Ask the Author: Mike Connell
Answered Questions (3)
Mike Connell
I am looking into writing a short history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DROC) and its predecessors. I have studied and written about the country in graduate school, as a visitor to the nation, and as an intelligence analyst in the Pentagon. Given the area's eventful and chaotic history starting in the late 19th century as an entity known as the Congo Free State, I want to provide an overview of the history of this important region of Africa for the general reader.
Mike Connell
While I was teaching history at a private school after I retired from the Army, I talked with a fellow history teacher who was writing and publishing her first novel. She taught me a lot of the details involved in being a writer such as the importance of catching fleeting ideas about your work when they occur and of drafting a concise query letter to explain the gist of your book to potential publishers. After hearing about her experiences, I decided writing would be a great project to undertake after I retired from teaching.
Mike Connell
During my three years stationed in Africa while I was in the U.S. Army, I kept a detailed journal and wrote several letters to friends and family about my observations and experiences. Although I had always planned to publish a memoir about this time, I didn't seriously pursue it until after I had retired and had taught history for nearly two decades at a private school. One day, a fellow history teacher shared an article he had read about how ill-informed Americans were about Africa. This story gave me the idea to focus my memoir on giving readers a more accurate understanding and appreciation of the continent. Hopefully, Into Africa provides that.
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