On learning Ukrainian before Russian, and the politics of foreign language study

Regular readers will know that language learning is one of my lifelong pursuits and hobbies.

I’ve received some emails of late about the prospect of learning Ukrainian. Do I plan to study it? Should you be studying it?

First, the obvious disclaimers. If you’re learning Ukrainian for reasons of love, or heritage, or a desire to move to Kyiv at some point in the future, then by all means learn Ukrainian.

And if you just really like the idea of learning Ukrainian, that’s okay, too. But if you’re reading this (or asking me about it), you probably have a more practical turn of mind.

Ukrainian has a base of about 27 million speakers. Numerically, that places it on the same level as Thai, Tagalog, or Dutch. Ukrainian isn’t Latvian (1.5 million speakers). But it isn’t Spanish, French, or Russian, either.

Speaking of Russian: Most Ukrainian speakers also speak Russian—for now, at least. Prior to the current conflict, many Ukrainians used Russian as their language of daily life, a remnant of Soviet times.

There is an active campaign within Ukraine to extirpate the Russian language and replace it with Ukrainian. The outcome of those efforts will likely hinge on the outcome of the war.

But what about you, an English-speaker who (presumably) wants to learn a Slavic language? Going by the numbers, Russian—with 258 million speakers worldwide—makes a lot more sense.

Not all of those speakers are in Russia. I recently met a young woman from Uzbekistan. Her English was minimal, but she spoke fluent Russian. (Uzbekistan is a former Soviet Republic.)

Another consideration is the availability of learning materials. Russian language pedagogy in the West goes back decades. When I was a college student in the 1980s, you could find textbooks and cassette courses to help you learn Russian. Every major language learning app (Pimsleur, Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, etc.) has developed Russian language learning materials in considerable depth and breadth.

Ukrainian, on the other hand, was an almost-never-studied language in the West until 2022. That too, may change. But such a change will take years.

I have the impression that some language learners in the West are choosing Ukrainian over Russian as a self-congratulatory political statement. Kind of like putting the Ukrainian flag on your social media profile.

Once again: you be you. As for me, though: “Russia” has been many things in my lifetime. When I was a kid, Russia was the center of the USSR. Then it was Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. Now it’s Putin’s Russia.

In ten years, Russia will probably be something else. But my guess is: there will still be more Russian speakers than speakers of any other Slavic language. (Even Polish only has 41 million speakers.)

I’ve lived long enough to have learned that while politics change, languages don’t. (At least, they don’t change that much within any human lifespan.)

If I were going to learn a Middle Eastern language, I would pick Arabic (373 million speakers) over Hebrew (9 million speakers). This has nothing to do with my feelings about the Arab-Israeli conflict, which—like Russia—has changed significantly within my lifetime. I would pick Arabic because Arabic is spoken in at least twenty countries, while Modern Hebrew is spoken in only one.

After I learned Arabic, then I might take on Hebrew. I have nothing against Hebrew, mind you. But when approaching a language family, I say: all things being equal, learn the major ones first. Spanish before Italian. Mandarin before Cantonese. German before Norwegian, Swedish, or Dutch.

And yes, Russian before Ukrainian, without strong motivating factors to the contrary. You won’t be drafted into the Russian Army as a result. I promise.

-ET

**View Ukrainian language-learning resources at Amazon**

Trump, abortion, and election-year pragmatism

In my 1980s youth, no one was arguing over the question of “what is a woman?” It was a blissfully boring era in which people of common sense agreed on most things.

But even in the 1980s, abortion was a point of heated disagreement and controversy. Abortion was legal, owing to the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. Many people disagreed. Then, as now, the most reliable way to get a room full of people mad at each other was to start a conversation about abortion.

Nevertheless, there was a national consensus. Most people, on the right and the left, understood that abortion was a complicated issue with overlapping rights. An early abortion following a sexual assault was not the same thing as a late-term sex-selection abortion (a commonplace horror in China), to cite one example.

In the 1988 US Presidential election, Michael Dukakis, a pro-choice Democrat, said, “I don’t think abortion is a good thing.” He then went on to state that this difficult decision should be left to a woman and her doctor. Bill Clinton famously coined the phrase, “safe, legal, and rare,” a few years later, in the 1990s.

