Worldly Wise

Don’t you just hate it when you live outside the United States and every web site you go to seems to assume that you do live in the United States? I know I do.

So that makes it kind of odd that, in my excitement in posting links to places where you can buy The Three Towers of Afranor, I neglected to include links for people who don’t happen to live in the Land of the Free and the Brave. That’s a bit of a slight to literally billions of people, not least of all my very own neighbors. Oh well, they are probably used to it—as I am—and know how to find their local sellers.

Anyway, I have updated the links on this book blog to include Amazon’s sites for Canada, the UK and Australia. Getting to the right geographical site does not seem to be so much of a problem with Google Play and Kobo Books customer since they do a pretty good job of detecting where you are and dealing with you accordingly.

If none of the above links get you to where you need for finding a digital version of The Three Towers of Afranor in your market, your best bet would be to go to your usual book-selling website and do a search for the book’s title or International Standard Book Number (ISBN), which is 978-0-9904865-5-8. If you are trying to find the Kindle version on an Amazon site, you can search for its Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN), which is B01GVT149E.

I am still waiting for the Nook version to show up as well as for the paperback to get to sellers. As they say, watch this space.

Birthing the Book

Just a quick update to note the official release date of The Three Towers of Afranor. It is also my daughter’s birthday. Coincidence or design? You decide.

As I mentioned, my aim was to have all versions of the book come out more or less simultaneously. On that score, I haven’t done too badly—in spite of birthday celebrations and, more problematically, serious interruptions of internet service.

As I write this, digital editions are available online. This includes Amazon’s Kindle Store, Kobo Books and the Google Play site. Barnes & Noble’s Nook Store should have it for sale very, very soon—if not already. As for Apple’s iBooks, it’s more of a case of, yeah, whenever.

The print version is taking longer than I had hoped to make its way into distribution channels, but hopefully it will start showing up among online sellers this coming week. You can check back to this page to see if the links have appeared.

Obviously, you will choose your own preferred seller based on how you like to read your books and where you like to buy them. I can, however, offer the following tip for those readers who like to have both the print version and a digital version. The cheapest way to do that is to wait for the paperback to be available from Amazon and buy it on that site. Once you have done that, you can purchase the Kindle version for next to nothing.

Enough huckstering for now. Where’s that birthday cake?

A Tale of Two Quests

Before he was able to say or do anything, he was thrown to the ground by a terrible shaking of the earth beneath his feet. It was the most powerful jolt he had ever felt. A rumbling roar rose up from the sea below. A blast of fire shot up from beneath the cliff’s edge and far into the inky sky. The heat from it was hot enough to inflict on his face a painful sensation of being singed. He shut his eyes to protect them. When he opened them again, he saw billows of smoke rising, obscuring the remaining light from the terrible flame.

So what is my new book about?

The book’s name, by the way, is The Three Towers of Afranor. I keep finding that I am very bad at mentioning the title when communicating about it online. I suppose it’s not so important on this page since there is a nice image of the cover (which includes the title) prominently displayed off to the right. On the other hand, these blog posts get replicated in other places where readers do not have the benefit of the various images and links on my book blog, so I should do a better job of keeping that in mind.

So what is The Three Towers of Afranor about?

When talking about it, I have been joking that it’s basically the same story as my first book, Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead. What is supposed to make that humorous is that the first book takes place in a very real time and place and is meant to have a certain degree of realism, while the second book is a sword-and-sorcery tale set in a totally-made-up world that has monsters and a sorcerer. On the other hand, my “joke” is not completely off the mark. You see, I did most of the plotting and a fair amount of the writing of The Three Towers of Afranor while finishing up Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead, and the two stories definitely had an impact on each other. For example, they both have young male protagonists and involve seemingly hopeless quests in foreign countries. Astute and interested readers are free to identify additional parallels.

