Jack Whyte

Author: Historical Fiction. 17 Novels covering: Roman Britain/ Arthurian legend/ Knights Templar/ Scottish Wars. World wide in English and translated widely.

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

The lady on CNN said,”On this Inaugural Day, Elvis has left the building . . .And as for his big farewell event, I’ve seen more people at the Apple Store! He just caved, got into Marine 1, and flew away. Thank God!

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

I know I never woulda thunk I’d ever say it, let alone write it. But that’s how the world changes.Our language lives and changes constantly, but it continues to be English from day to day, so the quicker we accept that, the richer we’ll all be! And now Amazing Grace is in vogue!

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

But it was a time of swift, radical changes to everything; a time of huge shifts in priorities, when previously sacrosanct rules and conditions were being shattered. Who woulda thunk back then, for example, that any real writer would ever dare say that?

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

But of course there aren’t; not today; not in America . . . recognizing that caused a kind of sea change in me and threw me backwards into the Memory Zone, which is kinda like the Twilight Zone before TV came along. It was a time I seldom think of today...

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

Got a reality check this afternoon, watching Joe Biden’s excellent tribute to the previously unacknowledged 400,000 dead in the USA... A young nurse came on to sing, and I thought, "Please, no, not Amazing Grace again. There are other hymns out there…"

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

But then, God, last time I heard from Her, told me I ought to try as hard as I could to be a perennial butterfly, to steer clear of Winter, and to eschew all things Hibernian… Sadly, that offed my Irish forebears, such as they were, but it often left me happily afloat on a raft.

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

Whoo! Was I glad to read the responses ot my last post about the Covid Blahs! I knew I wan’t alone, but I had no idea of just how pervasive this lassitude is. Nice to know it’s not just ageism at work, though. So now I’m engaged afresh with being an aging non-techie in perplexity

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

@ivancoyote Congratulations, Ivan! I remember the first time we shared a smoke behind the theatre at the Sunshine Coast Fest, waiting for you to go on… I didn’t know who you were. Sure know now… Go get ’em.

[David Henry Headley @DavidHHeadley]

😂 Punctuation is important.

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

Another day gone, in a meandering, aimless exrecise in mild frustration and snail-paced ennui. Tiny, trivial things seem to take on gargantuan proportions in these days of Covidian, delusional misunderstandings, and really important stuff is left undone. Or is that just my fault?

[Iguana Books @Iguana_Books]

Iguana Books is thrilled to announce the publication of YESTERDAY'S BATTLES, a first book of #shortfiction by internationally best-selling author JACK WHYTE, @authorjackwhyte. Find out more and purchase your copy here: https://t.co/S7stUnIJlN

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

That tweet, with video accompaniment, can b e found, incidentally, @clairecmc, under the heading “Trying to figure out what he is laughing about."

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

I’ve just seen a tweet showing Mitch McConnell smiling patronizingly and laughing under questioning about COVID-19. Why was I not surprised to see he was scoffing at the evidently "silly woman" challenging him, and being blatantly obvious in his scornful disdain of her criticism?

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

@MalcolmRobin Hi, Robin! I’m wondering why you say “it’s a bit like a crash course in fitting the pieces together…” That’s an intriguing perspective, and it makes me want to ask, “Why the pervading sense of urgency?” Want to expand on that, on how you see it?

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

And let’s empathize, even more strongly, with those who just don't know what to try next… When I was sick and feeling really low from Chemo a year or so ago, I used to be scared that I might never, ever be able to string words together coherently again. That was really freakish!

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

I thought it might be good idea to release a short teaser from one of the new stories in “Yesterday’s Battles”, just as an enticement… But guess what? When you’ve pared something down to its essence, it’s tough to shorten what’s left! Let’s hear it for painstaking prose writers!

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

@MaryRobinette I have to say, Mary Robinette, that your on-line presentations on the elements of short story writing were a massive help in training me to focus on what I needed to be looking at when I set out to make the big jump from lo-o-ng fiction to short and pithy stories.

Thank you.

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

Anyone interested in talking, or even musing?) about the differences between writing long fiction (like novels) and short fiction, stories and novellas? I seriously doubted I could make the jump from 500-pages to ten pages or less, but hey! All you need do is tighten a few rules.

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

@VeritasKnight One more thought: an alternative… Are you intimidated, perhaps by the thought that, since you haven’t yet published anything short, you might not have a prayer of scoring with anything longer? That’s worth thinking about, B.S. though it might be, existentially.

[Jack Whyte @authorjackwhyte]

@VeritasKnight Okay, Veritas In keeping with your name, ask yourself this, truthfully: Which daunts you more, the 50,000-word threshold, or the scope of what you’d have to achieve to get there?