On the right, almost everyone who was pro-life included the clause, “except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake.”

Wow…people taking a nuanced position on a complex, difficult social issue. Imagine that. That is what the 1980s were like.

Time and again in the 1980s, it was reported that most people wanted abortion to remain legal, with some reasonable restrictions.

The “reasonable restrictions” were where most people disagreed. Parental notification? How long into the pregnancy? Et cetera.

Then the 21st century culture wars happened.

Since then, abortion has become the equivalent of a sacrament on the left. There is no acknowledgment of any moral qualms whatsoever. Abortion has become more important to Democrats than affordable healthcare, workers’ rights, or even climate change. Many Democrats, especially Democrat-voting women, now seem to be one-issue voters where this matter is concerned. You would think that some of these people were having abortions every month.

On the other hand, the Republican right has lost all of its nuance, too. Right here in Ohio, Republican Representative Jean Schmidt more or less stated that she would require a raped 13-year-old girl to carry her rapist’s child to term, calling the situation an “opportunity” to raise a “productive human being.”

Both sides are nucking futs where this issue is concerned. But one side’s extreme viewpoint is more of an election liability. The GOP got creamed in the 2022 midterms as a result of a handful of severe abortion restrictions and outright bans passed in red states following the overturning of Roe v. Wade that summer.

Things are unlikely to be different this November without a change of course by the GOP. There are voters who care about virtually nothing else but maintaining a Roe-esque window of legality for abortion. Get that through your head.

Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee for POTUS this November, has split from the party’s social conservatives on this issue. He has long been a critic of outright bans, and he condemned Ron DeSantis’s 6-week ban as “a terrible idea”.

Trump has recently floated the idea of a 16-week (4 month) abortion restriction, with exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

The corollary is that abortion would be legal in most all circumstances up to 16 weeks, and in any reasonable circumstance involving rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

This won’t please everyone. Not by a long shot. Anti-abortion zealots will scream bloody murder, quite literally. Pro-abortion fanatics will demand legal abortions right up to the moment of birth…and possibly into the second year of primary school.

But most voters in the vast center should be able to live with this.

For Republicans, the alternative is to get trounced in yet another election over the issue of abortion. Remember that old cliché about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.

The Democrats intend to play this issue hard as the general election campaign heats up. And why shouldn’t they? Abortion, after all, is basically all they have to run on.

As evidence of this, last week Kamala Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion clinic. The VP popped in for a “tour” of a Planned Parenthood facility in Minneapolis where abortions are performed.

No word regarding whether the VP assisted in an actual abortion while she was there, just to show her solidarity. Perhaps she’s saving that for a date closer to Election Day.

But the VP gave us an early glimpse of the Democratic playbook. They want to make the general election all about abortion—and not Joe Biden’s record. Donald Trump, for all his flaws as a candidate (and yes, there are many) is pragmatic enough to realize that that must not be allowed to happen.

-ET

Audiobooks while you mow

Or podcasts, for that matter. Or music.

I am a big fan of  making use of all available time. During the spring and summer months, I mow two suburban lawns. That means about three hours of walking behind a lawnmower.

Here’s the problem, though: ordinary earbuds don’t provide sufficient hearing protection while you’re mowing the lawn. Nor are you likely to hear much of what you’re listening to, unless you only want to listen to KISS and AC/DC.

If you want to listen to spoken audio content while you mow the lawn, or operate other kinds of machinery, then you need to get a pair of WorkTunes Connect Hearing Protectors with Bluetooth Technology Headphones, made by 3M. 

It took me only a minute to sync my pair with my iPhone, which is loaded with podcasts and audiobooks. These headphones muffle the sound of my lawnmower to a very small background rumble, and I can hear the spoken audio content perfectly.

You can also accept incoming calls on these bad boys. Even with the lawnmower going, the party on the other end of the call can hear you perfectly if you speak at normal volume.

Highly recommended for audiobook enthusiasts who mow their own lawns. Audiobooks make the task of lawn-mowing much more pleasant.

