The advance review program for Colette has commenced. Here's the blurb...
Eighteen-year-old Collette’s peaceful life in France is shattered when the Nazi panzers steamroll across her country. She feels compelled to help the nation she loves and joins the Women’s Auxilliary Air Force, training as a radar operator. There, her French accent is noticed and she is recruited into the Special Operations Executive to spy in France.
Smothering her fear and self-doubt, Colette undergoes intensive training as a radio operator. One moonlit night, she is infiltrated into France to work with the Resistance. Nazi tracking vans are out, using her transmissions to locate her. Her messages must be short and she moves fast after each one.
It’s a game of cat and mouse which Colette must win … every time.
You can request an advance review copy by going to
Big news this week - I am now readying Colette (my WW2 novella)for publication! This means spending time fiddling with layout and it can be terribly frustrating trying to get the details right ... such are the joys of the indie author life.
As part of the release process, I will be looking for Advanced Reviewers. I'll have more to say about this in the next few weeks.
I was tidying up the loose ends from the beta process and final edit, when I came across an interesting moment of 'art imitates life'.
Radio operators like Colette needed to code their messages. The Nazis were always listening, trying to triangulate the transmission and capture the operator but also to break the code and read the messages. For the first part of the war Special Operations Executive agents like Colette used a poem as the basis of the code. I decided that Colette would use a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) - La Chanson d' Automne. I had studied this when I learned French and fell in love with Verlaine's poetry.
I was online checking the wording of the poem and discovered that the Allies used the opening lines to signal to the French Resistance that the D-Day landings were coming - and to prepare to take the fight to the Nazis - Les Boches - as the French termed them. Coded messages like these were read out after the BBC news. The Nazis made it illegal to listen to the BBC - but it was listened to regularly throughout occupied Europe and proved an exceptionally useful way to start predetermined actions.
After some thought, I've included the poem (in French with a translation) at the end of the novella as part of the Afterword.
I will be releasing the final version of the book here on Patreon, but I suspect that this wont be happening until October or later.
I quite understand if you unsubscribe from my Patreon if you don't want to be part of the beta program and can't wait til later this year. When the book is ready for release here, I'll announce it in a public post.
"Through different Eyes" is the sequel to "Through my Eyes. Again. - and it's now getting very close to first draft completion. Chapter 19 is done and I'm into the final chapter. It's been a bit of a journey - Word tells me Chapter 1 was commenced on 27th September 2020 at 9:53pm.
At present, the book is 155,554 words, so I expect the first draft to be about 160,000+ words ... which may be a bit long. One chapter is over 10,000 words at present. One of the pieces of feedback I'll be looking for is pacing - does the story move forward fast enough? If not, I may need to cut some scenes...although on my editing list before I release the beta is checking though to make sure Col's hatred of lies and falsehood comes across strong enough...
In other news, I posted a 496 word short story to SoL - and it scored 5.8 - the lowest of all my stories. I've decided to pull it - it may eventually appear in an anthology!
Take care of you and yours, Robert Brisbane, Australia
For those of you who prefer a real book to hold, the paperback edition of Through my Eyes. Again. is now live on Amazon - much faster than I had anticipated.
So you can now buy this for yourself and as a Christmas present for family and friends - hint hint :-)
To celebrate, the ebook edition is now on Special until after Christmas!!!
Its been pointed out to me that Chapter 10 of TDE (first draft) is missing from here.
My apologies - I'm not quite sure what happened, but I must have got confused and posted 11 when I meant to post 10.
Anyhow - here it is...
Please note that future draft chapters of TDE will be available to all Patrons though my Sync server - but you need to activate your Discord bonus to get to that.
If you can't work out how to do that or it doesn't work (Patreon seems to have some issues sometimes), please email me and I will send you a personal Discord invitation. I am uncertain of the future and direction of Patreon and need to make sure that we are protected from a sudden shutdown! Hence the move to make everything available to you elsewhere.
Rest assured, your continuing support is important to me - it is you Patrons that supported me from the beginning and I truly value that.
In other news, the new SOE Girl short story is coming along - nearly 9,000 words and I expect it to be around 20,000 when it's done. This is one of those things that 'just happens'.
