(updated 2019 June 03)
A standing bit of advice (even a “sage”) for writers and writers hoping to become authors…
(‘Think an “author” is someone with a finished a book which is “alive,” as an actual manuscript one can hold in their hands…and if necessary, show to others as “proof.”)
…is to, “Write the book you want to read.”
This one works for James Hood. (Inset here imaginary smiley face)
After having read, enjoyed and pondered them and reread, re-pondered and reread-re-pondered them to the point of wanting an “après” cigarette upon finishing the last line, this writer will freely admit, he would have been thrilled beyond belief, to have been brilliant and imaginative-creative to have personally written:
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (also Mysterious Island, Around the World In Eighty Days and Robur the Conqueror)
- All 13 Horatio Hornblower and the equal number of WW I and II novels and collected short stories by Cecil Scott Forester
- All 14 original Ian Fleming James Bond novels
- Most all of the young adult historical fiction, “We Were There…” series by various authors in the 1950s and 60s
- And of course, varied timeless works by masters including Ernest Hemingway, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Edgar Rice Burroughs
Because the above tomes, along with much, much else (mostly tres‘ boring non fiction), is what this writer enjoys reading.
Delightfully, re-reading the two published Adventure— novels and much of the refined draught of several in-progress sequels, provides the same satisfaction. James Hood wrote two (to date) novels he enjoyed reading. Ya-hoo!
Sage piece of advice heeded. Mission accomplished, ‘am carrying on.
JAMES HOOD 