Books like Smuggling — picked by fans

I’ve written three historical novels, all centered around how women’s roles in society began to change. While accustomed to writing about Victorian traditions on land, I can’t tell the difference between an oar and a clam. So imagine my panic when a captain showed up in my head and insisted that I write a novel about sailing a tall ship in 1894. I crawled into the local library to see if I could even write such a thing. The books on this list and others became my portal into naval traditions so I could write accurate fiction with a modern soul.

I’ve written three historical novels, all centered around how women’s roles in society began to change. While accustomed to writing about Victorian traditions on land, I can’t tell the difference between an oar and a clam. So imagine my panic when a captain showed up in my head and insisted that I write a novel about sailing a tall ship in 1894. I crawled into the local library to see if I could even write such a thing. The books on this list and others became my portal into naval traditions so I could write accurate fiction with a modern soul.

I’ve written three historical novels, all centered around how women’s roles in society began to change. While accustomed to writing about Victorian traditions on land, I can’t tell the difference between an oar and a clam. So imagine my panic when a captain showed up in my head and insisted that I write a novel about sailing a tall ship in 1894. I crawled into the local library to see if I could even write such a thing. The books on this list and others became my portal into naval traditions so I could write accurate fiction with a modern soul.

I’ve written three historical novels, all centered around how women’s roles in society began to change. While accustomed to writing about Victorian traditions on land, I can’t tell the difference between an oar and a clam. So imagine my panic when a captain showed up in my head and insisted that I write a novel about sailing a tall ship in 1894. I crawled into the local library to see if I could even write such a thing. The books on this list and others became my portal into naval traditions so I could write accurate fiction with a modern soul.

I've been fascinated by cultures shrouded in secrets and mystery since childhood, a fascination that intensified when efforts to unravel the mystery and expose the truth were stonewalled, leading to frustrating dead-ends.  I spent decades trying to uncover the truth history obscures through research that included travel to the lands of secrets, mystery, and sometimes outright lies. As a writer, I draw from experience, education, and imagination because I know it's sometimes necessary to wrap truth in fiction to protect it. The books I've selected speak to that reality.

I have chosen this area of literature because I enjoy expanding my horizons. I love to find out about stories from different cultures and different times that will open my eyes to things I would never have thought about before. The depth of the writing is important to convey the emotions felt by the characters. This is what inspires me in my writing and my book that I have chosen to highlight here is also a story of historical fiction, influenced by my experience of living in Slovakia and finding out from residents about how incredibly different life had been in their country.

I’m an author, a reader, and a second generation sci-fi geek. For me, space caper novels are the ultimate escape. Both fun and intellectually stimulating, they allow readers to safely explore adventures beyond the constraints of law, morality, and our planet.

I once had a history advisor in school whom I informed that I was studying history so I could write fiction better. I saw him cringe a bit at that. Even so, I think that history and fiction–and the mystery–go together well. I am always drawn by mystery dramas–and by the drama of real lives facing and unraveling their way through real events. Of course, that led to graduate studies in cultural and intellectual history, to many years of teaching literature, and to passionate reading of mystery novels. Sparkling fiction and strong narrative history, for me, continue to stimulate a sense of wonder at human experience and this incredible universe we live in.    

Comedy and science fiction have special places in my heart. I’m fascinated with the prospect of what AI and machine learning might bring us, and I believe to laugh and enjoy life is to be healthy and content. The best humor is revealed through character relationships. I grew up watching Doctor Who, a show that presented a serious story with lighthearted moments. Douglas Adams put that same formula in his books. For ten years I honed my writing skills producing graphic novels, where you had to tell a story and inject humor onto one page. Now novel writing is my means of bringing a little joy to the world.

I grew up on the coast of South Carolina, where many of the Golden Age pirates were welcomed as business associates and charming guests by some of the most influential people of the day. They are, to this day, considered local heroes. I read everything I could lay hands on about them, fiction and histories, and I knew my first book would have to be about the pirate I always pretended I could be, if I’d only been born two hundred years ago.