Interview With Author Michael Bergen
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am Michael G. Bergen, the author of The Rutherford Chronicles. I was born in Croydon, England, during the Nazi “Vengeance” V-1 and V2 bombings of England and raised in Montreal, Canada. I spent three years in the Royal Canadian Navy at sea out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and studied for four years at Concordia University in Montreal. My varied life has involved living and working in 8 cities in 5 countries on 3 continents, as related in my Cold War Memoir. I lived and worked in Montreal while studying; in Croydon, England, for one year while traveling; in Heidelberg and Frankfurt, Germany; Paris, France; and for many years in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.
Before writing novels, I spent many years in high-technology software research, marketing, and entrepreneurial business management. During that time, I wrote many technical and business papers and presentations. However, I became curious about my family history a dozen years ago. That launched an extended project that resulted in me documenting that history and inspiring me to write The Rutherford Chronicles.
The Rutherford Chronicles is a four-book series that follows a family’s lives, passions, and struggles through four of the most significant conflicts of the 20th Century. It’s a saga of ordinary men and women thrust into extraordinary, dangerous circumstances during the deadliest hundred years of human history. The Rutherford Chronicles is a fast-paced, exciting, and fact-enhanced historical series of sweeping breadth that will appeal to avid readers and history buffs alike.
The series follows three generations through conflicts on three continents and their rapidly changing world. It is a series about empires and war:
1. Empire Discovered is about the experiences of Joe Rutherford during the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902) and his service in British India (1902-1906).
2. Empire and War is about Joe’s service in the trenches and detention in German POW camps during the Great War or WWI (1914-1918).
3. Empire and Tyranny follows Joe through the economically stressful Interwar Years (1919-1939) in England and Joe’s Canadian future son-in-law and soldier during World War II (1939-1945) in England and Italy.
4. Empires Lost: Cold War Memoir follows the author’s life during The Cold War (1945-1991/1994).
These books tell of the horrors of war experienced by my grandfather, father and myself. We were personally involved in the four major conflicts of history’s most deadly and costly one hundred years and survived.
As background, 20th-century Europe began with five major empires:
1. The British Empire was ruled by Queen Victoria,
2. The Russian Empire was ruled by Tsar Nicholas II,
3. The German Empire was ruled by Kaiser Wilhelm,
4. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was ruled by Emperor Franz Joseph I and Emperor Karl I,
5. The Ottoman Empire was ruled by Emperor Mehmed V.
After WWI, only the British Empire remained, the largest in history. By the end of history’s most tempestuous and deadly century, there were none. However, although not classified as Empires, two vast new powers emerged from the two world wars: The United States of America (US) of the Western Bloc and the Soviet Union (USSR) with its Eastern Bloc.
According to the Imperial War Museums, every year of the 20th Century suffered conflict. It has been estimated that 187 million people died from war from 1900 to the present. In World War I, there were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians. In World War II, 75 million people died, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians, many of whom died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation.
What did I learn from researching the history of all those wars and the deaths and maiming of millions of young people? It boils down to the wisdom of the famous Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana. In 1906, Santayana partially answered these questions when he wrote,
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”
So, why do we let our leaders and politicians lead us into war after war? Why do the youth of every generation rush to make themselves available to fight and die in battle? How do all of the lessons learned from the 20th-century wars relate to the world we live in today, with its global tensions backed by nuclear weapons? Are we not in another Cold War teetering on becoming another Hot War, WW3 perhaps?
If we can’t answer these questions and act to end the desire to wage war with the weapons now at our disposal, the consequences could be the worst in human history! I try to answer those underlying questions by exposing the dangers of war in the four books of The Rutherford Chronicles series through the personal family stories of the three protagonists involved. Still, the same questions keep appearing, war after war.
The Rutherford Chronicles journey begins with three historical fiction novels about life in the industrial district of Tyneside, Northeast England’s coal mines and shipyards. It continues through the Boer War of South Africa and a soldier’s life in British India in the early years of the century, France and Germany during the Great War, England, and the Italian Campaign of World War II. The series concludes with my memoir of the Cold War, involving Cold War NATO maritime exercises in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Oceans, the Cuban Missile Crisis on the East Coast of Canada, and the US and Cuba during the 1960s. It concluded with a divided
Germany and a divided Berlin, the devastating proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one of the Soviet-backed liberation struggles in Africa through to 1994.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is the fourth part of The Rutherford Chronicles series, Empires Lost: Cold War Memoir. It was inspired by my experiences with the Cold War in Canada and the Atlantic Ocean, living in a divided Cold War Germany and experiencing a precarious South Africa during the Soviet-backed struggle for a majority democratic republic.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
That’s an interesting question. Maybe my writing habits are all unusual for many people. However, I go to bed early and rise well before sunrise to research and write. It may be that many writers can produce a nearly perfect manuscript from the first pass, but that’s not true for me. All my writing involves extensive historical research, developing a broad outline of the story or stories, writing a rough copy, and then returning several times to refine the historical facts and edit and re-edit my books.
Of all writing habits, discipline is the most important, in my opinion. Writing is generally a lonely occupation, so the author must learn from whatever source one can find, verbal or written, and control one’s ‘bad habits’.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I have been influenced by extensive reading of science fiction and historical fiction novels, non-fiction history, and military journals. I am well-read, having read most of the classics in many genres. While writing, I read fewer novels and more non-fiction, but I accumulate lists for reading between projects. Apart from my early readings of Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, H G Wells, Issac Asimov, and Frank Herbert, I have been strongly influenced by Ken Follet, Mary Renault, and Irving Stone. Canadian author Farley Mowat is also a favorite of mine. As it happened, Mowat was in the Canadian Army during the same campaign as my father. I have read an enormous number of historical non-fiction books during my research
What are you working on now?
I am working on an epic historical-fantasy-fiction novel involving two thousand years of the Celts and my Scottish Clan MacRae and Rutherford roots, about two-thirds of my ancestry and heritage. It also touches on my other third ancestry and heritage: the Scandinavian Vikings.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
The best method is https://www.michaelgbergen.com/
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Be empowered, confident, curious, determined and disciplined in your research and writing, but be open to continual learning. Do not shy away from criticism; constructive criticism is essential and valuable, so accept it happily in that light.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Ignore convention and follow your dreams.”
What are you reading now?
The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson, another favorite author.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Completing my epic work “The Lure of Celtic Legends”, traveling and enjoying life. I have outlined another memoir of my life in nature on three continents, which I may or may not publish as a non-fiction picture book.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I would take a selection of books by Robert Graves and Bernard Cornwell that I’ve not read, plus a few non-fiction books.
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