**Get a pair on Amazon

AI narration: an experiment

One of the dominant players in the AI audiobook narration field recently offered access to its platform at a deep discount.

As an author, it behooves me to keep up with such things, even when I have my doubts. I have long been skeptical of the much-ballyhooed AI panacea. But I thought I should try AI narration before I completely wrote it off.

And like I said: the company was offering a deep discount.

I gave the whiz-bang AI narration platform a try. It does indeed output a narration from text. 

That narration is far from perfect. Not something that I would package as a for-sale audiobook…not at this point.

But I might use it for some short stories for YouTube and my website.

More on this later…

-ET

Macron’s warmongering, his wife, and the transgender rumor mill

There is a rumor afoot that Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, was born a man.

The rumor is not confined to the dark corners of the Internet. The French President has seen fit to publicly deny it.

Meanwhile, commentator Candace Owens has declared her willingness to stake her “entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man.”

The rumor reportedly originates with a 2021 article in the right-wing French magazine, Faits et Documents.

What is known (and is beyond dispute) is that Macron’s history with his wife is unconventional. When they met, he was a 15-year-old student, and she was his married 40-year-old teacher. 

But…originally a man? I don’t think so. To begin with, Brigitte Macron is the biological mother of three now middle-aged children, whom she had with her former husband, André-Louis Auzière. Is her biological motherhood of three French citizens a long-running fabrication, then? That would require an improbable level of conspiracy. Her 40-year-old daughter, Tiphaine Auzière, is the spitting image of her mother. That seals the deal for me.

Also, the transgender conspiracy alleges that Brigitte Macron transitioned at the age of thirty, in 1983. How plausible would that have been, given the sex-change (I refuse to use the politically correct term, “gender-affirming”) technologies at the time?

Emmanuel Macron has been President of France since 2017. Since that time, he has mostly been the unserious president of an often unserious country. No one’s idea of an inspirational statesman, but not a target for anyone’s odium, either. And who really cares if he boffed—and then married—one of his high school teachers?

Recently, however, Macron has fancied himself a modern-day Napoleon. He has suggested that NATO might send troops into the family feud between Russia and Ukraine. The likely outcome of that would be a nuclear war between Russia and NATO (including the USA).

I don’t believe that Emmanuel Macron’s wife was born a man, and I wouldn’t care even if she was. All I ask is that this callow man-boy not start World War III over the question of which flag flies over a narrow strip of land between Russia and Ukraine. Is that too much to ask?

-ET

Classical music in small doses 

Amadeus, the biographical drama about the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the mid-1980s. Starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, and Elizabeth Berridge, Amadeus brought the famed 18th-century composer and his times to life.

Amadeus remains one of my favorite movies of all time. But when I saw it for the first time, as a teenager in the 1980s, I was inspired: I had a sudden desire to learn more about classical music, or at least about Mozart.

This was more than a little out of character for me at the time. As a teenager, my musical tastes ran the gamut from Journey to Iron Maiden, usually settling on Rush and Def Leppard.

So I read a Mozart biography. I was already an avid reader, after all. Then it came time to listen to the actual music. That’s when my inspiration fell flat.

I found that Mozart the man was a lot more interesting than his music. At least to my then 17-year-old ears. Nothing would dethrone rock music, with its more accessible themes and pounding rhythms.

Almost 40 years later, I still prefer rock music. In fact, I still mostly prefer the rock music I listened to in the 1980s.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1781 portrait
**View Mozart biographies on Amazon**

Recently, however, I took another dive into classical music.

Classical music, like popular, contemporary music, is a mixed bag. Some of it is turgid and simply too dense for modern ears. Some pieces, though, are well worth listening to, even if they were composed in another era.

Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is one such piece. For the longest time, I mistakenly assumed that this arrangement was written for the 1986 Vietnam War movie, Platoon, in which it is prominently figured.

I was wrong about that. “Adagio for Strings” was composed in 1938, long before either Platoon or the Vietnam War.

