The Dog Days of August 2020 and COVID rules the land. My publishers in Denmark and Italy have pushed back the release of Cold Lonely Courage and the rest of the series incrementally thereafter. I'm pleased that I continue to get five and four-star reviews for CLC, Angels Don't Die, and The Patience County War. What's missing is Wolves at the Door. The second novel in the Madeleine Toche Series. Wolves takes off right at the end of Courage and I believe might be an even more engrossing read than Courage. Madeleine and Hartmann are in the field together and they are fierce. I also did tons of research on the Mittelbau-Dora V-2 rocket factory where so many Jewish slave laborers worked to build Hitler's V-2 rocket, the first intercontinental Ballistic Missile courtesy of Wernher von Braun, a Nazi we celebrated later during the Apollo missions. Our enemy's (USSR) enemy became our friend. I don't care, the bastard has the blood of thousands of innocent Jewish people on his hands. The achievement does not justify the means.
I am especially pleased to see that the majority of my reviews are by women readers. My goal continues to be to highlight the real heroines of our recent past. I can't wait for my readers to be introduced to the Russian women pilots; the Nazis called The Night Witches. I'd say more but their true story is just too damn cool. I introduce them to Wolves at the Door. Madeleine's exploits have earned her legendary status among them.
I'm researching the prequel to Courage, Under No Man's Land. Stenger, Willi, Hartmann, Rommel, and Jean-Pierre Toche in WWI. Boom! There's a ton of research but I'm focusing on a couple distinct actual events. There was a battle that took place near a town called Passchendaele. Survivors on both sides said, Hell is a place of mud, not fire.
The Irish Times remembers:
Passchendaele: A killing field of mud
The most merciless enemy was the foul mud and with it the stink of wet rotting bodies.
Horrors
In time, commanding officers would weep publicly about the horrors their soldiers endured. Maj CL Fox of the 502 Field Company Royal Engineers wrote: “There was no ground to walk on; the earth had been plowed up by shells not once only, but over and over again, and so thoroughly that nothing solid remained to step on; there was just loose, disintegrated, far-flung earth, merging into slimy, treacherous mud and water around shell holes so interlaced that the circular form of only the largest and most recently made could be distinguished.
That's it for today. I am always willing to give away PDF's before the books are released. After that, sales go through the publishers. The books will be in close to one-thousand brick and mortar bookstores in Italy. I couldn't be more pleased.
August 29 2020
Peace