More stories coming soon

 

I have two books waiting to go through the editorial process.

Face to Face with the Führer looks at Renate’s mother / Clara’s daughter and a strange encounter she had with Hitler. So strange in fact that a mainstream publisher probably wouldn’t look at it.   

The Class Letter  revisits the round robin letter but looks in more detail at some of the characters we’ve met before: a girl who trains to be an actor, one of the twins who has to help run her father’s business after he dies suddenly, a girl who becomes a farmer and the class teacher.  

In addition there are two further stories being planned. They haven’t got firm titles yet but working titles are:

Helga’s Story This is the story of an “Untertaucher” who survives being hidden right under the noses of the Nazis. However, she meets persecution again in the 1980s. This story takes place partly in the 1940s and partly in the 1980s.

Gabriela Gabriela is the aunt of the girl on The Class Letter who becomes an actor. She is working secretly for the German resistance.

Comments and beta readers are very welcome.  The first two books mentioned are ready to go. The second two aren’t written yet.        

The Class Letter (Book 5) almost finished

I’m now on the final edit of what I’ve decided to call The Class Letter. It goes into more detail about some of the girls – Erika, one of twins who have to take over running their father’s business when he dies suddenly, Anika who trains to be an actor and gets involved in some subversive theatre, Gerda who becomes a farmer and Hanna who is their former teacher. This also expands on what happens after Hanna Braun has told the girls some of the truth about what has happened to some people who were disliked by the Nazis. This includes a nun who taught at the school, a local vicar and Elfriede Kaiser, another Jewish girl who went to the school but wasn’t as fortunate as Renate.

In the final edit I’m tidying up the appearance and creating a glossary of the German terms I’ve used.  I’ve decided not to have chapter numbers but just names of each girl whose story is in that chapter ad the heading.   I’ve not put dates as part of the chapter title.  We’ll see what the beta readers say about that. Each chapter contains quite a few time markers in any case. Many of them move through several days and in most cases time moves on a good deal between chapters.

Book 4, Face to Face with the Führer is still queued for publishing.  I’ve also tried a few other independent publishers. “Good” rejections so far.  I’m a little ambivalent about this.  It’s good to keep it in one imprint. But there is some way to go before it will come to the top of the list.  

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

 

Schellberg 5 The Round Robin

I’m now writing another book in the Schellberg Cycle. This goes back to the original class letter and I’m expanding on some of the stories behind the letters. So, I’m in 1940s’ Germany again. 

I’m focusing on just a few characters:

• A farmer’s daughter,
• A young woman who becomes an actor
• The class teacher Hanna Braun
• One of identical twins.  They have to take over running their father’s factory.  One twin gets married and has a baby.  The other, featured here, takes on most of the work with the factory. 

To do this I’ve gone back to the letters included in The House on Schellberg Street. There’s an interesting story here, too. My editor suggested shortening some of the letters and leaving some out altogether. I think he was right. However, one reader asked where all the others were; he’d noticed an oddity in the sequencing. That is one of the reasons I’ve included “deleted scenes” on this web site.  Find them here.       

Each letter from these individuals is turning into two or three chapters. 

Again it is proving to be a way of uncovering what actually may have happened. What led to the twins needing new boots and how did they actually cope when there were none available? What was it like for Hanna Braun when her mother died and when she had to give up teaching? What was it like when they knew they were losing the war and how did the young men react? What was it like when the Americans arrived? 

I anticipate the book being about 80,000 words. I’m working on other projects as well but every day I work on this one I’m writing about 1,000 words.    

The story in the letters

Well, I have now completed all of the edits though we still have to do something about widows and orphans in the finished text. We’ve really tightened up the letters, making them no more than one side long and containing just those details that add to the two other plots or give some important setting detail. It was one of those cases where less or more is needed.  We went for less. That is probably the right decision: the novel is now a more realistic length.

But what of that extraordinary story the letters tell?

The German girls’ story

I’ve decided that I needed to write another novel. I still need to represent that naïve German point of view and that is the story told by the class letter. The real class letter contains some fascinating detail but makes for dull reading. I’m now working on telling the story of four of those involved in the letters: the farmer’s daughter, the twin who does not get married, the girl who becomes an actress and the class teacher. They gradually become enlightened as the story goes on.

The Schellberg Cycle

I started with one story – then I realised I had to write Clara Lehrs’ biography.  I’m working on that now. I want to investigate the fanatic’s mind. How did they become like that? So I’m going to tell the story of  BDM leader who eventually see fit to warn Hani and the others about what is going to happen to the Hilfsklasse’s little school. Then as I worked on Clara’s story, I realise that Käthe Edler is an interesting enough character to have a book to herself. Now I have a fifth.

The books can be read in any order. Two are written for adults and the other three are teens / young adults. Once one has been read, the other should be of interest regardless of age. So we have in order of writing:

The House on Schellberg Street

Clara’sStory

The BDM Girl (working title only)

The Woman Who Nearly Shot Hitler

The Class Letter (working title?)

Will I ever get away from the first half of the 20^th Century?