“Adagio for Strings” is practically dripping with pathos. It is the perfect song to listen to when you are coping with sadness or tragedy. This music simultaneously amplifies your grief and gives it catharsis. You feel both better and worse after listening.

“Adagio for Strings” was broadcast over the radio in the USA upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. It was played at the funeral of Albert Einstein ten years later. The composition was one of JFK’s favorites; and it was played at his funeral, too, in 1963.

Most of the time, though, you’ll be in the mood for something more uplifting. That will mean digging into the oeuvre of one or more of the classical composers.

While the best-known composers (Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc.) all have their merits, I am going to steer you toward Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) instead.

Dvorak was born almost a century after Mozart and Beethoven, and longer than that after Bach. To my philistine ear, Dvorak’s music sounds more modern, while still falling within the realm of the classical.

Antonin Dvorak

I would recommend starting with Symphony Number 9, Aus der Neuen Welt (“From the New World”). This is arguably Dvorak’s most accessible work, and my personal favorite at present. Symphony Number 9 contains a lot of moods. It takes you up and down, and round again.

This is not the story of an older adult turning away from the pop culture of his youth for more sophisticated fare. Far from it. Dvorak is not going to replace Def Leppard on my personal playlist. Bach and Mozart have not supplanted Rush and AC/DC. 

But time has made me more musically open-minded. Almost 40 years after I was inspired by the movie Amadeus, I have, at long last, developed a genuine appreciation for classical music.

But that is a qualified appreciation, for an art form that I still prefer in measured doses.

-ET

Russia, China, and our military unreadiness

I am an unabashed skeptic of NATO’s newly bellicose stance toward Russia and China. That skepticism starts at home, in the USA.

This is partly because the average American voter (and the average American politician) knows far more about Taylor Swift than about the history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Quite simply, we haven’t done our homework.

Most Americans who are eager to rattle sabers at Russia are of a progressive bent. This has less to do with their genuine feelings about Russia or Eastern Europe, than our domestic politics. Progressives have drawn a false equivalency between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The Trump-obsessed blithely ignore the prospect of civilization-ending nuclear war. Beating Trump is all that matters, and let the world burn, if that’s what it takes.

But there is also the simple matter of our military readiness, or rather, lack thereof.

First, there are the material, measurable factors. Arsenals are down, and our military technology has fallen behind that of our major geopolitical adversaries.

The US Armed Forces have had difficulty meeting their recruiting goals. This is partly because of a robust civilian job market. But also because, for two generations, public school teachers have taught American children that their country is evil, racist, and generally deserving of whatever destruction might befall it.

But then there are the nonmaterial factors. Our fighting spirit, for one.

This is better shown than explained. Take a few minutes to view the following: recent military recruiting ads from China, Russia, and the USA.

China and Russia are selling their militaries to their young people the traditional way: with the concepts of duty, patriotism, and membership in an elite fighting force.

The United States is selling its military as an LGBTQ-inclusive organization. This may be the only way to get the youngest generation of American adults to sign up, given that our public schools have also developed an obsession with all things “queer” over the past decade.

But as Pope Francis would say, “Who am I to judge?” Perhaps we are headed for a Brave New World in which all of us, like the Emma in the US Army recruiting ad, will have two moms. Maybe I’m just a twentieth-century fuddy-duddy, and this really is an amazing future we’re headed towards.

Perhaps. But I hope for all our sakes—including Emma’s—that she never has to face those Chinese and Russian troops in actual combat, with their superior battlefield technology and genuinely military esprit de corps.

-ET

In Brussels with the chickenhawks

Ursula von der Leyen is the current President of the European Commission, headquartered in Brussels. Von der Leyen is one of Europe’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the escalation of tensions with Russia, as evidenced by her many public statements and policy decisions.

She is also a typical European chickenhawk.

Von der Leyen was born in Belgium in 1958 to German-speaking parents, and moved to Germany in 1971. Like almost all European Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, she has no experience of war or military service. (Ursula von der Leyen, along with French President Emmanuel Macron—another European chickenhawk—has never served in any nation’s military.)

Von der Leyen vows, “We cannot let Russia win.” This means: Russia cannot be allowed to take/keep the Donbas and Crimea, areas long under the control of Russia anyway.