I was working on a scene in Chapter 12 when Mutti tells Col about the execution of an SOE girl in Ravensbruck - and I needed to put together some back story. I ended up writing the scene of the girl's execution so I could write Mutti Frida's telling, which occurs immediately afterwards. It's very dark - but not explicitly violent. It was also very strange to write - it's written in first person from the point of view (POV) of the girl herself.
... and I found I could not stop there. She grabbed me and insisted I tell her full story. It's become my tribute to those girls in the SOE who gave their lives in WW2, whom I first learned about when I visited the Dachau concentration camp and saw the plaque commemorating four young SOE ladies executed there in September 1944.
The picture below is the first draft of the cover for Colette created by Chris Pink (who did the covers for TMEA and TDE.
Don't worry - I am working on both the short story and TDE at the same time, which is an interesting experience of itself. Chapter 13 of TDE is nearly done...
I am currently working on chapter 13 of TDE - and a new short story involving Colette Roberts. She is the SOE radio operator who befriended Mutti Frida whilst both were imprisoned in Ravensbruck. Mutti Frida's daughter, Colette, is named in her memory. Mutti Frida survived Ravensbruck but Colette did not.
They gave me back my diary today; it’s been five days. I know because I’ve been counting them since we walked into the Dusseldorf army HQ asking for political asylum. They took everything from us then, including our clothes and my diary. I ended up with some sort of one-piece overall. Once the legs and sleeves were rolled up, it sort of fitted me like a potato sack and that’s what I wore for a couple of days until they found some English clothes to fit me. I never got back my original clothes.
I’m making this entry as they clearly expect me to write one – so they can read it. But I’m the child of a Staatssicherheitsdienst officer and know that writing things down is dangerous, so I will keep this to what they already know.
Hello there, British security people. I hope that doesn’t disappoint you.
Who are ‘they’ I hear you ask, dear diary? Well, I’m not exactly sure as ‘they’ have been in civilian clothes since they brought us here – to ‘somewhere in England’ – but they are British security, whether military or civilian. And the ‘us’, of course is Mutti and me.
We’ve been well treated – apart from being kept apart for much of the time – but they are being very cautious, which is understandable. They need to make sure we are not spies. They also want to get as much information from us as possible: the wife of a Stasi officer would not fall into their hands very often.
So let’s start there, with my father – Major Axel Schmidt of the Stasi Leipzig office.
I actually don’t know what year he was born, but I do know that he shares (to his annoyance if people mention it) a birthday with Adolf Hitler, 20th April. During the war, he was an officer in the Ordnungspolizei, the civilian police known as the Orpo. He was a member of the Nazi party, but I hear it was impossible to have a career unless you were in the party (much like East Germany now), so that doesn’t mean anything really, lots of current DDR bureaucrats were members too.
After the war he was recruited into the Stasi. His police experience would have been useful to them. In Leipzig, he met and married my mother, though she is much younger than him. To me, he was always a rather distant person and I never experienced much affection from him – but my parents were not overtly affectionate to one another. Fortunately, Mutti hugged me tight and often.
When you are a child, your parents and how you live are ‘normal’. It was only as I started to venture out into the world that I realised that they – and as a result, me as well – were not normal.
I first noticed something at Kindergarten: the teachers treated me slightly differently from the other children. They were more solicitous of my welfare and I began to wonder if I had some terrible sickness needing extra care. It was there also that I felt the other children keeping me at a slight distance. I found out why this was so in my first year at what later was called the Polytechnische Oberschule in central Leipzig. One day, I was involved in a verbal fight with an older student over something trivial (so trivial I can’t remember the cause) and was called a Stasi-Schnüffler (Stasi snooper). When I asked Mutti about it that evening, she explained that Vati worked for the police and some people didn’t like police. It took several years for me to understand that the Stasi were not ordinary police. As those years passed, I became increasingly isolated as no-one wanted me as a friend, but they were very polite about holding me at arm’s length.
Mutti is Frida Maria Schmidt. She was born in Leipzig on May 1st, 1929. Her parents were communists who died during the war – but Mutti won’t talk about what happened. I don’t know Mutti’s story, but she is regarded as some sort of local hero by the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands– the ruling communist party in East Germany. When I ask her about it, she always deflects me, telling me to wait until I’m older.
Mutti works – worked, I suppose – as a translator for the government. She speaks and writes English, Russian, Polish and of course German. At home, we spoke Russian together quite a lot to help me with the compulsory Russian classes at school. Perhaps I have inherited some of Mutti’s ability with languages as the teachers seem genuinely pleased with my progress.
