New Rob Shackleford Novel – Traveller Manifesto

Now Rob Shackleford Novel - Traveller Manifesto I am delighted to announce the publication of my new novel: Traveller Manifesto. It's the third of a series I began over ten years ago when I wrote Traveller Inceptio. The concept of these novels is highly speculative. What if someone created a device that would send a person back only 1000 years - no more, no less. (In my defense, please note - Traveller Inceptio and the associated time-travel universe was written before we had seen Game of Thrones, Outlander, and a crappy TV show called Travellers. While my books are so…
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Inked Up – A brief history of Vikings and Tattoos Part 2 by Rob Shackleford

Were Vikings Inked? - Vikings and Tattoos Part 2 by Rob Shackleford Did Vikings have tattoos? Nobody really knows. Now, with popular media we want Vikings to have had tattoos, but did they really? Unfortunately, except in unique circumstances, human skin does not survive centuries of burial. Add to that, few Viking literary works survive, so we are forced to rely on outside accounts. Many come from Arab statesmen who carried on extensive trade and cultural exchange with Norsemen in the ninth and tenth centuries. One Arab traveler, Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, a scholar of Baghdad, was sent by the Abbasid…
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