What happens, exactly, if Russia does “win”, or partially “wins”? What’s the bottom line here?

Russia had control over all of Ukraine from the 1790s through the early 1990s—not just the eastern and southern portions. This was the status quo first under the Russian Empire, and then within the framework of the Soviet Union. Russian control of those areas is by no means a new idea.

But what about Ukrainian sovereignty? What about the sovereignty of the Basque Country of Spain? Or French Flanders, for that matter?

Nationhood within Europe has always been a fluid concept. And nowhere has that been truer than within the Russian Empire and the USSR.

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) is one of the giants of Russian literature. Guess where Gogol was born: Ukraine. Gogol considered himself as much a Russian as a Ukrainian.

Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982), one of the leaders of the USSR, was also born in Ukraine. But as a subject of the Russian Empire (and then the USSR), he considered himself a Russian, too.

Because back then, Ukrainian and Russian nationality substantially overlapped. They overlapped substantially until 1991, when Boris Yeltsin and a handful of his associates unilaterally dissolved the Soviet Union. 

None of this is to say that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukrainian-held territory was a good thing, or even justified. But nor is it an existential threat to Western Europe, in itself.

The question of Western participation in the Ukraine conflict has been presented to us in terms of a false choice. Either one is all in—and that means eager to go to war with a nuclear power over the future of eastern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, or one is a shill of the Kremlin.

We have ignored the third choice: i.e., that we should express our disapproval of the violence, do our best to broker a peace deal, and otherwise stay out of a family quarrel that is none of our business.

One of the principle ideas at the end of the Cold War (1989) was that the United States and Western Europe ought to cease meddling in other people’s affairs. That seems to have gotten lost in recent years.

The situation is all the more perilous now because the leadership in Europe is callow and clueless. During the Cold War years (1947 – 1989), Western Europe was always led by the generation that personally experienced World War II. Those leaders did not speak lightly of total conflict with Moscow.

Since 1989, the World War II generation has all but passed into history. Europe is now led by chickenhawks who have no experience of combat. They seem to believe that thermonuclear war would turn out fine. These are people who take pronoun rules more seriously than the threat of nuclear armageddon.

Worse yet, their real motives are highly suspect. The European Union’s crocodile tears over Ukrainian sovereignty are as much about the expansion of the EU as they are about Ukrainian sovereignty itself.

The European bureaucratic class envisions a European Union that includes every nation from the eastern shores of the English Channel to the western shores of the Caspian Sea. (They are also eying Georgia, another former member of Greater Russia, for EU membership.)

This is progressive megalomania led by chickenhawks who have no idea what they’re doing. And they are more than willing to risk the end of the world to accomplish their aims.

-ET

The looming TikTok ban

A bill that would ban TikTok seems about to pass both houses of Congress with bipartisan support. President Biden has said he will sign it.

Theoretically, TikTok could avoid the ban through a sale to a non-Chinese entity. But that won’t happen quickly, if at all.

I have little personal stake in this one. TikTok is not my cup of tea. I find the content there superficial and silly. That said, this looming ban disturbs me for several reasons.

First of all, many Americans have built incomes on TikTok, or used the platform as a vehicle to amplify another form of income.

This includes many of my writer colleagues. I don’t promote my own books there much, as TikTok seems to work best for promoting romance and YA fiction, neither of which is my bailiwick. But for authors in these categories, TikTok has been a real boon.

You might counter that social media itself is socially deleterious, especially for young people. I don’t disagree, but a TikTok ban will not rid us of social media as we know it. On the contrary, a TikTok ban will only increase the market share of Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta. This will further empower one individual—Mark Zuckerberg—to decide what Americans will see, hear, and read on the Internet.

Former President Trump recently made this point, punctuated with a typically Trumpish ad hominem jab. Trump’s feud with Zuckerberg is long-running and well-documented. However you feel about these two public figures, you can’t be enthusiastic about giving such power to a single tech CEO. Competition is not just good for the market, it’s also good for the cause of free speech.

Finally, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of government officials who sit and vote making this decision for the rest of us. Government power, once taken and unchallenged, is rarely yielded peacefully.

