Hello Jackson,

Thanks for the interest. You are certainly a rare bird to comment on my historical research endeavors. Few seem to be interested sadly. Until I am actually published myself, (beyond magazine articles, military journals and academic conference competition papers) I am right there with you as an amateur historian. Hopefully professional soon though!

As far as my book(s) go, it is a never ending joy and torture simultaneously. I am my own worst enemy. I have one book on philosophy that I have been writing for almost 30 years and its still not complete. For about 10 years I shelved it with the attitude that it would be arrogant for me to assume that I could tell anyone anything useful about living or morality when not only did I not have it(life) figured out myself, but was such a pathetic hypocritical example to emulate.

Friends and family encouraged me to pick the work back up but I find that half of what I wrote to now be useless after a lifetime of experience. So as I think of new ideas I just jot them down. The last third of the book is nothing still but an ordered outline yet that I slowly fill in with special sauce.

As far as the book on Piracy goes, it has been over a decade of effort now. I have found a lot more time to dedicate to it because it has been a passion of mine to dig deeper and deeper. I have found so many excellent stories and battles and places and historical personalities that other English speaking historians have hardly noticed at all. This is part of my problem, I keep finding new things to put into the book. I firmly believe that when finished, my work will be the most comprehensive and in-depth study of colonial expansion, competition/defense, maritime support of that expansion/competition and the concurrent criminal and state sponsored piracy that accompanied all of it – ever written.

I have four trips planned in the next year(or two) to the Netherlands, Spain, the Caribbean and the Yucatan in order to complete the research for the book. In each instance archival evidence that will support claims I am making need to be carefully examined and entered as research resources. This is essential not only to finishing, but also to being taken seriously by any historical academician that might read it. Not only do I lack a PhD (on the bucket list), but you see – history like so many other disciplines has a crony arrogant strata which will reject any author who does not belong to their special hoity-toity club from a select group of higher institutions. My family and I were just in Scottsdale AZ a couple weeks ago for a funeral and one of the few light points of the visit was that my son coined a new acronym for the residents of Scottsdale. He said they all suffer from HTD syndrome. This means Hooty Tooty Douchee syndrome. These places I name suffer badly from HDT just like the people in South Park from San Fran who smugly snif their own flatulence in champagne glasses. LOL

Don’t get me wrong, I do want to be taken seriously, but not by the likes of them. I will send a copy to some of my favorite authors and mentors for review and even find out if any of them are willing to write a Forward for me. If I got the notice of Karl F. Marx and his approval alone, I would consider my work such a great success because no other scholar on the subject and period has inspired me as much as he. David Marley is a close second just for his archival research alone. I have been on a crusade to find one of Marley’s out of print works for the longest time now and find I cannot completely finish my chapter on the great Laurens de Graaf until I finish perusing the archive at Merida as well as make a complete photo copy on my next trip north from a university library where I finally located a copy of Marley’s, “Sack of Veracruz: The Great Pirate Raid of 1683”.

This book has more information on Dutch piracy, pirates and privateers than any other book ever written – even more than Virginia Lundsford’s “Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands” which has been an excellent secondary source in my research.

All this to say that I think the book still needs three more years to be finished. My estimate is one year(+) more of travel/research, another year finishing the editing, index and bibliography, and another to get it printed through a good publisher and distributed.

So to answer some of your questions/comments. There are many more articles coming in various stages of completion. I rarely do any writing of any single piece without having half a dozen others open at the same time. The site is undergoing an update right now, you just can’t see any of it right now because I haven’t told it to display. In another day or so there will be lots of new stuff up to read. I do have other periods of interest. I am well balanced in all of western history. My passion for some years has been the era surrounding the wars of Reformation up through the Golden Age roughly 1480-1720. I also love the Carolingian Renaissance, the late Byzantine era and the North American Indian Wars/Civil War/Old West-pioneer expansion time-frames. I have many old papers both graduate and undergraduate (some prize winners) that have the makings/beginnings of some great books on these other historical subjects as well. Been sticking with the piracy lately because something just resonates with me there in the last decade since I have lost all trust in our current western model of corporations in bed with privately owned central-bank run governments. There is a better way.

As far as the comments go, I have tried to open them up numerous times, but the clunky wordpress anti-spam software constantly closes them again. I would love comments. When the new website is built in a couple more months, I will have all of that properly sorted out.

Lately (the last month) because of severe depression, I have stopped writing the book. I find myself writing poetry – something I have never done before. I even thought about starting a thread called MK’s Poetry Corner (That’ll be a popular thread EH!!!) LOL

Here is a selection of my most recent….

BACKHOE

By Aaron R. Shields

A backhoe in corner with bucket wet
Rarely washed but with purpose yet

Oft not considered or so it seems
Long taking work from ditch digging teams

With power to move both stump and mass
Cuts scars in the earth now covered with grass

Daily it moves in its usual gear
Dredging up soil ordered furrow near

Six feet below is the depth it goes
The seeds of our dearest departed it soes

Filling up graves now marked with stones
With treasure below of charished bones

A BELLY FULL OF FOREVER

By Aaron R. Shields

My belly full,
my weight like a bull,
I move to lay myself down

To think a spell,
and sleep not well,
whilst in dark hours I doth drown

My troubled dreams,
present tangled streams
in fate yet ahead not found

I wake so sad
in tears nearly mad
and wonder at a sound

that stirs me up
to see my gut
as I struggle to my feet

what wonder is this
I’m thin and in bliss
my friends are all around

from my bed I fall
its naught at all
a snore that broke my sleep

I work and live
I love and I give
my new friends books that I keep

as time rolls on
I just mow the lawn
and know the time will get darker

the clock ticks wrong
my time less strong
my thoughts and days grow shorter

A plot awaits
with earth displaced
where unknowingly I will enter

My only hope
for my spirit to cope
my heart given free to our Savior

For with faith unbound
Put down in that ground
it shall not be my final space

For my soul will rise
High above the skies
to dwell in a far better place

…to dwell in a far better place…

True purpose found
and friendship abound
Judgement with total forgiveness

Darkness cast down
Distant memory now
Forever in pure happiness

A Final Retirement

By Aaron R. Shields

A lonely dark angel moves down to his place
Long given up in assaulting our race

His brothers now wonder at whence he has gone
In former times his presence so strong

He sighs as he opens a long dusty case
and gazes upon implements decaying in waste

An old broken hourglass askew on its side
Its contents blown windward as sands of the tide

Beside lays worn handle with attachment still there
a harvesting blade of ancient despair

Its grim cur’ved surface now dull with neglect
dried edge thick rusted, bloody function long checked

The sythe a reminder of sin that once was
Mortality and pain now replaced by the Dove

Up to the window of time he doth look
No longer collecting the souls he once took

Brutality – inequity both great and small
replaced with perfection, pure contentment for all

The spirit and body now one and the same
great debt paid in full by the One who was slain

defeating the angel by rising again
and raising us with Him – redeeming all men

Making the slayer’s old task obsolete
With death now retired and heaven complete

Disturbing no? Ever since my nephew died I have been in a very dark place. Our game helps me escape so much…

MK

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by modernknight1.