Historical Fiction Influences; SHOT TOWER Update

Here's a brief sketch of some of the historical fiction I've read in the past, all of which I can say I enjoyed and that made me want to read more of it, and write some of it.

Here's a pretty comprehensive site about a wide-ranging genre: historicalnovels.info.

Earliest I remember -- which doesn't mean it was the earliest I read -- was Julian by Gore Vidal, about a Roman Emperor who tries to reestablish the old Roman religion after Christianity was well-established.

Vidal's Burr is called "snotty" by a politician and strangely enough, upon thinking about all this the last few days for this post, the one "insight" by Vidal that I've retained all these years is that the renegade criminal Burr considered George Washington a pompous half-wit who had a big butt. Kind of snotty. If you look at full-size portraits of Washington you see where Vidal might have gotten the big butt part. But pompous half-wit or not, if that's what it takes to defeat an Empire and launch liberty, so be it.

Then there was I, Claudius, The Name of the Rose,  August 1914, Little Big Man.

Of course The Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian are excellent. Be sure to read them in order. I'm still only about half-way through.

These three Roman epics I read individually way back. Then a few years ago I decided to reread them all one after another, a kind of reading Roman orgy. I forget the order but that was worth doing: Quo Vadis, The Robe,  Ben-Hur.
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Then there's Allen Furst's World War II espionage novels You'll want to read them all. They can be read in any order but I recommend reading Night Soldiers first, or last. It's different. A bit more epic in scope.

Update on Shot Tower. By any measure more than half done this official First draft. Moving in on Chapter 20 of 30 tonight. So by that measure it's about two-thirds done. No promises but I'm pushing to nail down this official first draft next weekend in Philadelphia, home of the Shot Tower. The fast-moving action-packed last 10 chapters of the rough draft make that a possibility. Maybe I'll do the last page edit and save in the shadow of the tower or something nutty like that. Stay tuned.