When it comes down to it, I find I am hesitant to go into too much detail about the new book’s story. I am not trying to be overly cute. It is just that I put in a few twists—or at least I attempted to—early in the book and it is probably more enjoyable to discover them in the reading. Yes, I am trying to avoid spoilers. So probably the best summary (and an admittedly vague one) is the one I wrote in this space a couple of days ago: It has action, adventure, swashbuckling heroes, a warrior princess, an evil sorcerer, monsters—and even a bit of romance. The book is mainly meant to be fun and entertaining, which is not to say that I didn’t try to slip a few serious themes into the story. As with Max and Carly, there are some obversations on what it is like and what it means to be young and male. At the same time, because this story is more epic in scale, there is a bit more variety in the characters, including some female ones, a demographic all too under-represented in Max and Carly.

Indeed, the story of the three towers is one that has been with me for an awfully long time. Remind me to tell you how it was born and how it has evolved over many years.

Towers Looming

That just left the black-haired man. He raised his sword as he saw Chrysteffor running toward him. The prince hoped he would be as lucky wounding him as he was with the other two, but this man seemed faster than the others and much more skilled at fighting. With one quick motion of his sword, he knocked Chrysteffor’s weapon from his hand. Chrysteffor was so determined that he did not stop running and, before his adversary could do anything else, the prince had tackled him to the ground.

I have a chance, thought Chrysteffor, as he saw the other man’s sword fall from his hand. It is just the two of us now, with no weapons.

Boy, time sure does fly when you’re having fun.

It was just a mere two years ago that my first and (until now) only novel, Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead, was released. For the first several weeks it was available only as a Kindle book. At that point I didn’t even know if there would be a paperback edition. I had been convinced that people didn’t read on paper anymore. But, like Humphrey Bogart looking for the waters in Casablanca, I was misinformed. People did want a paperback. Not everyone, but quite a few. To be sure, the vast majority of copies sold were and continue to be for the Kindle platform. But people who wanted a paper book really wanted a paper book.

So this time I am approaching things differently. I am doing my best to make all or most versions of the book available simultaneously. I get to say when the official release date is, and it is this Saturday (June 11). What I have no control over is how soon physical copies make their way into the distribution channels and start showing up on the pages of the various booksellers’ websites. Ditto the various digital versions, although my experience is that they show up on the online sellers’ sites pretty darn quickly after I click the right buttons. So I am fairly confident that, if you are determined to do so, you will be able to start reading The Three Towers of Afranor on your e-reader device by the end of the weekend. As I said before, I will add links on this page to each of the major sellers once I see the book is available there.

The one laggard, as before, will be iBooks. Apple’s ebook platform is problematic for those of us who don’t happen to have a late model Apple computer to hand, and it’s hard to justify making that seller a priority anyway since, at least as far as I know, I have yet to sell a single copy of Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead through iBooks.

For those who read their books on paper, I would love nothing more than to recommend you to your favorite local independent bookshop. Sadly, the economics of book selling make that scenario pretty impossible. Instead, if you want a paperback you will have to order it from an online seller who delivers to your location. The obvious place to go, from a worldwide perspective, is Amazon, but other sellers are available, notably Barnes & Noble in the U.S. What if you absolutely prefer to get your copy from Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle or Powell’s Books in Portland or some smaller shop? Can you have them order it for you? I don’t know. Try it and see. (The book’s ISBN, which will simplify ordering, is 978-0-9904865-3-4.) If they do, I would be interested in hearing about it. My guess is that, if they have a website, they will just tell you to order it on your computer or phone instead, as someone at Barnes & Noble told a friend of mine.

This time around I am also trying to up my social media game. You can see those links off to the right as well. In addition to my Goodreads page and my Twitter feed, I now have an author’s Facebook page and even a Tumblr(!) blog—for those who prefer to visit those places. I will do my best to keep them all up-to-date, but the best and most current place for info will undoubtedly continue to be this blog.

Maybe, before shelling out your hard earned shekels, you would like to know a bit more about the book? That seems reasonable. Give me time to come up with another post.

Swords, Sorcery, Adventure!