As for me, I’m Col Schmidt, born on 15th March, 1950. I’m a dark-haired, dark-eyed, socially isolated twelve-year-old. My school results are excellent – possibly because I’m not distracted by friends and I read a lot. Somehow, I don’t think my social isolation is going to be relieved by being a defector…certainly not until I can speak English.
I’ve asked Mutti and the people that come and speak to me what’s going to happen to us. So far, the best answer I have had is ‘don’t worry, we’ll take care of you’ – which is supposed to make me feel better. Unfortunately, I know how the Stasi deal with people they do not trust and so ‘being taken care of’ by the British equivalent does not allay my fears.
Quite the opposite.
(Hello again, British security people. I’m sure you understand why I’m nervous. Perhaps if you bought me some books I would be less anxious.)
Welcome to July (the depths of Australia's winter)!
I have uploaded the first draft of Chapter 10 to the sync server - go to my Discord server for the link (all patrons have access to this - if you're not able to access it, email me and I'll help you). I've also distributed the first 10 draft chapters to my Beta readers.
Chapter 11 is happening (currently 2,500 words and at this point I think I'll be able to make it to the end early next year...which is a bit later than I had hoped, but that's life.
I'm about 6 weeks away from getting my second Covid vaccination - but with the Delta variant now in Australia and half the population in lock down to control outbreaks, I wish it were sooner. Fortunately my wife (who is vulnerable) is now fully vaccinated.
All the best for the summer or winter (depending on your hemisphere - I'll be back when Chapter 11 is uploaded (or something else significant happens).
Take care of you and yours, Robert Brisbane, Australia
I've been running adverts on Amazon for "Through my Eyes. Again." (which sounds expensive but isn't as you only pay for clicks). My ads have been seen nearly 1000 times and have been clicked on 5 times generating 1 sale. I want to try to increase the click rate and thus the purchase rate with a better blurb. The 'average' rate is about 10 click per 1000 views.
I've had some feedback that the blurb should be spiced up a bit - so here is my latest version. I'd love to hear from you what you think - and any suggestions you have.
On the writing front, TDE Chapter 10 is about 2/3 done. I had to chop nearly 1000 words from the chapter last weekend, unfortunately, as I realised the characters were leading me into a corner. But I've picked up the thread and wrote about 1000 words in replacement. Unfortunately, the end of semester is upon me with its attendant marking and reporting, so my writing time will be curtailed. Then I'm supposed to be travelling to Melbourne for a week to see my son and his family - but that is a bit doubtful as they are in lock-down after Covid escaped from quarantine. We'll have to wait and see if I'm allowed to travel there.
So - I've decided to suspend payments for the next month. Thank you for your interest and patience!
Down here in subtropical Australia, that means winter is approaching. Nights are cooling off and we probably have had our last over 30C day until late spring (that's October). The solar heater is keeping the swimming pool warm, but I we will probably turn it off next weekend after a last swim.
I have uploaded the first draft of Chapter 9 to the Sync server and attached them below - so please have a read and give me me feedback! Chapter 9 completes 'setting things up' for the Australian section of the book...which gives a hint about what else lies in store.
My plan is for about 21 Chapters, but as chapters are somewhat longer in TDE than in TMEA it looks like TDE will probably be about 150,000 words.
Sales of TMEA are trickling in - along with reviews, all of which have been 5* so far. I'm told by experienced indie authors that sales won't really kick in until TDE is published. It seems that readers are more likely to pick up books that are part of a series - which also provide more opportunities for marketing.
It looks like I will be able to get my first round vaccine shot in the next few days. We'll see - the vaccine roll out here in Australia had been a complete shambles, so it's just as well we have no community transmission of Covid. There have been a few cases 'escape' from quarantine by people working there getting infected and we've had the occasional snap 3 day lockdown while the contact tracers get on top of things. But we're heading into winter, which is the sort of weather Covid seems to like and the new variants all seem to be much more infectious.
Here's the first draft of TDE Chapter 8 - I have some concerns about this chapter being a bit too slow - your feedback would be most useful!
