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Books by D.J. Butler
Category Archives: History
Witchy Eye: Real-World Christian Grimoires
One of the fun things about writing my epic blackpowder fantasy WITCHY EYE (Baen, forthcoming) and now its first sequel (WITCHY WINTER) has been exploring real-world ideas about magic. It turns out, for instance, that right into the nineteenth century … Continue reading
Posted in Bookshelf, History, How to Write
Tagged Baen, Christian Magic, Francis Barrett, Grimoires, Johann George Hohman, The Long-Lost Friend, The Magus, Witchy Eye, Witchy Winter
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City of the Saints Historical Note #5
Brigham Young may or may not have really denounced Levi-Strauss jeans as “fornication pants.” His proposed State of Deseret was rejected by the United States Congress in favor of a significantly smaller Utah Territory in 1850, which was still twice … Continue reading
City of the Saints Historical Note #4
The inventors in City of the Saints deserve a short note. Isambard Kingdom Brunel built railways, bridges, tunnels, and the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship. In 2002, he came second to Sir Winston Churchill in an extended survey to find the … Continue reading
City of the Saints Historical Note #3
Sam Clemens’s brother Henry did in fact die when the steamboat he was working on, the Pennsylvania, exploded. Sam had dreamed of Henry’s death a month earlier, and these experiences left him with an abiding curiosity about psychic phenomena and … Continue reading
City of the Saints Historical Note #2
Edgar Allan Poe is the father of both detective stories and weird fiction. He also dabbled in cryptography. In the real world, he died in 1849 in Baltimore. He died strangely: delirious, not wearing his own clothes, and muttering about … Continue reading
City of the Saints Historical Note #1
I stole my title from one of my protagonists. In real life in 1860, Captain Richard Burton, East India Company man, linguist, Nile explorer, swordsman, falconer, and erstwhile ersatz hajji (ahem), traveled to Salt Lake City. He wrote a book … Continue reading