What mainly drew the three men’s attention—and struck fear in their hearts—were the faces. The creatures’ skin barely clung to their skulls, and there were black holes where their eyes should have been. Were there truly no eyes in their sockets or was it an illusion conjured by the darkness? The princes had little time to wonder. The creatures were making straight for them with wooden clubs raised. There was no question but that this was an attack.

Adryan raised his sword and shouted, “Defend yourselves, princes of Alinvayl!”

And so it begins.

The fighting princes have ventured into the dreaded land of Afranor. And there they immediately find themselves beset by dangers and challenges. Who or what is responsible for the terrors that plague this land, and what do the kingdom’s mysterious three towers have to do with it all?

Yes, the moment is nearly upon us. My new book is a reality. It has a cover. (Look over to the right.) And it has a title. It is called The Three Towers of Afranor. How can you not want to read a book with a title like that? Right?

While there are admittedly some thematic similarities with my first book, this one is a whole different beast that is aimed at a much different audience. It has action, adventure, swashbuckling heroes, a warrior princess, an evil sorcerer, monsters—and even a bit of romance. Who is it aimed at? Anyone who enjoys fantasy and wants to have a bit of fun. And, unlike the first book, I will feel safe in recommending it to my friends’ children. While there is a certain level of fantasy violence, there is none of the bad language with which Maximilian and Carlotta was laced.

When and how can you get a hold of this new opus? I’ll go into my customary obsessive nitty-gritty details about all of that in my next post, but the short version is that the official release date is June 11. All going well, on or soon after that date you should be able to order the paperback and/or download the ebook from the usual places. As I find the book’s pages going live on the various online sellers’ sites, I will add links to them in the usual place over on the right-hand side of this page. And don’t worry. Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead will still be available as well.

Expect a torrent of additional information—or at least words—in the coming days. Because the only thing I enjoy more than writing a book is writing about a book I wrote.

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Today is the 154th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla in which 4,000 Mexican soldiers scored a major victory over the 8,000-strong occupying French army. Cinco de Mayo is an annual regional celebration in the state of Puebla and has become widely celebrated in the United States, even though it is not really Mexico’s independence day. That date would be September 16, which is the anniversary of the Grito de Dolores (Cry of Dolores) in 1810, which kicked off the war of independence against Spain. Dolores (full name: Dolores Hidalgo Cuna de la Independencia Nacional, or Dolores Hidalgo Cradle of National Independence) is a small town in the state of Guanajuato. September 16 is the major annual celebration within Mexico.

The original Cinco de Mayo, i.e. May 5, 1862, was followed by more battles and eventual French victory. A little over a year later there was a Second Battle of Puebla, which the invaders won and which was quickly followed by the fall of Mexico City. France then installed the Habsburg archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph as emperor of Mexico. His wife was Charlotte of Belgium, whose name in Spanish would be Carlota, or Carlotta as I learned it in high school. Hmmm. Maximilian and Carlotta. Wouldn’t those names fit nicely in the title of a novel…

Yes, I’m exploiting another country’s holiday to make yet one more pitch for my book.

If you don’t think you have enough—or, for that matter, any—copies yet, time is running out for buying them while Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead is still my most recent novel. With any luck, before long, it will merely be my second most recent novel. So hurry and act before that psychologically significant deadline gets any nearer.

In case you are a Scott Adams fan and are wondering, yes, I am trying out the persuasion techniques that the brilliant Dilbert cartoonist keeps using on his blog to motivate people to buy his book but, unfortunately, I think I am doing it wrong.

Have a happy Cinco de Mayo anyway.

Climbing the Wall

Reading Clae Johansen’s book turned out to be a good start for immersing myself in World War II and, by extension, the Cold War. During the extended combined St. Patrick’s Day and Easter school break, we took a few days to visit Berlin.

There were a number of reasons we settled on that particular city. It is a relatively short and easy journey from Ireland. We had heard great things about the place from our neighbors. It gave my kid a chance to practice the German language, which she is studing in school. And, for me personally, it was an opportunity to do a bit of research. You see, I can divulge that in my third book, which will be a sequel to Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead, my protagonist Dallas Green will venture off on another daft quest in a foreign country. Among the places he will wind up will be Berlin in the year 1980.

