Brodie Curtis is an author of historical fiction. His most recent work, ANGELS and BANDITS, is a Coffee Pot Book Club Gold medal recipient.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “there are no second acts in American lives,” but Sue and I turned our talents and drive to building a real estate business in Denver. With plenty of hard work, our business did well, our second act achieved top billing, and I began to write. It’s said to take 10 years to become proficient at a trade, and with the time I’ve put into writing, I feel I’m closing in. Maybe a third act?

ANGELS and BANDITS is my second historical novel, set around The Battle of Britain. What inspired ANGELS and BANDITS? Well, I can say the book is a follow-on to THE FOUR BELLS, my debut novel. Protagonist Eddy Beane is the answer to a loose thread from my first book, and we follow Eddy’s story all the way to those heady days when Britain stood alone in 1940.

But my inspiration for ANGELS and BANDITS goes beyond a sequel and is rooted in deep respect and admiration for the Royal Air Force’s defence of unrelenting German Luftwaffe bombing attacks in August and September of 1940. For me, I was stirred beyond words reading Churchill’s war-time speeches and famous line: “Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few.” Walking by The Battle of Britain sculpture on Victoria Embankment in London, opposite the London Eye, was terrifically inspiring. Watching YouTube clips of the Spitfire in action took my breath away. And I must admit that watching scenes from Michael Caine’s movie  The Battle of Britain, for the umpteenth time, still gives me chills. 

So who were “The Few”? That question, I suppose, is at the heart of ANGELS and BANDITS. My impression from a deep research dive is that “The Few” were men of many backgrounds. Some educated, some not; some wealthy, some far from it; Englishmen and Canadians and Aussies, Poles and Czechs, and many more. All united by the masterful leadership of Air Marshals Hugh Dowding and Keith Park, and others. 

How did “The Few” do it? The answer, in part, is that many of them flew the magnificent Spitfire, Britain’s elegant yet powerful fighter plane. The more I learn about Spits, the more I love them, and can’t wait for the day I look into the cockpit of one. My admiration for Spitfires surely comes through in many scenes.

So, ANGELS and BANDITS was a true pleasure to write, owing to the massive historical record, words and images, that chronicles The Battle of Britain.

THE FOUR BELLS, by contrast, was set in motion years ago, in a homey lounge, when I heard a gorgeously mournful acoustic version of John McCutcheon’s song about the transcendent Christmas truce of 1914. It inspired me to research reports on the truce in contemporaneous writings and non-fiction, and to walk the fields of Flanders. 

I decided to write about the truce. Once my pen hit paper, my characters took me down their own road, and the truce became just one scene in the story. Where Maddy and Al left off at the end of THE FOUR BELLS set the stage for ANGELS and BANDITS.

My next project turns to nineteenth century Middle America, and the romantic but under-fictionalized time of Mississippi River paddle-wheeler showboats.

~~~

I feel I’m still very much a novice writer. I don’t have a long list of book titles, journalistic credits, or even a list of creative writing classes under my belt. Perhaps the best way to convey who I am as a writer is to explain my journey. 

For me, it all starts with reading, and I suppose that is always the case with a writer. I read voraciously as a young boy, but lost momentum with it during my teenage and college years (meeting a few distractions during that period). As I settled into a law career, I got back to reading, accumulating stacks of novels and non-fiction titles and made myself good and near-sighted by reading in the evenings, on planes, whenever. 

History was always my go-to. That started for me early in high-school, when I was assigned Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. A story set during the American Civil War, Crane’s rendering of a common soldier’s ambitions, fears, insecurities, survivalist instincts and, of course, courage in the face of mortal conflict, has never lost its influence on me. Maybe capturing Crane’s writing magic has always been my quixotic dream. Crane was the first, but I have gone on to read countless novels set around military action, as well as dozens and dozens of war-time non-fiction works and biographies. 

Since I’ve begun writing, I’m also putting my book reviews on paper. Under my reviews page, you will find that I’ve posted more than 100 of my quick takes, just a paragraph or so, on a wide variety of world war-based fiction titles. I’ve also posted reviews of historical novels outside the world war fiction genre. Most of these were published in the Historical Novels Review. 

Anyway, back to my writing journey. Some years back I decided it was my turn. As I mentioned earlier, I was inspired by the Christmas truce of 1914, and found that there wasn’t much fictional treatment of the subject and decided to write a novel about it. 

So I sat at my desk and wrote. I’d written tens of thousands of pages of legal memorandums, business letters, and corporate reports. Surely I could write a novel. Actor, action, subject. No problem.

I cranked out a draft, which I was extremely proud to have delivered to myself. Certainly it was near best seller shape, I thought, and searched the internet for an editor who might tune it up a little bit before it was displayed by the front door at Barnes & Noble. 

The feedback wasn’t what I expected, and the most valuable comments were the harshest. ‘It’s all tell—no show. First or third person, even omniscient—just pick a point of view. This thing is filled with meaningless physical gestures and unnecessary movements, summaries and conclusions, and meandering dialogue. Cut the crap out of this three hundred page manuscript and there might be enough for a novella.’

Now, the smart move might have been to toss my pen in the bin and work on my golf game. Instead, I put the pen down, and set about educating myself on the craft of writing and building some skills. For probably half a year, I read writing instructional books and blogs, and did innumerable writing exercises. Viewpoint, voice, the narrative, sourcing, premise, themes, suspense, raising the stakes. 

Then I rewrote. I knew I had improved my writing game— but I was still way over my skis. I reached out to the very talented author-editor Sue Millard from the Lake District in the North of England to help me with applying British authenticity to my dialogue and descriptions, naively believing this was all the help my book required.

I thank my lucky stars that Sue took me on and poured herself into THE FOUR BELLS. Without her care, corrections and guidance, there would be no book. Sue has me striving to write with precision (find the perfect word), and with economy (say it the simplest way, and don’t double up on descriptions). More than that, she taught me to write with a plan. Who are your characters? What are they about? Describe them on paper. Recognize that each action triggers a response. Draw out how the actions and responses flow. To see what I mean, pick up any of Sue’s novels at www.jackdawebooks.co.uk to read stories by a master of the craft of writing.

What I do know is that I’m a work in progress, and will put in the time to improve my writing chops. Best of all, I have fun with it! I have more books in me, and each will be better than the last. I hope you read THE FOUR BELLS and ANGELS and BANDITS and the next ones, and judge that for yourself!