In other news, TMEA how has 5* reviews on Amazon and Goodreads - now all I need is for people to actually buy it (and give it more good reviews to get it up the list). I've been spending an inordinate amount of time in getting the marketing effort organised. In part, that's because I don't know what really works. I have 700 people on my mailing list - but even though I have sent them all of chapter 1 of TMEA, only 30% actually read that email.
I'm active on fb and IG but I'm not sure just how much that's worth. I am doing an Amazon advertising course in about a week, and I'll see how that goes. However, from the author groups I am in it appears that you really only start to get traction with the second and subsequent books (unless you are really lucky).
Anyhow - I hope everyone is having as pleasant an Easter as circumstances allow - my trip to Melbourne to see my grandson was stopped by the recent Covid lock-down here in Brisbane; I'll try again in late June!
I’ve been asked by a few people about the cover of Through my Eyes. Again. as it’s a bit different from the ‘usual’ modern covers. As I started writing an explanation, I thought that you might like a glimpse of what goes on behind the final production of the book. A cover is the ‘hook’ that first attracts a reader and so it needs to be well baited with elements that hint at the story.
The overall design of the cover echoes an East German propaganda poster from 1970 (below) by a Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR - communist East Germany) artist, Klaus Bernsdorf. This was found by Chris during his research and you can see this influence in the cover design.
The 1970 East German propaganda poster by Klaus Bernsdorf The text translates as “See, great things have been accomplished.”
Initially we planned to use the poster on the back cover and our echo on the front. I got in touch with the German Historical Museum in Berlin, trying to track down copyright. They were very helpful and were able to locate the name of the artist, but could not trace an address. As the copyright had returned to the artist when the DDR ceased to exist with the reunification of Germany, that meant we could not use the poster itself without breaking copyright. Work on the back cover continues - but it will only be needed if I decide to produce a print edition. (I have acknowledged Klaus Bernsdorf’s work as the inspiration for the cover design in the front pages of the book.)
The novel is mostly set in Herne Bay and Beltinge, in the county of Kent in the UK during the Cold War in the early 1960s; I felt the cover should reflect this time and location. Herne Bay is a seaside town on the north Kent coast and used to have one of the longest 19th Century piers in Europe. Initially, I thought we could use an image of the pier. However, neglect, fire and storms have practically destroyed the entire structure and I couldn’t find the right picture from earlier times. As a result I went looking for some other landmark.
On the Herne Bay seafront, close to what was the entry to the pier, is a clock tower. After considering various options with Chris, I decided that this was an appropriate landmark for the top part of the cover.
One of the important characters in TMEA is a child that grew up in the city of Leipzig in what was then East Germany, before escaping to the West a few weeks before the start of the novel. As with all German cities during World War II, Leipzig suffered extensive damage from bombing by the RAF and US Army Air Corp - and was then fought over in the closing stages of the war. The lower picture is of Leipzig in 1945. Chris came up with the idea of eyes of different ages - picking up the time-slip element of the novel.
As you've seen, the cover for TDE keeps this look - at least for the moment.
TMEA is released on Wednesday...I'm oscillating between nervous and excited (mostly just nervous).
I have uploaded the final version of Mrs Henderson's Limp to the Sync Server (go to my Discord server for the link). There have been a number of minor corrections and a chunk of new material added at the end.
I will be releasing this short story as a 'teaser' to help build momentum for the launch of TMEA on 24th March.
Enjoy (I hope)1
I have uploaded the final version of Mrs Henderson's Limp to the Sync Server (go to my Discord server for the link). There have been a number of minor corrections and a chunk of new material added at the end.
I will be relieasing this short story as a 'teaser' to help build momentum for the launch of TMEA on 24th March.
I promised you a short story before the end of January - and here it is. Please take a read and enjoy - and give me your constructive criticism from typos all the way through plot, character and pacing.
This story is a prequel to TMEA - giving some of the back story to Mrs Henderson. Will meets her (although she's not named) at the MI6 HQ late in TMEA and, as you know from the draft chapters of TDE, she plays a significant role in the early chapters of TDE.
Please be aware that this short story takes place within a well documented event in occupied France in 1944. The settings are real (Google street view is useful in this context) and I've researched as deeply as possible to ensure my retelling is as accurate as possible. The characters are however, fictional and bear no relationship at all to any person involved in this event.
This story is currently available only as a pdf - but it is on my sync server in the TMEA folder. I will be making epub and mobi versions when I release to a wider audience.