While the Berlin of today is a very different place from the divided city of the Cold War era, the place is brimming with museums, memorials and reminders of what that time was like. In fact, Berlin has done an excellent job of preserving and educating about its often difficult history. The German Historical Museum, in particular, does a great job of teaching the entire breadth of German history via art and artifacts. The Topography of Terror museum provides an exhaustive and stunning chronicle of the Nazi era. And, of most literary use to me, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum shows and teaches one anything one might want to know about Berlin during its divided period.


My kid and me behind a remnant of the Berlin Wall

Strangely, this was the first visit to Germany for any of us. I say strangely because I grew up thinking of myself as “German,” in the way Americans often tend to embrace a second or previous nationality. This was because my mother’s parents’ first language was German, but I eventually learned that my mother’s people were more accurately described as German-speaking Dutch nomads with little actual connection to Germany itself. There were never any ancestral places for us to go visit in Germany as there were in Sweden for my father’s family.

By a happy accident, while in the German capital we made two new friends—Berlin-dwelling friends of Irish friends—and, before bringing us to a concert at the Komische Oper Berlin, they brought us to a fun and bustling Bavarian-themed restaurant (complete with lederhosen-wearing waiters) for dinner. I had to laugh when I saw the name of the place. It was Maximilian’s! So, of course, I had to explain to our new friends that I had wanted to come to Berlin for inspiration for a follow-up to a book which featured the name Maximilian prominently in the title.

Talking about that book then and there was very strange because one of the people to whom I was describing it was a woman who—at an age only slightly younger than my own daughter is now—had to abandon her native Vietnam in the wake of the American withdrawal and fall of Saigon. She now has—or will soon have—a copy of the book, and I wonder what she will make of how that painful period is portrayed from the point of view of young men facing the prospect of fighting in that war.

Now that the school break is nearly over, I am more than ready to make use of my Berlin experiences as I continue writing book number three. But first there is the not-so-small matter of book number two. I have been getting useful feedback on the draft I sent out and, with hopefully not too much more delay, I will be getting that book finished and into the hands of readers.

A Nation Surviving Between Two Devils

As promised in my previous post I have gotten the chance to read and review Claes Johansen’s new book on Finland’s experiences during World War II. It is currently available for ordering on Amazon.co.uk and for pre-ordering on Amazon.com.

Claes Johansen has given us as thorough and as considered an overview of Finland’s experience in World War II as any student of the subject could want. Johansen is an author who has written many books, both fiction and non-fiction and in both Danish and English. Until now I have mainly known him for his books on the seminal English musical groups of the 1960s, Procol Harum and the Zombies. Clearly, they were merely the tip of the literary iceberg. War has been a particular focus of his writing, and Hitler’s Nordic Ally?: Finland and the Total War 1939-45 is an English language account that follows Johansen’s Finland og den totale krig published in Danish in 2013.

While I have no doubt that serious scholars will find this 310-page tome (plus appendices and index) quite useful, it is entirely accessible and readable for those of us who are mere history buffs or who simply want to know more about an extremely interesting time and place in recent history. Many of us—especially Americans, such as myself, born after the war—have always tended to see the Second World War as a single continuous conflict between two sides—with numerous participating countries arrayed on either one side or the other. By chronicling Finland’s experience during this period, Johansen brings home the fact that the experience of each individual country was not only particular to that country but that not every nation self-identified as either a member of the Axis or as a teammate of the Allies. Smaller countries like Finland were mainly striving to survive with their independent nationhood intact. Finland, we learn, did not so much participate in what we think of as World War II as fight three separate and successive wars while other wars were raging simultaneously in Europe and in the Pacific.

