After having taken mystery writers to task for using the D38AP (dreaded thirty-eight auto pistol,) I have now to take myself to task for a mistake I made.
In State of War, I apparently had a character ruminating about how the longbow had given the British the victory at the Battle of Hastings, against the Normans. I don't recall writing the scene, but I'm pretty sure Tom C, Doc Pieczenik, or Larry S didn't pen it, so I must have done.
Oops.
Meant to show how good the Brits were with the weapon, and they were -- but it was the Battle of Agincourt where the longbow did the trick against the French. A mere three hundred and fifty years later.
I don't know what I was thinking. Must have had a stray cosmic ray zap my brain that day ...
Been six years since that book came out, and a reader just got around to noticing. But that's the thing about a book in print -- once it is out there, on somebody's shelf, or in a mountain cabin's desperation-lit bathroom rack,* it might be around to haunt you for a long time. Better to get it right before you write ...
Thanks to British reader MH, for pointing it out. We never like to hear we goofed, but we do want to know so we don't repeat the mistake.
(*this is a rack containing books that you'd only read if you were stranded in a snowstorm, had to use the toilet, and had nothing else to read ...)
Now if they had only stayed with the long bow and their mandated Sunday practice for every capable male, they would have stayed a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, things that go BANG really appeal to the male psyche, no matter how hideously slow and innaccurate they may be.
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