-ET

New extended preview: ‘The Consultant’

I’ve added an extended preview here on the site for The Consultant.

The Consultant is the story of an American marketing consultant who takes a business trip to Osaka, Japan, and talks to the wrong woman in a bar.

One thing leads to another, and he ends up in North Korea.

The story is loosely (I emphasize loosely) based on real events.

The North Korean government has carried out targeted kidnapping campaigns of civilians over the years. Most of the known targets have been South Koreans and Japanese. But there is no reason why an American couldn’t be the target of such a kidnapping. This novel explores that scenario.

The Consultant is a good read for Tom Clancy fans who also like James Clavell…or James Clavell fans who also like a bit of action.

View the preview here!
View THE CONSULTANT on Amazon!

World War II historical fiction series now available in an omnibus edition

THE CAIRO DECEPTION OMNIBUS BOXSET 

**Spies, lies, and the race for the atom bomb!**

In 1938, the planners in Nazi Germany know that war is coming. They are eager to acquire the atom bomb.

They are working against Allied governments, operating both in Germany and abroad. (And not all of the Reich’s accomplices are German nationals.)

A group of ordinary Americans and Germans are forced to choose sides. Their choices will lead them into a web of betrayal, murder, and espionage.

Their paths meet in Cairo, Egypt, where the Reich is hunting a fugitive atomic physicist. 

The main characters:

Betty Lehman is a 19-year-old girl from Dutch Falls, Pennsylvania. Her family is active in the German-American Bund. Betty has been recruited to betray her country in the service of the Reich.

Rudolf Schenk is an undercover agent of the German Gestapo. He wants to do his duty. But can he abandon his last shred of conscience?

Jack McCallum is an American treasure hunter in Cairo. He falls for two women: one who is working undercover for the Third Reich, one who is fleeing the Gestapo.

Heinrich Vogel is a physicist who fled Germany for Egypt. He and his young adult daughter, Ingrid, face a daily game of cat-and-mouse with the Gestapo. His goal: to reach Britain or America before the Gestapo reaches him and his daughter!

View THE CAIRO DECEPTION BOXSET on Amazon!

Note: The individual books will still be available on the series page!

The Headless Horseman returns

How I wrote a horror novel called Revolutionary Ghosts

Or…

Can an ordinary teenager defeat the Headless Horseman, and a host of other vengeful spirits from America’s revolutionary past?

The big idea

I love history, and I love supernatural horror tales.  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was therefore always one of my favorite short stories. This classic tale by Washington Irving describes how a Hessian artillery officer terrorized the young American republic several decades after his death.

The Hessian was decapitated by a Continental Army cannonball at the Battle of White Plains, New York, on October 28, 1776. According to some historical accounts, a Hessian artillery officer really did meet such an end at the Battle of White Plains. I’ve read several books about warfare in the 1700s and through the Age of Napoleon. Armies in those days obviously did not have access to machine guns, flamethrowers, and the like. But those 18th-century cannons could inflict some horrific forms of death, decapitation among them.

I was first exposed to the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” via the 1949 Disney film of the same name. The Disney adaptation was already close to 30 years old, but still popular, when I saw it as a kid sometime during the 1970s.

Headless Horsemen from around the world

While doing a bit of research for Revolutionary Ghosts, I discovered that the Headless Horseman is a folklore motif that reappears in various cultures throughout the world.

In Irish folklore, the dullahan or dulachán (“dark man”) is a headless, demonic fairy that rides a horse through the countryside at night. The dullahan carries his head under his arm. When the dullahan stops riding, someone dies.

Scottish folklore includes a tale about a headless horseman named Ewen. Ewen was  beheaded when he lost a clan battle at Glen Cainnir on the Isle of Mull. His death prevented him from becoming a chieftain. He roams the hills at night, seeking to reclaim his right to rule.

Finally, in English folklore, there is the 14th century epic poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After Gawain kills the green knight in living form (by beheading him) the knight lifts his head, rides off, and challenges Gawain to a rematch the following year.