Johansen lays out Finland’s complicated story by dividing it clearly into four distinct sections, corresponding to each of the three different Finnish wars and to the 15-month Interim Peace between the first two wars. The narrative alternates between detailed descriptions of the political debates and maneuverings that preceded and followed each of the wars and blow-by-blow accounts of the military actions that shifted the Finnish-Soviet border westward and then eastward and then westward again. The battle narratives are brought to life by generous excerpts from journals and first-hand accounts by participants on the ground and by many photographs of stunning quality from the war zones. The author highlights in particular the participation and accounts of his Danish countrymen—as well as other international volunteers from Norway, Sweden and the Baltic countries. Some photos—like that of a dead child being carried by a soldier or of the skeletal cadaver of a Russian prisoner of war—are terrible to see and serve to remind us how horrific things were for so many people in Europe—and during a period that was not that many years ago.

A preface helpfully sets the stage by setting out the intertwined history of Finland and the Soviet Union leading up to the Winter War. We learn that from 1809 to 1917 Finland was a grand duchy of Russia and that it gained its independence after a civil war that paralleled the one in Russia but which had a very different result. That set the stage for two decades of tensions as the Soviets worried about the security of their second largest city, Leningrad (the once and future Saint Petersburg), whose suburbs lay only 30 kilometers from the Finnish border. By the end of the book, we are appreciative of the near-miraculous fact that Finland avoided being absorbed into the Soviet Union like nearby Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. At the back of the book are six pages of maps to help the reader situate the various battle zones and the shifting border, but avid perusers not familiar with the geography may want their own detailed map at hand to glance at frequently during their reading.

What comes through clearly in Johansen’s telling is his deep admiration for the Finnish people (if not always for each and every one of their political and military leaders) and their determination to survive as an independent people. (The author clarifies at the outset that, while Finland is not a Scandinavian country, it is a Nordic one.) In an introduction he asserts that the “Finnish Army was probably the most effective fighting force in all of the Second World War. Despite being made up of conscripts, small and poorly armed, it managed with practically no outside help to keep the mighty Red Army at bay for more than three months during the Winter War of 1939-40.” For all that, his tone is generally detached and non-judgmental and he leaves no stone unturned in examining every angle of the choices made by Finnish leaders when it came to cooperating with Nazi Germany in its war against the Soviets.

His ambivalence about judging probably explains why the title ends with a question mark. It would be fair for readers to wonder why the question mark is actually there. After all, as an unoccupied country that coordinated with Berlin in advance of Operation Barbarossa (the Axis invasion the Soviet Union), Finland surely qualified as a German ally—even if Finland was never a formal member of the Axis. Yet, as Johansen is at pains to demonstrate, as non-Aryans (in the Nazi world view) the Finns were operating out of practicality and were not invested in Hitler’s ideology. Finland during this period just may be one of the best examples we have of the old expression: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And while the Winter War and the Continuation War were both fought against the Soviets, the seven-month Lapland War of 1944-45, which followed an armistice with the Soviets, was fought against the Germans. Having said that, however, we do learn that there was a current in Finnish society that aspired to a Greater Finland which would encompass the adjacent Soviet territory of East Karelia and possibly even parts of the Baltic countries, so things are never completely black and white. In the end, the Finns’ motivations and actions were complex and not always morally comfortable and, in fact, War-Responsibility Trials were held in the post-war period in an attempt to sort out some measure of accountability.

Of all the complexities and seeming paradoxes that come to light in exploring Finland’s history, probably the biggest conundrum is the one highlighted by Johansen at the very outset in his introduction: “Finland was the only nation with an elected and democratic government to fight on the German side in the Second World War.” As the author makes clear, this was largely out of necessity. The Finns would have gladly accepted support and aid from the Allies, but it was never going to be forthcoming. At every turn the Finns were thwarted by other countries caught up in their own uncomfortable necessities and their own shifting allegiances.

As is no doubt amply clear by this point, I can highly recommend the book to anyone with even the slightest interest in the topic.

