To kick off my first blog entry, I thought it might be good to start at the beginning. Which is, whatever in the world possessed me to want to, or think I could, write anything anyone else would want to read! I suppose it started when I was about six years old and I began work on my first \u201cnovel.\u201d It was about an adventurous Norwegian boy I called \u201cPer\u201d (my schoolteacher mother informed me it meant \u201crock\u201d, which I thought grand) and though I got off to a reasonable start the words trailed off after two scribbled pages. Already writer\u2019s block??!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Long years of education and the matter of earning a living postponed further efforts until many decades later. In the 1990s, after discovering a vast trove of letters, documents, memoirs (several thousand pages) in my grandmother\u2019s keepsakes (Mamie B. Nelson 1879-1976), I decided to write a four-volume series called \u201dA Minnesota Remembrance,\u201d which told the story of the north-central Minnesota regional history through the eyes of the Marcus and Mamie Nelson family. This years-long effort did two things\u2014enabled me to preserve their written and pictorial history and, perhaps more importantly, greatly helped to hone my own writing skills (see my Home Page for details on purchasing these volumes from the Aitkin County Historical Society).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having whetted my writing appetite and finding my business career slowly winding down, I decided to seriously apply myself to this scribbling business. In 2009, the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, MD published my book Flying From the Black Hole: The B-52 Navigator-Bombardiers of Vietnam, <\/em>which in 2015 was named one of their Top Ten books on Vietnam (see Home Page). Subsequently, with The Three Musketeers of the Army Air Forces: From Hitler\u2019s Fortress Europa to Hiroshima and Nagasaki <\/em>I told the story of the three key men who delivered the atomic bombs against Japan. It helped greatly that I had served with bombardier Tom Ferebee and had gotten to know navigator Dutch Van Kirk later in life. During these years, I also wrote short stories and nonfiction magazine articles on military\/aviation history, all available on the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2022, traditional publisher Sunbury Press of Mechanicsburg, PA agreed to publish \u201cFirst Crossing: The 1919 Trans-Atlantic Crossing of Alcock and Brown.\u201d <\/em>The elevator pitch to Sunbury on this story may have set a mark for brevity: \u201cThe first to cross the Atlantic non-stop wasn\u2019t Charles Lindbergh, but two long forgotten British airman.\u201d In 2026, I was most pleased when Sunbury decided to publish my first novel called The Medicine Treasure. <\/em>Scheduled for release in the Fall of 2026, a brief synopsis is available on the Home Page. Much more on the making of that book is yet to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again welcome to my blog. I will from time to time post additional items which I hope will provide readers with a better understanding of who I am, where I am coming from, and why you might want to read my stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To kick off my first blog entry, I thought it might be good to start at the beginning. Which is, whatever in the world possessed…<\/p>\n
Until next time!Bob<\/p>\n\n\n\n