Today I think I can quote the line from Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein,” because today I have pushed my own little monster into the world. iFrankenstein is now on Amazon! I’m doing the 90 day Kindle Select Program, so everyone on other platforms (including those waiting for the iPhone app) will have to wait just a bit more. Sorry.
I’ve published six novels now, with another due in January. If you count writing books and anthologies, that number goes up to ten. You’d think I’d get used to the book’s birthdays.
But, I don’t.
I’m just as anxious for little iFrankenstein as I was for A Trace of Smoke, my first novel. That one came out from a New York publishing house (Tor Forge, a division of Macmillan, thank you for taking a chance on me!) and I had a top notch cover, great editing, and some good placement at bookstores, including Barnes & Nobles and Borders (remember them?).
This one goes straight to Amazon. I made all the decisions myself. Luckily, I didn’t do it alone. I had my crack writing group, Kona Ink. Kathryn Wadsworth, David Deardorff, Judith Heath, and Karen Hollinger have been tearing my work apart and forcing me to put it back together in a better form since I began to write the first draft of my first published novel (not a coincidence, they are that good). I also worked with a talented graphic designer and app developer named Quinn Stephens. He did a bang up job on all the graphics and formatting you’ll see in the book, but you won’t really be able to appreciate his talent until the iPhone app comes out in 90 days.
So, even with all that help, why am I as scared as the very first book?
Because it’s a story. It’s a promise between a writer and a reader. A hope that others will step into your world, read it, stay awhile, and leave feeling richer.
That’s a lot of weight to put on a few words and images on a page.
No wonder I’m scared. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Happy reading!
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Can’t wait to read – many congrats on the new book.
Thanks!
I was very excited when A Trace of Smoke was announced and got it out of our library as soon as possible.
Why? For years I’ve been hoping to see more popular fiction about Germany. (I was born during WW II in a little town just south of Berlin.) But it seemed to me that everyone from romance authors to blockbuster authors shunned Germany as an unsuitable setting for a book of whatever kind.
When I finally held your book in my hand and started reading, I followed the map of Berlin in my mind as I had in reality during my visits to the city and my relatives who still lived there in summer 1962, the first time I saw it as a near adult ’til 1995, when I last saw it. I know very little about Germany’s history unless it touches on Britain’s or France’s, or my parents have told me about it.
So thank you so much for writing this series. I’m currently reading the latest one and enjoying it as much as I can enjoy a book in which so many bad things happen, and still retracing the routes that Hannah walks or travels as best I can.
Does anybody know of other books or series of books that feature Germany and Germans. I love history and historical and, therefore, feel all the more ashamed at not knowing more of the history of the land of my birth.
And I’ll think about iFrankenstein. I’m not much of a horror fan. Could it relate to the bombers and bombs I heard during the first year of my life?
P.S. Has Hannah Vogel been translated into German, or is it selling in English there?
Thank you! I’m so glad to hear that you liked the Hannah Vogel books. Other books set in Berlin around and during the war are Arianna Franklin “City of Shadows,” Phillip Kerr’s “Berlin Noir” series, and the David Downing books. Berllin is a fascinating city! Now that we’ve moved here, I’m getting to walk in Hannah’s footsteps, which has been wonderful.
iFrankenstein is as much science fiction as horror, but it’s not for everyone.
To answer your PS, the Hannah Vogel books are currently only available in English in Germany (well, also in Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese, and Slovakian).