StanleyWheeler

 Truth in Flames is up for pre-order. It will be available for download in a week. I recommend ordering your copy now.

Here's a little excerpt from the book -- used with the author's permission, of course. The formatting got messed up when I pasted it in here. It's a conversation between Rip and Antonio: 

Rip said, “We’re after gunpowder. Unless the British are going to welcome us in and hand it over, I don’t expect you’ll have time to make inquiries for a señorita, who may not even be on the island.”

“I expect she’s been pining away for me these few years. Probably wasted away to a mere shadow of herself with grieving and waiting for my return.”

“So you think she has forgotten the pearl necklace you stole from her?”

“Captain, you wound me. She gave it to me. Or she would have if she had been there when I went to her room to find her.”

“Her only item of any monetary value.”

“I couldn’t have her leaving it. I knew she would want to bring it. I took it so she wouldn’t have to go back for it.”

“And so she lost it.”

“And it got us out of that sticky situation with the lieutenant who wanted to have a look at our cargo and papers. His sweetheart may wear those pearls now.”

“He probably sold them. He didn’t seem the type to have a sweetheart.”

“We sailed away as free and easy as legal merchants. You have Catalina to thank for that.”

“We best not find her then. She may want payment for the pearls.”

Antonio scowled. “A pretty young thing like Catalina is never without resources. Some fancy captain or governor’s lackey will be supporting her in style.”

“While she wastes away awaiting your return?”

“Inside, Captain. She’ll be wasting away on the inside..."

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Did you notice how the conversation above is quick, interesting, and builds some anticipation and tension for Antonio's encounter with Catalina? I mention those things because I've been watching The English via vidangel. I had heard good things about the show, but I'm 4 episodes in and trying to find a reason to keep watching. The dialog--and there's a lot of it--is long, slow, dull, and mostly pointless. Cue Roberta Flack, because it's killing me slowly with dialog--and slow shots of nothing happening. The 4th episode had me weighing the benefits of throwing myself into a woodchipper during the flashbacks and music playing over some dialog, which probably revealed a fact that will become important later--except it didn't reveal it to the audience. 

The conversation is too slow, and there's too much silence between words and exchanges. However, the use of the pop, pop, pop, pop, pop of the gatling gun in the distance was highly effective. It hammered the horror of the slaughter into the mind of the audience far more powerfully than any graphic display could have.

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Finally, Sons of Liberty. I'm glad I found the 3 one and a half hour episodes. I did like it. I give it three and a half flintlocks out of 5. What I'm about to say will make me sound completely enamored of my own work and unable to say anything good about potentially competing works. So let me reiterate, I did like it--just not as much as I had hoped. I think the main problem was that it tried to cover too much ground in too little time. The final episode covered Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, and the Declaration of Independence. It took five books in my series to get from Bunker Hill to the Declaration of Independence. Of course, I covered a whole lot of other ground as well. Now here's the part that makes me seem terrible. During the Bunker Hill and the Declaration of Independence portions of the episode, I couldn't keep from thinking that I did them so much better in my books. I imagine time, budgetary constraints, and the difficulties involved in getting the story to film account for many of the shortcomings. Still, I did do it better. Check out Threading the Rude Eye for my account of Bunker Hill.