March News!
Hello to you all!
I hope you're all having a good week and start to the month so far! This newsletter would ordinarily have gone out on Monday 2nd March but, I've delayed it for one day for... reasons... that we'll discuss below!
But before we get to that - what else is coming up in these newsletters in March?
For the First World War focused newsletter I'll be be re-examining the Battle of Verdun 110 years since it began in 1916. That should be publishing on Monday 16th March. This will be the last edition of the First World War newsletter that is available for free to everyone. From April onwards they'll only be accessible to paid tiers. So if you've enjoyed this glimpse of them and want to continue reading them, you'll need to sign up for one of the subscription tiers.
It seems that my piece on Timothy Zahn's Star Wars: Specter of the Past from last month got accidentally emailed out to everyone so it was essentially free. Consider that a gift from me to you all so you can get a sense of how I'm approaching these Star Wars Legends books! The next edition focused on Vision of the Future will be published on Tuesday 31st March and will definitely only be for paying subscribers so, again, if you want to see that - sign up to read it!
For those of you on the upper ($10) tier you'll also get the chance to vote/suggest topics for the April edition of the First World War newsletter. There's also still time (until Friday 6th March) to vote on where you'd like me to go next with Star Wars content. At the moment it looks like it'll be Heir to the Empire but there's still time to make your voices heard.
But what else has been going on for me?
Public History Work
Last month I spent a few days in Exeter giving a talk to staff and postgraduate students about the lessons I've learned from doing consultancy for computer games and also writing for Star Wars with DK.
Whilst I have now largely left academia, I still believe that what I do with computer games and things like Star Wars is valuable and also should be considered as 'public history'. So spreading the word about them to other historians and academics is really important for me.
Speaking of computer games, the new trailer - focusing on the Siege of Kut - for Gallipoli was released last week and it looks amazing.
We're all working really hard on the game and I'm very excited about it!
Oh! What a Lovely Podcast - the First World War and popular culture podcast I do with several friends and colleague also released it's latest episode at the start of the month focusing on the novel My Soul, a Shining Tree. We've recorded a lot of episodes over the years so take a look through our back catalogue for anything that might take your fancy!
On Tuesday I'm also giving a talk to a local history society about the 'Battle of the Boar's Head' during the First World War, which should be a lot of fun. Speaking of Tuesday...
The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire and the future...
This newsletter is scheduled to go out at 11am EST / 4pm GMT on Tuesday 3rd of March.
In exactly one hour (12pm EST / 5pm GMT) an interview I recorded with Star Wars Explained will be published on their YouTube channel. Most of that interview is a deep dive into The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire and it was really nice, nearly 18 months after the book was published, to have an indepth discussion about its contents and the process of writing it.
At the end of that video I also announce the title and discuss some of the details of my new Star Wars book.
The interview is probably about an hour long so to give people chance to watch it I will hold off on sharing further information online until 2pm EST / 7pm GMT but at that point I will send out a further email from here for all of you and also share details on my BlueSky and Instagram pages.
It's nearly time.
#RedactedStandingBy
