Jack of Harts

I spend a lot of time studying history as part of my Captain William Carter stories. Weapons. Ships. Fortresses. Cultures. Nations.

I’ve learned more in the last three or four years writing these stories than I have in decades, and I actually studied stuff like this for fun before. Now I’m more targeted, and it is really interesting to see what is out there. What we have done. How the world has changed. How it hasn’t. Language is one obvious bit that has changed. But its interesting that the intents we speak with the changing words are often very much the same.

Don’t hurt my friends. Respect my property. And if you don’t, we’re going to have to do something about that. A lot of people have found out a lot of things over the last few thousand years of human civilization, after they spent a lot of time messing around with other people. Civilization is a never ending wave of people coming and going, and every few centuries there’s a big change where one people fall and another rise. There’s not a single piece of land that hasn’t been fought over. The places don’t change. The cities remain. The names change as cultures fall and rise. There’s a lot of history in the names.

And it is awful fun to study them.