Stone was performing in that first week after publishing. I chose the post below because it gives some insight into how that particular book rose from the ether.

It all came down to being burned out researching for my early, historically based fiction. In my basement, I still have binders and notebooks full of all sorts of research for both Vril and The Slaying of the Bull. The Bull in particular was a huge undertaking, with it being set in the 13th century and on a topic that hasn’t been particularly well-researched– the Mongol invasion of Hungary. I wanted the book to have a strong, historically accurate foundation, and that meant spending a lot of time in rabbit holes. I reached out to curators, I borrowed books from all over the world (MIT’s Libraries were a godsend), I obtained blueprints from the Catholic Church, and even travelled to some of the locations, including Budapest. At the time, I really thought I was producing something great. Did I? Probably not, but I get an A for effort. It is a long book, and as you will see, it was going to be even longer. I began to write the sequel, which was going to take place seventeen years after the first and centered around the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258, but I will likely never get back to it. My passion is well-rooted in Dark Fantasy now.

Anyway, it is a neat snapshot. Check it out!

Cheers!