Posts by Jack Whyte

Have you noticed the cost of a paperback book recently? I never lose sight of it; it’s my bread and butter. A long time ago, when I was a boy back in the U.K., paperback books were looked down upon as “pulp fiction”. We were actively discouraged from reading them, and they had built-in obsolescence.…

Last night the phone rang at supper time and, foolishly, I answered it without looking at the Caller ID display. “Hello, Mr. Whyte, and how are you today?” I’m quite sure you’ve already recognized the overture. It hits you like the voice of doom every time, just when you least expect it, and suddenly you…

I’ve been thinking a lot about perceptions recently, prompted by all the media brouhaha about the forthcoming federal election and the exorbitant costs involved in a campaign that most people see as much too long. That single, public perception, that the campaign is being needlessly drawn out for political purposes, can do our current federal…

Serendipity can sometimes be more than merely serendipitous. A few days ago, for example, my next-door neighbour reminded me that three months ago, in June, those who know about such things celebrated the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, the medieval document that most jurists and constitutional experts consider to have been the…

One of oldest chestnuts in The Mythological Book of Frequently Asked Questions About Being An Author disappeared around the turn of the Millennium, and almost nobody noticed. I noticed its demise–though only very slowly–because it had always been one of my favourite questions and I loved answering it because there were so many ways to do…

I was extremely disturbed recently to learn that there are educational jurisdictions within Canada, (and elsewhere around the world, of course, but I’m Canadian so my concern lies here,) where the decision has been made to stop teaching children the art of cursive writing. That’s handwriting, folks, in case the term ‘cursive’ isn’t front and…

A few weeks ago, on a rare evening with time on my hands, I sat down to watch an episode of a long-running CBC TV series that I had heard about but never seen. The series is The Murdoch Mysteries, it has been running for years, and in the space of less than ten minutes…

My most recent novel, The Guardian, will be released this week in the mass-market paperback edition. The original hardcover version was published in September last year, and there was a time, not too long ago, when a full year would have elapsed before the paperback appeared. Nowadays, though, the interval is shorter because hardcover book…

In an earlier column I wrote about what I do in deconstructing legends and I have another example that I’d like to tell you about. This one was the original puzzle that first led to my increasing fascination with finding the truth underlying such tales, and it was brought to my attention decades ago while…