Charles Douglas Billet
Born and raised in New York State in the US to age 22, he has resided in France since 1972 and became a French citizen in 1986. Now retired, he lives in southwest France.
He holds university degrees from Stony Brook University and the Sorbonne in Paris.
He founded a training institute in Toulouse, France from 1989 to 1998, training hundreds of adults in professional English: aeronautics and space, pharmacology, negotiation, business correspondence, public speaking, and clear communication.
In 1995 he founded his own publishing firm, Media Training Corporation, in Cannes, France. Until 2016 he wrote and designed over 60 publications — ELT methods, in all areas of scientific and business English. He did all the layout, and created all the graphic illustations, including the covers, himself. This includes audio material as well.
The publications were marketed worldwide and may still be seen on Google under “C. Douglas Billet.” All were registered with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.
In addition, he was chief trainer in all areas of professional English, especially pharmacology and scientific writing for Galderma R&D, Sophia Antipolis, France, from 2001 to 2015.
He has never stopped studying and learning: quantum physics, cosmology, pharmacology, chemistry, biology, art, architecture, history. He was very much into Egyptology in his younger years, hence one of the current short novels: Deep Night, Bright Dawn: Akhenaton and the Heresy.
You will also find these works: TIMES LONG PAST - TALES OF SHADOWS OF HAPPINESS, along with DEMONS OF DEATH and CITY OF DARK NIGHT.
Then there is music: an opera lover from age 18, he has been playing the piano and studying music theory for over 60 years.
Not much else remains to be said about this guy. He speaks, reads, and writes English, French, German and Russian and has read extensively the literature of those languages and the histories of the countries where they are spoken. A great lover of English literature since the age of 16 he has read extensively the works of all ages, but tends to prefer Shakespeare and the Romantic poets, though sometimes partial to Victorians such as Swinburne and Matthew Arnold.
He is particulary fond of Russian — perhaps because he is 50% Ukranian on the maternal side. He is currently reading, in Russian конечно-konechno, all of Tolstoy’s writings and is about to embark on Dostoyevsky. And some recent works of modern Russian authors.
His writing (begun 40 years ago) displays many voices: serious and very philosophical as well as critical-satirical, facetious, gently mocking, wistful, bittersweet, yearning — there’s the German Sehnsucht for you!