But Revolutionary Ghosts is focused on the Headless Horseman of American lore: the headless horseman who chased Ichabod Crane through the New York countryside in the mid-1790s. 

The Headless Horseman isn’t the only historical spirit to stir up trouble in the novel. John André, the executed British spy, makes an appearance, too. (John André was a real historical figure.)

I also created the character of Marie Trumbull, a Loyalist whom the Continental Army sentenced to death for betraying her country’s secrets to the British. But Marie managed to slit her own throat while still in her cell, thereby cheating the hangman. Marie Trumbull was a dark-haired beauty in life. In death, she appears as a desiccated, reanimated corpse. She carries the blade that she used to take her own life, all those years ago.

Oh, and Revolutionary Ghosts also has an army of spectral Hessian soldiers. I had a lot of fun with them!

The Spirit of ’76

Most of the novel is set in the summer of 1976. An Ohio teenager, Steve Wagner, begins to sense that something strange is going on near his home. There are slime-covered hoofprints in the grass. There are unusual sounds on the road at night. People are disappearing.

Steve gradually comes to an awareness of what is going on….But can he convince anyone else, and stop the Headless Horseman, before it’s too late?

I decided to set the novel in 1976 for a number of reasons. First of all, this was the year of the American Bicentennial. The “Spirit of ’76 was everywhere in 1976. That created an obvious tie-in with the American Revolution.

Nineteen seventy-six was also a year in which Vietnam, Watergate, and the turmoil of the 1960s were all recent memories. The mid-1970s were a time of national anxiety and pessimism (kind of like now). The economy was not good. This was the era of energy crises and stagflation.

Reading the reader reviews of Revolutionary Ghosts, I am flattered to get appreciative remarks from people who were themselves about the same age as the main character in 1976:

“…I am 62 years old now and 1976 being the year I graduated high school, I remember it pretty well. Everything the main character mentions (except the ghostly stuff), I lived through and remember. So that was an added bonus for me.”

“I’m 2 years younger than the main character so I could really relate to almost every thing about him.”

I’m actually a bit younger than the main character. In 1976 I was eight years old. But as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m nostalgic by nature. I haven’t forgotten the 1970s or the 1980s, because I still spend a lot of time in those decades.

If you like the 1970s, you’ll find plenty of nostalgic nuggets in Revolutionary Ghosts, like Bicentennial Quarters, and the McDonald’s Arctic Orange Shakes of 1976.

***

Also, there’s something spooky about the past, just because it is the past. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

For me, 1976 is a year I can clearly remember. And yet—it is shrouded in a certain haziness. There wasn’t nearly as much technology. Many aspects of daily life were more “primitive” then.

It isn’t at all difficult to believe that during that long-ago summer, the Headless Horseman might have come back from the dead to terrorize the American heartland…

View REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS on Amazon

Southern Ohio’s Dead Man’s Curve

Not far from where I live, there is a stretch of Ohio State Route 125 that has been dubbed Dead Man’s Curve

The spot is just a few miles from my house, in fact. I’ve been by there many times.

According to the urban legend, if you drive this section of rural highway a little after 1 a.m., you might see the faceless hitchhiker. From a distance, this male figure may look relatively normal. Once you get close, though, you’ll see that he has no face.

Sometimes the hitchhiker isn’t content to stand there by the side of the road and watch you. There have been reports of the phantom actually attacking cars.

Creepy, right?

Yeah, I think so, too….

Dead Man’s Curve on Ohio State Route 125 has a long and macabre history. Route 125 is the main road that connects the suburbs and small towns east of Cincinnati with the city. But much of the road (including Dead Man’s Curve) was originally part of the Ohio Turnpike, which was built in 1831. (Andrew Jackson was president in 1831, just to put that date in perspective.)

That section of the Ohio Turnpike was the scene of many accidents (some of them fatal), even in the horse-and-buggy days. The downward sloping curve became particularly treacherous when rain turned the road to mud. Horses and carriages would sometimes loose their footing, sending them over the adjacent hillside.

In the twentieth century, the Ohio Turnpike was paved and reconfigured into State Route 125. In 1968 the road was expanded into four lanes. 

