#Follow @jackdrsm—writer who bases his writing on his "brushes with history."

Featured Follower: Jack Durish: Brushes With History

In his own words:

My brushes with history serve as the basis for the stories I write and tell - almost all from personal experience. My blog also includes posts about my writing process and progress. It's a bumpy ride through the 68 years of my life, so hang on and expect almost anything.

A Sampling of His Blog

The Arrogance of Writing

TOWARDS THE END of my training at Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, a senior officer addressed our class one morning on the subject of arrogance. He was for it. To be more accurate, he opined that arrogance was a necessary quality in a successful infantry officer. He had a point. When artillery shells are exploding around you and hot lead fills the air, it takes a peculiar form of arrogance to stand up as though you alone know what is to be done and say, “Follow me!”

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Scultpting a Story

"HOW DO YOU sculpt a horse?” a man asks an artist in an old parable. “It's easy,” the artist is purported to have answered. “Start with a rock and chisel away everything that doesn't look like a horse.” I feel that this is the method I used in writing my first novel, Rebels on the Mountain. During the first two years, I wrote approximately a quarter million words. In the past six months, I have been chiseling away to free the story trapped within all that excess verbiage.

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Behind Every Mountain

MY VIETNAM STORY is on hold. Nick Andrews, the protagonist from Rebels on the Mountain, refuses to die in my head. So, I'm now embroiled in the Korean War when Nick came of age as an Airborne Ranger. No, it isn't going to be a war story. It's going to be the story of a young man coming to grips with his past, present, and future while fighting for his life behind enemy lines during the Korean War.

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