My book is out today. Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt is finally for sale. A release day is a funny thing. There has been a lot of anticipation, suspense, heartache, highs and lows, and then, then, the book comes out. And it does have a bit of anticlimax. There should be bells and shouting from the rooftops and of course that is why you do media. But in reality your book coming out is the end of a very long journey that began years before when you had the idea to put pen to paper or fingers to screen.
In the case of Forging A President I was intrigued by a biography of Teddy Roosevelt when I learned his mother and wife died on the same day and he went West for three years to the Dakota Territory or the Badlands. It is an amazing thing to think that this vigorous President had such tragedy at such a young age (26) and then went to the West to essentially become someone else. Add to this that he was a sickly asthmatic who literally had to fight for every breath prompting his father to once observe, "you have the mind but not the body Teddy, and without the body the mind cannot go far."
And from that moment I wanted to find out what happened to Teddy Roosevelt out West and how did it create this barrel chested persona who comes down to us through history. I do believe in destiny, anyone else would have been killed by the falling horses, the arrows from Indians, the six shooters pointed his way by bad men. And so you write the book, push the book, and then finally it comes out. And like a child that grows up, the best you can do is give your book a good push... and let it go.
Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt
In the case of Forging A President I was intrigued by a biography of Teddy Roosevelt when I learned his mother and wife died on the same day and he went West for three years to the Dakota Territory or the Badlands. It is an amazing thing to think that this vigorous President had such tragedy at such a young age (26) and then went to the West to essentially become someone else. Add to this that he was a sickly asthmatic who literally had to fight for every breath prompting his father to once observe, "you have the mind but not the body Teddy, and without the body the mind cannot go far."
And from that moment I wanted to find out what happened to Teddy Roosevelt out West and how did it create this barrel chested persona who comes down to us through history. I do believe in destiny, anyone else would have been killed by the falling horses, the arrows from Indians, the six shooters pointed his way by bad men. And so you write the book, push the book, and then finally it comes out. And like a child that grows up, the best you can do is give your book a good push... and let it go.
Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt
