(Disclaimer: I won’t go into the question of whether Shakespeare wrote all those plays and poems or someone else did.  It doesn’t matter here.  Someone wrote them and did a helluva job.) I appreciate the reverence accorded William Shakespeare, but also am amused by...

With monstrous head and sickening cry. and ears like errant wings, The Devil’s walking parody on all four-footed things. G.K. Chesterton (1874- 1936)             I have no idea how many characters, real and fictional, I’ve met in thirty-seven years of historical...

The title quote is from William Wordsworth's Prologue to Peter Bell About the ring on the cover of Devilish: a dragon eating its own tail is called Ouroboros.  It’s a symbol of eternity that goes back at least 3,000 years.  That was when, as explained in the Wikipedia...

            The Old King’s Highway chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution recently invited me to speak at their meeting.  I always enjoy visiting with members of the D.A.R.  Not only are they nice people, they’re one of the few organizations that focus on...

Landscape between Benson and Dragoon, Arizona        When I lived in southern Arizona in 1972 I never imagined I would write a book, much less a story set there.  Twenty-seven years later I was driving through my old Arizona haunts while researching a sixth historical...

       Here’s what that brilliant, scrofulous 18th-century English curmudgeon, Samuel Johnson, wrote about Americans.  “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.”  Now why would Dr. Johnson say such a...