Unearthing the Secret Journal

I write as M. H. Broderick—because Michael Henry Broderick takes up a bit too much room—but off the book cover, I’m just Mike.

The inspiration for the Covilhã Secret Journal series struck in a dusty Viennese antiquarian bookshop: I stumbled across a rare 1947 chronicle of Portuguese seafarers and discovered an incredible, untold odyssey.

I saw that Pêro da Covilhã played a pivotal role in the escalating 15th-century conflict between East and West, Islam and Christianity. He successfully scouted the route to India a full decade before the celebrated Vasco da Gama ever set sail. Yet, because of a strict policy of secrecy at the Portuguese court, his achievements were buried as a mere footnote in our history books. I was compelled to set the record straight.

Archives, Research, and the Horn of Africa

Today, my writing is fueled by a private library centered on the history and culture of Portugal and Abyssinia. This archive allows me to build an immersive, historically accurate geopolitical backdrop—with the tension and narrative drive of a world on the edge of empire.

To ensure this peculiar and puzzling world feels real, my wife and I have traveled extensively through Iberia and embarked on a study tour of the old Abyssinia—in today’s Ethiopia—to gain some understanding of Pêro’s native soil and the cultures he encountered in the Highlands of the Horn of Africa.

Itinerary

Iberia
Barbary
Mediterranean
Levant
Indies
Abyssinia

The Scriptorium

Today, I live a quiet life near Heidelberg with my dearly loved German wife and a strict succession of fierce German cats.

In fact, my wife—strongly supported by an ear-flattened, low-profile Kitzekatze—insisted that I include a fictional Maghrebi cat in the book. I took the hint: Felfel—Pepper—now plays a major role in Terra Barbaria. And there will be at least one feline accomplice in every novel—I promise.

All three of us enjoy perusing the old tomes. My wife loves the colorful plates of exotic costumes and I pore over the roteiros, the rutters of the Portuguese discoveries, while the Kitze keeps a wary eye on pictures of suspicious flora and fauna.


From Barstow to Barbaria

I learned to type in junior high in Barstow, California.

I was the only guy in a class full of girls, pounding away on a machine that our cats could use as a staircase today. It took a few decades, a slight upgrade in hardware, and a whole lot of research, but those early, hard-won typing skills eventually hammered out the first draft of Terra Barbaria.

Look closely at the page in this early-1900s Remington Standard No. 10. It was the first model where you could actually see the words as they were typed—which means you can see them, too…