Welcome to Liam H. Dooley’s blog on Tales of Writing, Warfare, and Roaming. This blog is about creative writing, thoughts on international security and warfare, and traveling. This blog is inspired by the experience of writing my first novel The Holy Diamond, and travel adventures and tips from, what I like to call, the Unlimited-Budget Budget Perspective. That’s when you have enough money to spend on anything within reason but you also know that money is limited and the more you save, the more you have. YOLO – but it may be a long life so don’t blow it all on one trip.
Why Write, Right?
The original and central purpose of this blog is to talk about my first novel, The Holy Diamond, providing some context to and information about the scenes, sites and cities mentioned in the novel. These discussions won’t match the chronological order in the novel; and there won’t be too many spoilers. I’ll provide travel advice and smallish recollections about my experiences about these locations, in some cases how they helped me conceive what I wrote.
Warfare: It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it (General Lee)
I have not been in the uniformed military and am not a veteran. The closest I have come to war is visiting battlefields, and being in a country briefly in the midst of being invaded. And I was in Washington, DC, on 11 September. Nonetheless, I have a passion for military history, defense studies, and national security. I will write occasional commentaries on current diplomatic and conflict issues, and try to throw in a “paper” now and then about something such as tanks, defense planning, planes, and whatever else comes to mind. I might even be able to mix and match the themes of creative writing, warfare, and travel.
A Tome of Roams away from Home
This blog will also discuss general travel tips such as backpacking, travel supplies, my favorite travel bags and clothes, couchsurfing experiences, and hosteling experiences. Most of these are likely to be somewhat relevant to The Holy Diamond, as many of the novel’s ideas originated from my backpacking lifestyle. In the past ten years or so I have visited some 45 countries and 500 cities, towns, villages, and other sites. Most of my travels have been within Europe, and I can honestly claim to have a good knowledge of (due to having lived in or traveled extensively through) approximately ten European countries. Okay…some of them are a bit of a cheat – like Vatican City, Luxembourg and Monaco; a day or two is enough to “know” these microstates. But others, such as Germany and France, are massive in their size and even moreso in their content; and it has taken ten or more trips amounting to at least a month worth of travel, if not years, to experience and appreciate each of these country’s cultures, histories, and to visit their cities and sites to even a moderate degree.
Photos: A Thousand Words and Three Megabytes
All of my blog posts will be supported, when possible, by photographs taken in almost every case by me (see copyright notice). Some photos may be linked into other web sites due to copyright purposes. If you own a site/link and would like that link removed, please let me know. Or complain to the Wikipedia folks as that’s mostly where I’m going to get my linked photos from.
Liam's Tales of Writing, Warfare, and Wandering 