The Comb Honey Book

Richard Taylor was a talented, educated and erudite writer. Unfortunately, not a very tenacious one. He died without seeing his novel, The Duration, published. When former Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Taylor sent his novel to Charles Scribner & Sons in 1964 and it was returned unopened, he gave up. It sat in a box, still in the brown paper mailing wrapper, until his stepson discovered it in 2009. After a long career in newspapers, including a stint as editor of the East County Californian, Taylor had died in 1979. Richard Taylor grew up in San Francisco in the 20s and 30s. Although he was a young man during WWII, he did not serve in the military. He was a gifted student who graduated from Stanford. While a student there he was part of a longitudinal study of students with extremely high I.Q.s that followed their careers over a 30-year period. He was a journalist, writer, and an editor during his entire professional life. The last publications he edited were The Valley News in El Cajon, California and the Labor Leader in San Diego. He was also a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and had articles published in San Diego Magazine as well as a history of the Lakeside-Santee area for the County of San Diego. As a history buff, Richard could have been a brilliant college history professor but thought college teaching was too political. He could talk for hours about battles that most of the population had never heard of. The Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, just 13 days before the Battle of Hastings, was one of his favorites. He had read every word he could find on it and would quote things reportedly said by Harold of Norway the day prior to the battle as if they had been said the day before he stated his own eloquent recollections.