Thanks to Deborah Riley-Magnus for inviting me, and you can
find her at http://rileymagnus.wordpress.com/.
Here goes nothing, then, LOL. I told Deborah I’d have issues
answering these blog hop questions – because they talk about A book. Well, as
you know if you’ve followed me here, I keep a lot of projects open, and
sometimes work on two or more of them in a day, so the first problem I had to
overcome was deciding which project to answer the questions about.
1: What is the working title of your book(s)?
This one has a working title that can’t work for the
final manuscript. It’s called “War Plan Red”. Since the story is a wartime
romance, the title is too masculine. Secondly, someone has already published a
book with this title, and it has nothing to do with my story line – their book
is set in the wrong war, let alone the wrong time period.
2: Where did the idea come from for the book?
I tend to dig around in libraries a lot and also watch
some of the more obscure documentary series. This book came from the latter, a
Discovery Channel documentary about historical events that might have happened.
This one is based on the series of colour coded plans
developed by the US General staff during the 1920s and 30s to deal with any
possible threat. War Plan Red has been described as the oddest document to be
found in the US National archive. Each of the coloured plans dealt with a
different scenario. Orange covered war with Japan (and was the basic of WWII
strategy in the Pacific), Black covered war in continental Europe with Britain
as an ally (and formed the basic US strategy for the European theatre in WWII),
but Red was the oddball. Red, nonsensical in our modern eyes covered what was
then considered to be the real possibility of war between the US and the
British Empire. By 1930 a number of leading politician’s thought this war was
not only possible, but even inevitable. Even Hitler saw it as such, and the
America First organisation assumed Hitler would come in on the American side.
(In fact Hitler wrote that in such a war he wanted the British to win in order
for America to retreat into isolationism and allow him the time to complete the
conquest of Europe first).
The US War Plan Red was complex and involved both land and
amphibious assault son Canada, including an assault landing at Halifax which
would be accompanied by a bombardment of civilian targets by poison gas. This
particular plan was signed off by none other than Douglas MacArthur himself, a
man who became a hero ten- fifteen years later, but at that point could easily
have gone into the annals as a war criminal for such a heinous act.
The Canadians were well aware of this and had their own off
the wall plan for a raid south in strength followed by a scorched earth
withdrawal to prevent or delay the American attack, enabling the British Empire
to ship troops across both oceans for their defence.
This is the backdrop for my romance, between a Canadian
cavalry officer (yes, they still sued horses then) and a French-Canadian Naval
secretary who embark on a dangerous mission who are then torn apart by the war.
3: What genre does your book come under?
It’s a romance story, but set in 1930 so I guess you’d
call it a Historical Romance. Having said that it’s set in a history that didn’t
happen, the war did not occur in our time line, so I guess you’d call it an
Alternative History Romance.
4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters
in a movie rendition?
Oo… this is a toughie. I don’t usually think in terms
of film versions of my books. Don’t get me wrong I’d love it to happen, but I
don’t write for the silver screen. I guess my lead would have to be Brad Pitt, which
is not exactly original. I think I’d pick Natalie Portman or Anne Hathaway,
either of which could carry the outer fragility but inner strength of the
female lead. The Admiral in charge of the base at Halifax I would picture as a
gruff Scotsman, so Sean Connery in his pomp would be just about perfect. Gregory
Peck played Douglas MacArthur to perfection, so if I could resurrect him, I’d
use him for sure there.
5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
"Brought together by international crisis, and torn apart by the war nobody wanted - Can their love survive?"
6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent
publisher, or represented by an agency?
it will be published by Bluewood Publishing, but not sure when yet, possibly Fall 2014.
7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of
your manuscript?
Still writing it, so I don’t have an answer for that.
Research has been my problem – I needed to know a lot about the locations as
they would have been in 1930, rather than as they are now. That has been
difficult, especially for the more rural areas of upstate New York and the area
around Halifax. Halifax itself was badly damaged by the explosion of 1917, told
in a friend’s excellent book shattered by Jennie Marsland – available here: http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-ebook/dp/B005PGR1L0
So getting the geographic locations right has been
important. I’ve finally managed to find the maps so am about to start on the
full draft of the book, rather than the scenes I’ve already written to set the
voice for the book.
8: What other books would you compare this story to
within your genre?
I’m not sure I would, or should. Maybe a mix between "Cassablanca" and "Carve Her Name With Pride".
9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?
As I said earlier, the complex politics of the inter-war
years fascinate me. I studied 20th century Political history so this
is food and drink to me.
10: What else about your book might pique the
reader’s interest?
What’s not to like? Political intrigue, historical depth,
larger than life characters yet still ordinary people caught up and torn apart
yet still find time to fall in love.
The next blog in this sequence will be Anne Brooke, whose second
book in The Gathandrian Trilogy came out today. Hallsfoot’s Battle is available
in e-book and paperback form. See it here: http://www.amazon.com/Hallsfoots-Battle-Gathandrian-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00BWWB0RW
Her blog will be hopped to on 3rd April here: http://annebrooke.blogspot.co.uk
The
second blog I’ll be hopping you too is my good friend, and romance author
Paulette Rae. Paulette, based in New Zealand, writes riveting contemporary
romance novels, her latest being The Silver Lining also available in e-book and
print form: http://www.amazon.com/The-Silver-Lining-ebook/dp/B00BEWMC18
Her
blog will be hopping on 17th April here: http://pbrae.blogspot.co.uk
Hope
you enjoyed this and follow the hop. Please comment.
By
the way, this post is 1202 words so that makes me 3576 for the day and 248,420 for
the year.
Fascinating about the history side - looks great!
ReplyDeleteThanks Anne. David
ReplyDelete