View Post

How to Translate a Foreign Language Video on YouTube

In History Entrepreneur

If you’ve ever wanted to translate a foreign language video on YouTube, this is the post for you. Boy, if I had a dime for every time I found a documentary on a royal figure that’s in Russian, German, or some other language I don’t speak…I’d have enough money to buy a second monitor, that’s for sure. The technology isn’t …

View Post

Historical Research: What’s in a Name?

In History Entrepreneur

Hands down, the hardest part of research is keeping everything organized. When I started this project, it was just for fun. I didn’t realize it would snowball into three books, with hundreds of sources in four languages. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually know. That’s okay—it happens to just about everyone. But it meant …

View Post

A Writer’s Midlife Crisis

In Getting Personal, History Entrepreneur

There is a lie we tell our children. It goes something like this: “If you set your mind to a goal, you can achieve it. Anything is possible if you work hard enough.” We tell our kids they can be an astronaut, a ballerina, a basketball player, a physicist, or even the president. It’s not true. At least it wasn’t for me. I …

View Post

2016 Wrap-Up

In Getting Personal

Happy New Year’s weekend, everyone! Welcome to my year-end wrap-up, along with a few recommendations for amazing stuff to watch and read that I discovered in 2016. Although this year kind of sucked for obvious reasons, it wasn’t all bad. Here’s the proof. On to the wrap-up! In 2016, I published: The Dante Deception (thriller, Natalie Brandon #2) The Carmelite Prophecy …

View Post

The Carmelite Prophecy: Reading List

In The Natalie Brandon Series

This book was simultaneously fun and torturous to research. On the one hand, who wouldn’t want to prowl around the web and YouTube looking for pictures and video of a beautiful French church? On the other, I knew going in that a hell of a lot of people were killed there in a gory massacre in 1792. So there’s that. …

View Post

The Dante Deception – Chapter Six

In The Natalie Brandon Series

June 1978Moscow, U.S.S.R. Three loud raps on the door startled him. Valentin Lazovsky looked up from his dinner, a plate of pierogi Stepan had left in the icebox for him. He glanced at his father, slumped in a moss-colored chair in the next room. Makar’s head twitched at the knock, but nothing more. Valentin made a fist. He got up …

View Post

The Dante Deception – Chapter Five

In The Natalie Brandon SeriesLeave a Comment

April 1973Moscow, U.S.S.R. Stepan Lazovsky put on his overcoat, slipping the second button through the first hole. He fastened three more lopsided buttons on the way to the stairwell. In exactly two minutes, Vakhan Zyuganov would walk past the rear entrance to the General Staff building. They’d greet each other with surprise and shake hands. Stepan would ask the other …

View Post

The Dante Deception: Playlist

In The Natalie Brandon SeriesLeave a Comment

Every book I write has a soundtrack. It’s filled with songs that capture the mood of the story, or the point of view of a particular character. Here are the 23 songs that guided me through The Dante Deception. You can listen to the whole playlist on YouTube – or just click on any of the video images below. The …