The “Swiss Journalist” wrote:  Hi Griff, hope things are well. Can we talk on the phone tomorrow? I have to ask you something…

And I thought to myself:  This is how it starts.

It begins with “Can you do me a favor?” and it ends up with you running for your life through a muddy swamp at midnight, being chased down by rifle-toting guards who are accompanied by dogs that don’t respond to commands in English planning on playing “fetch” with my giblets.

So I said, “Sure!”…

I have my once-a-year cold.  Nothing miserable, just a low grade energy drain, which means I basically have the ambition to drive to work, work, then drive home and more or less fall into to bed.  Motivation for the other things that make life worth living (writing, spending time with The Rib, or wrestling with the cats and dogs) is sadly absent.

Like me, my son Cameron both celebrates and curses our genetics.  We’re cheered that we very rarely fall ill to whatever bug is going around, our joints are sound, and so on.  We grumble that in the DNA dice game of life, we got the “you will start losing your hair in your mid-twenties” snake eyes.

You win …

Haven’t discovered the title for Book Four (the last, I swear!) of my By the Hands of Men series.

But I did finish the first part (working title “Ringside at the Circus of the Fallen”).

I’m hard at work on the next section, which I call “A New Love.”

Meanwhile, a peek of me back in my “Getting Paid to be Errol Flynn” days, when I was the 61st Aviation Rescue Swimmer in the Coast Guard.

(Rare photo of me in my dry-suit…that water in San Francisco could be cold.  The dry-suit is discolored from the time I was crawling around the very greasy engine of a sinking fishing boat, trying to stop the leak.  Ah, youth.)

 …

Why Trump?

This seems to be the question a lot of perplexed Europeans are asking of Americans:  “Why in the world would you vote for Trump?”

Before we begin, google the term “JournoList” and the name “Jonathan Gruber.”  I’ll wait.

Quickly, you’ll discover that JournoList was a private email list made up of a number of writers and reporters for major news organizations in the United States.  In 2008, this private email list of the people who craft and create the news presented to Americans declared themselves the “unofficial Barack Obama election committee.”  They were preplanning smears of critics of the glory that would be the First Black President of the US, all the while claiming to …

Guy’s blog on his grandfather’s Coast to Coast trip in 1922.

“I received a transcribed copy of my granddad’s journal which details his journey with three friends across the US in a Model T. I became very interested in his trip and then discovered he had taken pictures along the way.”

Haven’t got a chance to read much, but still…looks damned interesting.

The election?  Oh, that.  Well, I’ll have something to say about that on Thursday.  KGB asked for a Op-Ed on it, we’ll see if they publish that, first.

 …

The Historical Novel Society is a ” literary society devoted to promoting the enjoyment of historical fiction.”

They also reviewed Into the Flames and The Wrath of a Righteous Man, bless ’em.

Of Into the Flames they said:  “In this second book of the series, Roy Griffis continues where he left off in the first volume – the violence and dreadful conditions of war, the cheapness of life and the cruelty of man – and all without overstating the gruesome parts… the writing is excellent and easy to read, and the plots are well crafted. Recommended.”

And the reviewer had this response to The Wrath of a Righteous Man:  “In this third volume, Roy Griffis explores the character …

But here is a nice review for “The Old World” from an English website dedicated to Historical Fiction.  

“Without ever sinking to graphic descriptions, Roy Griffis captures the horror and brutality, the terrible injuries and the severe conditions under which those men and women lived for so long. Can love survive these trials?

“With its excellent characterisation, tenderness amongst the carnage and with a fast-paced style, I can thoroughly recommend this book.”

(just as a side note, I find reviews like this fascinating because of things like “with a fast-paced style.”  It’s not how I think of my writing…I just write the story I’m hearing in my head, if that makes any sense.)…