For a variety of reasons, I have not been able to make any significant progress with TDE this month and so I have paused your pledges for January. The biggest reason is that I have been working on publishing TMEA and trying to get some marketing in place. As part of that marketing, I am writing a short story prequel 'teaser' - about Mrs Henderson's experiences in the Special Operations Executive before it was disbanded at the end of WW2. Mrs Henderson then joined MI6, in which role she appears in TMEA and TDE. Once her story is written, I will return to TDE.
Thank you again for your support and, for this month, your patience.
Through my Eyes. Again. is now being published, with a release date of 24th March, 2021. I have been able to do this because of the interest and support shown by readers here. I
My thanks, to you all!
I have published through Draft2Digital, which turned out to be a much simpler task than I had at first feared. D2D distributes to all the major outlets and (amazingly) to libraries. The final version of the ebooks (epub, mobi and pdf) are available to patrons via my Discord server (Patron channel) so please do get the latest version for your library. I am now exploring print on demand so physical books may be possible soon...
In other news, work continues on the sequel, Through different Eyes, with draft chapters posted to here for patrons. As part of the marketing effort for TMEA, I am writing a short story 'prequel' for TMEA. Once TMEA launches, I'll post that here.
Well, the 'final' read through of TMEA turned up a few more edits. However, I am now pleased to announce that the ebook version of TMEA is to be published, probably late in January.
Patrons are able to download the final ebook version from the sync server (the link for this is on my Discord server).
I'll announce the final publication date here after Christmas...and now I can at last concentrate on TDE. I'm still hoping to upload chapter 7 draft before Christmas.
The final editing pass for Through my Eyes. Again. (grammar and punctuation) had completed and I'm now preparing the final version for self-publishing. I'm not sure how long this is going to take - but it won't be in time for Christmas. When the final version is published, Patrons will be able to acquire the it for free.
In other news, the academic year is over and I will now be able to spend more time on Through different Eyes, so Chapter 7 may see the light of day before Christmas - watch this space.
is the end of the academic year, which is now in sight! I will finish all the marking and reporting in the next couple of days and then it's back to work on TDE. The first draft of chapter 7 of TDE is at 2,300 words and I'm still hoping to complete and post this before Christmas.
There's a great deal of other things going on though - my son and his family are travelling to Brisbane to be with us for a week over Christmas, so there is quite a bit of cooking and 'getting things ready' to be done for that. Then there's gliding: we are entering the peak gliding season here in Queensland and I still have my eyes on a big flight (out to Charleville and back for a total of 1024 km). This requires some fairly spectacular gliding weather which happens ... when it happens. So, we shall see what the weather gods provide.
I'm also expecting TMEA to come back from it's final grammar/punctuation editing pass and so in January I will be putting that together for wider publication (ebook and print). After which comes the significant work of marketing and promotion for an independently published book.
First of all, my apologies as this chapter has taken much longer to surface than I had hoped. Handling the sensitive and very useful feedback from my editor took much more time than I had expected - and there will be another flurry of activity once the punctuation and grammar sweep is returned to me in the next week or so.
As the end of the academic year is approaching rapidly, I decided to post this version of Chapter 6 as I definitely owe you, my Patrons, something for your continued support. Please be aware that this chapter has not had anywhere near the same level of work on it as earlier draft chapters, so there are quite likely to be continuity and other errors! Please do send me a note about these and I will fix when I have time.
In the meantime, I hope to get chapter 7 out in January.
Once again, thank you for your continued support. Take care of you and yours in these strange and difficult times.
Going back and editing a book is both boring and dangerous: boring because chasing down and eliminating repeated words is just … boring, and dangerous because the temptation is huge to start editing the text around the repeated word, which greatly extends the time to find and rid the text of those wretched repeats. I have eliminated the 953 occurrences and variants of ‘look’ and am now working through ‘really’, to be followed by ‘clearly’ and a list of words shared with me by an author friend, Ryan Sylander. He’s on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ryansylander/ and I strongly urge you to go and read his Hook, Pick and Lens trilogy.
But today, I took a break from the editing and dived back into TDE – chapter 6 now stands at 2000 words and counting, which is more than I expected. Perhaps I’ll get it finished before the end of the academic year heaves the marking mountain over the horizon!
Take care of you and yours as the virus surges around you.