As part of the expansion, the spot known as Dead Man’s Curve was leveled and straightened. (As a result, the curve doesn’t look so daunting today…unless you know its history.) This was supposed to be the end of “Dead Man’s Curve”.

But it wasn’t.

In 1969, there was a horrible accident at the spot. The driver of a green Roadrunner—traveling at a speed of 100 mph—slammed into an Impala carrying five teenagers. There was only one survivor of the tragic accident.

Shortly after that, witnesses began to report sightings of the faceless hitchhiker during the wee hours. (The hitchhiker is said to be most active during the twenty-minutes between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m.) There have also been reports of a ghostly green Roadrunner that will chase drivers late at night. 

Oh, and Dead Man’s Curve remains deadly, despite the leveling and straightening done in 1968. In the five decades since the accident involving the Roadrunner and the Impala, around seventy people have been killed there.

Is there any truth to the legend of Dead Man’s Curve?

I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve heard many eyewitness accounts from local residents who claim to have seen the hitchhiker. (Keep in mind, I live very close to Dead Man’s Curve, and it’s a local topic of discussion and speculation.) Almost none of these eyewitnesses have struck me as mentally imbalanced or deceitful.

I know what your last question is going to be: Have I ever driven Dead Man’s Curve between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. myself?

Uh, no. But perhaps I’ll get around to it someday, and I’ll let you know in a subsequent blog post!

***

Hey!…While you’re here: I wrote a novel about a haunted road in Ohio. It’s called Eleven Miles of Night. You can start reading the book for FREE here on my website, or check out the reviews on Amazon.

You can also start reading my other two novels of the supernatural in Southern Ohio: Revolutionary Ghosts and 12 Hours of Halloween. 

Check out my FREE short stories, too….many of them have macabre elements.

And stop back soon! I add content to this website every day!

Hellhounds in Ohio

**When walking down lonely roads at night, beware the hellhounds!**

Jason Kelley is a college filmmaker who has accepted a challenge: walk eleven miles down the most haunted road in rural Ohio, the so-called Shaman’s Highway.

If Jason completes his task, he’ll win a $2,000 prize.

But before he reaches his destination, he’ll have to cope with evil spirits, trees that come to life, an undead witch, and packs of roving hellhounds!

A creepy supernatural thriller! Not for the faint of heart!

**View ELEVEN MILES OF NIGHT on Amazon**

A crime novel that came from a casino visit

One day in the early spring of 2018 I traveled to a rural part of southern Indiana to attend to some family matters. (I live in Ohio, but I’m half Hoosier. My dad grew up in nearby Lawrenceburg.)

I spent most of that day in Switzerland County. You’ve probably never been there. Switzerland County, Indiana looks nothing like Switzerland. In early spring, that part of Indiana, along the Ohio River, can look a little bleak. 

(Portions of the 1988 Molly Ringwald/Andrew McCarthy movie, Fresh Horses, were filmed in Switzerland County. McCarthy said of the area, “There’s the whole starkness up there; it helped the mood of the movie.” )

Southern, rural Indiana is home to several large casinos. I ordinarily have no interest in gambling venues. I ate lunch at the nearby Belterra Casino that day, though, because…there weren’t many other dining options in the vicinity.

My visit to the casino got me thinking: What if a young couple in debt visited the casino in a make-or-break effort to get ahead financially? What if they were lured there by a special offer? $300 worth of ‘free’ gaming chips?

What if their beginner’s foray into gambling went horribly wrong, and they fell further in the hole? Then suppose that a narcotics kingpin offers them an alternative plan…another way to get ahead. 

All they have to do is run an errand for him. What could possibly go wrong?

That’s the premise behind my 2020 casino novel, Venetian Springs. Set in a fictional version of Belterra Casino, Venetian Springs is a story of two down-on-their-luck high school teachers who succumb to the lure of easy money. They soon discover that easy money doesn’t exist. But this is a lesson that may cost them both their lives.

Watch the Venetian Springs trailer below.

View Venetian Springs on Amazon.

Read the first 8 chapters of Venetian Springs here on Edward Trimnell Books.