Today’s the first anniversary of a new Facebook group, Second World War Club – well, I’m exaggerating a bit. The group is a week old but it’s off to a good start. As you probably know, I’m writing a series of Short Reads and novels set in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. For years I’ve had an interest in that era and I enjoy reading about all aspects of life during the war, in places around the world, not just the corner I write about. I know lots of people love wartime fiction too, so a friend of mine, Rachel Zaouche, who writes as Ellie Keaton, and I decided to set up a Facebook group where we can get together with other wartime fiction fans.
We’ve teamed up to form the Second World War Club. It’s a Facebook club for readers who enjoy wartime fiction. We set out to focus on World War II but have quickly expanded our horizons to include World War I too. The aim is to share books we loved, talk about real life historical events and meet others who share our enthusiasm for the subject. We’ll also invite authors to discuss their books with us and we hope to have some giveaways too.
If you are interested in wartime fiction, in its many forms, why not hop over to the club and have a look. If it appeals to you, please join us here.
narratives of real events to reveal history for what it is: a tapestry of the fibers of individual lives through time. Building from the premise World War I, World War II, and the many other wars of the 20th Century were actually one prolonged human tragedy, the Threads series crosses the world to find individual stories exposing the facts, fictions and fallacies of armed violence. In Volume 1 the reader is whisked from the seats of a German cinema in 1915 and high over Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 to under the water of the port of Alexandria, Egypt and on a rail line in East Prussia in 1945. Volume II builds off of its predecessor by taking us from the celebratory streets of Paris in the summer of 1914, under the coast of North Carolina in 1918, across the ocean to the evacuated beaches of northern France in 1940, and finally within the minds of both the liberated and the confined at camps in 1945.
in the Second World War. Almost seventy-five years ago today the first ships carrying American troops docked in Belfast; these troops were the first US troops to arrive in Europe. The first enlisted soldier to officially step onto European soil was Private First Class Millburn Henke of the First Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, 34th Infantry Division. Although other units had already disembarked in Belfast that morning before he came ashore at Dufferin Quay, he was chosen to represent the US servicemen and became the face of the ordinary soldier at the official welcoming ceremony. He was interviewed by reporters and posed for photographs, and the resulting newspaper articles were published across America, making him nationally famous.
KC: Decorum is about a tycoon (Connor), an heiress (Francesca), a mistress (Blanche), and a gigolo (Edmund) who struggle to find happiness, power, and wealth amid deception, betrayal, bigamy, and murder in Gilded Age New York. Each character has his or her own challenges to overcome: though he has made his money, Connor yearns to break into the big league in New York business; Francesca is trying to move on with her life after her family has been killed; Blanche is trying to shake off her shady past and find security; Edmund, too, is looking for security—and control.
novel about Gilded Age New York—that began taking form in 1999 during a course on writing historical fiction. From that moment, Connor O’Casey (who had been rattling around in her brain for months) finally appeared one night and said, “All right, woman. Here I am. What are you going to do about my story?” So she began to put his words on paper, and he hasn’t kept quiet since. Soon Francesca, Blanche, Tracey, Vinnie, and the rest of the characters began arguing, gossiping, loving, and forming themselves into Kaaren’s first novel.
On Sunday night I left my comfy chair beside our fireplace to attend a concert in Belfast. Relaxing into my seat in the concert hall, I savoured I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas sung by a classical trio. I’m sure you’ve heard the song somewhere; it is considered the best selling single of all time. And it’s a song that always stirs memories for me.
When we return home I’m greeted by a house festooned with decorations and other items that are intricately part of Christmas for me. Some of them I brought with me from my home in Toronto, including a set of colourful bells on a bright green braided rope that a Dutch aunt brought to Canada with her, fragile tree baubles that belonged to my mother and even the rocking chair that sat in our Toronto living room and was crafted at my grandfather’s farm in Western Canada long before I was born.
writer, but the eras I knew and loved best – English and ancient Roman – seemed to be well-covered by writers better than I ever expected to be. One day, I picked up John Julius Norwich’s “A Short History of Byzantium” and found myself fascinated by this civilization. When I went looking for novels about them, however, I found precious few. Most of them seemed to be focused on either Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora – admittedly an interesting topic – or were from the point of view of the Crusaders, who had little love for the Byzantines. It was then I realized that I had found what I would write about.
About Eileen Stephenson: She was born in Fort Worth, Texas but spent most of her life in the Washington, DC area. She has degrees from both Georgetown University and George Washington University (neither involving the Byzantines) and is married with three daughters. Her interest in Byzantine history all started one fateful day when every other book in the library looked boring except for John Julius Norwich’s A Short History of Byzantium.
MW: NEAR THE WILD is taken from my family history, stories I’ve heard my entire life about how my ancestors came to America from Ireland to homestead in Kansas in the 1800s. The story is fiction, but it’s very much based on fact, or at least the stories I’ve heard from my mother’s and father’s generation of our family.
About Maureen Willett: She is a writer of fiction that pushes the boundaries of established genres. Her stories mostly come from her own family legends that have been passed down through generations, but then she tops them off with a twist of faery dust and angel wings. She is a former journalist, public relations professional, and media marketing specialist. Maureen lives in Hawaii with her family and walks the white-sand beaches of Oahu each day to get her inspiration for writing.
Italian-American civilian contractor, Frank Long, who is staying at her family’s hotel in Irvinestown, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Serious and reserved, he is nothing like the friendly, outgoing British and Canadian servicemen she knows. Nor, she discovers, does he even use his real surname.
imagine walking around a building site of four magnificent towers that rise to the sky and belong to a temple just in the beginning of its construction. And try to imagine the life of one of the stonecutters, a well-off woman with singular personality, who will encounter an ambitious man related to her jeweler family. Many things could happen, no?
About the author: Andrés Vidal is the pseudonym of Marius Molla. He is the author of two other novels that were successes in Spain: Inheriting the Earth (2010) and The Dream (2012). By training the author is an industrial engineer in Barcelona.
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