Full Finnish Circle

A quick update on my writing progress. With the holidays over (Christmas in Ireland pretty much runs for 30 days and requires another fortnight for me to recover and catch up), I am happily back at it. To my surprise, I have found myself suddenly making a pretty good start on a first draft of a sequel to Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead. After much idea-chewing over a long period of time, the story and the characters have at last settled into something I can get really interested in, and I’m now pretty movitated to put it all down on virtual paper. So, in answer to the question that I get most often about Max & Carly, yes, the next (actually third) book will be a sequel to the youthful exploits of Dallas Green. Of course, before I get too caught up in that writing project, I really need to go back to editing and polishing the second book (the sword and sorcery one). Anyway, this is definitely the time of year to try to get these things done.

During this seemingly interminable period between the actual publishing of books, I take vicarious satisfaction in the publishing being done by other people—like my friend Claes.

My acquaintance with Claes was born out of the moment I entered the Egyptian Theatre in Seattle in 1987 for one of 68 screenings I attended during the twelth Seattle International Film Festival. I didn’t actually meet Claes way back then. But I wrote something that would eventually find its way onto the world wide web (once the world wide web had finally been invented) and would consequently draw him to me. It was a three-hour Finnish war movie called Tuntematon Sotilas (The Unknown Soldier, in English), and I took on a typical (for me) tongue-in-cheek tone in reviewing it. Thirteen years after I had written that review, Claes emailed me to take me to task. And he was in a good position to do so because he wrote the book on Finland during World War II. And I mean that literally.

His 272-page hardcover book Hitler’s Nordic Ally?: Finland and the Total War 1939-1945 will be released on February 28 and is available for pre-order on Amazon. The book is in English, which is worth mentioning because Claes has written quite a few books (both fiction and non-fiction), and not all of them are in English. Some of them are in Danish. Two of his English-language books, which I have read and enjoyed, were fairly definitive biographies of two seminal 1960s English rock bands: The Zombies: Hung Up on a Dream and Procol Harum: Beyond The Pale. Something else he wrote in English was a very good radio drama called Sam and the Animal Man, which was aired two years ago on RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, and which can be streamed from RTÉ’s web site.

When Claes and I first began corresponding, he thought (logically enough) that I was in the U.S. and I assumed that he was in Denmark. Imagine our mutual surprise when we finally realized that we were both in Ireland and that fewer than 300 kilometers separated us.

It sounds as though I might get the chance to read and write about his book in advance of its release. (Stay tuned.) Already being familiar with Claes’s writing, I am sure it will be a good read. Moreover, it will bring my very glancing acquaintance with Finland’s World War II experience full circle—more 28 years after I wandered into a Seattle cinema to see a three-hour Finnish war movie.

All the way to eleven

It has been brought to my attention that Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead is, as of this writing anyway, tied for eleventh place on Goodreads’s list of Best 1970s Historical Fiction.

Goodreads, a preeminent web destination for serious book lovers, has lots of lists, which are voted on by its members. (I am one, and I have an author page there.) One could argue that 1970s historical fiction is a rather specific category, bolstered by the fact that there are only 53 books on the list. But 11 out of 53 is pretty good, eh?

While this placement certainly does my ego good, I’m not exactly letting it go to my head. If you check the vote totals, you will see that the numbers of votes are pretty low, so this doesn’t exactly represent widespread acclaim. Still, it’s flattering to be placed on a list that includes such well known works as Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm (numbers 1 and 2, respectively) and Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (edging me out at number 10). The fact that I placed ahead of such better known books as Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin (number 25), the late Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries (number 40) and Jerzy Kosinski’s Pinball actually makes me seriously question whether the list is valid at all. But clearly that is the wrong way to think. I should be arguing that I should have been in first place.

I guess that makes this a good excuse to do some huckstering and remind people that, if you are looking a great gift for that 1970s historical fiction aficionado on your list, Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead is still available from all fine internet bookstores. Just click on one of the links on this book blog.

As for the next book, editing/polishing/revising continues or, rather, it will once the holidays are over. I know better than to expect much work to get done on it during the last couple of weeks of December. So anticipate having a great choice next year for that sword-and-sorcery aficionado on your list.

Incidentally, if you are interested in my reviews of the screen adaptations of The Ice Storm (by Ang Lee) or The Buddha of Suburbia (by Roger Michell), you can check them out on my movie blog.