If you want to improve your writing, you have to actually spend time writing. The old mantra of practice makes perfect is true. The more you write, the better you improve.

Little Bit

You only need to write a little bit every day. I can tell you from personal experience that a little bit every day goes a long way to finishing your manuscript. If you want to write a thousand words in one day when life is against you, you’ll never get it done.

Trying to write a novel in one day will never happen. But you can find yourself at the end of a story quickly if you do a little every day. I was doing that with three stories at once. I was shocked when I realized that I was just a few chapters away from completing all three. …

The Heart of the Holocaust

Take suspicion and toss in arrogance and you have the perfect recipe for the Holocaust and all the steps that led to it. It was the arrogance of the Romans, who saw themselves as better than all other civilizations, which allowed them to kill without any other emotion but pleasure. Pride and greed led the Crusaders to kill all who they considered the opposition in taking Jerusalem into the hands of the Christians. Arrogance helped support the Inquisition and the harsh treatment of the Native Americans.

It was pride and arrogance that resulted in the death of Huguenots, Catholics, Protestants, and aristocrats. All examples of mass murders by leaders can be attributed to arrogance to some degree. …

Just as the world conflicts changed after the Cold War, so did the exposure of torture to non-military individuals. Torture was no longer found just with prisoners of war. Torture was becoming the norm for some states to use against those they wished to control or eliminate. It was also finding an expansion of its definition from physical to emotional as the studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) revealed how damaging events can be when the mind absorbs it.

As the increase and perfection of genocide also rose, so did the methods and definition of torture. The United Nations (UN) was finding torture to be another developed issue they were going to have to face in the post-Cold War world. …

You cannot imagine how important it is to have an Amazon Author Page. As a reader, I use it all the time. The Amazon Author Page directs me to more books and more info I can use to stalk a new favorite author. It is a starting point to politely stalk your new favorite author. As an author, you want to have people wanting to gobble up your works and everything about you they can find out.

From the Viewpoint of a Reader

I find a book I am interested in. Maybe I want to know if the author has any other books. This is a huge chance for the author to sell more to me. I type in the author’s name in the Amazon search field. I won’t get what I expect. I’ll get the first few results as the author’s book but then I’ll get a ton of other authors. Why? Because they put the author I’m looking for in their keyword search hoping that their books will be chosen as close enough to the other author. It gets frustrating. …

Background

Over the course of time, nations have come and gone. When it comes to Armenia, it had been a sovereign nation for many years before it was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. The problems began then because Armenia was the oldest Christian nation in the world. The Ottoman Empire was Muslim. While Armenians were allowed to continue practicing their religion, they were treated cruelly and taxed at much higher levels than anyone else.

When the Empire began to fall, it looked out to place blame. It fell on the Armenians who were prospering despite their persecution. It was assumed they were conspiring with other Christian nations around them. …

A dark time in our world’s history is the Holocaust. It was a time of murder, indifference, and the loss of humanity. Either one is obsessed with it, wants to ignore it due to the pain it causes, or they deny it.

Any discussion of the Holocaust involves the Germans, specifically the Nazis. The evil that draped these men and women are described in various degrees by all who write and speak of the atrocities they committed. The words Elie Wiesel used to describe them speak louder than any thunder clap ever could.

Beyond Murder

Words can be used like ‘evil’, ‘monster’, or ‘demonic’ in describing the Nazi Germans. The atrocities that are laid out for a reader can turn a stomach and sicken a heart. The most moving accounts are those that did not call the Nazi’s names, but described them in the acts of murdering Jews. It was their words, their facial expressions, and their reactions to the world of the concentration camps that truly described the Nazi. …

Torture is nothing new. It has been around since nearly the beginning of time. If someone wanted something, they were willing to hurt others to get it. Some got creative, but beating someone is easy to do with anything including your own body. That meant it was a basic form of torture that was used.

Beatings are some of the most common as well as the easiest forms of torture that has been used in history. This form has been used since the beginning of time as it can be very productive and not require special equipment. Various groups have used it to further their cause. …

(Note: From a paper I wrote in college)

Victorian society had a set of social rules that all parties of England were to adhere to. That meant there were levels that could not be crossed or crossed in pre-ordained methods. Classes were instilled to keep keep like people together. Yet within the power of the written words, authors strove to break down those classes or show how the divides were harmful to society specifically in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. …