What’s Next by Dru Ann Love

I co-wrote a short story. Have you read it?

What is next? People who have read our story asks, what are you writing next? My co-collaborator writes short stories and I’ve read one of them and he is quite good. As for me, I tried to think of something to write, but my mind is blank.

I will stick to reading books, unless an opportunity for me to collaborate with someone to write a short story happens again.

Other than that, I’m preparing for my first reader/fan convention that will happen at the end of April.

For writers, do you find it hard to come up with story ideas?

The Classic Camel Coat

I gave away my winter coat. It was a long wool coat with generous sleeves, easy to fit over a bulky sweater or blazer. It was a classic style: Notched collar, button front, buttoned bands at the sleeves. It was camel colored. The same color as my dog. Some would call this coat ageless – my mother had one in the 60s. Hers was mohair. Mine was wool.

Having left my job in the business world, I no longer wore my classic camel coat, opting instead for a pack-able down number that I can stuff into my purse when needed. I donated my old coat during the winter coat drive last fall.

I bought the camel coat in 1995 to match our new dog, Millie, a golden retriever mix who shed year-round. My favorite long wool red coat was a magnet for her fur. The camel coat collected her fur too, it just didn’t’ show.

The coat served me well, but I never really loved the color. Tan, in general, washes me out. I prefer a red coat, or purple, or navy, or black – anything other than tan.

Years passed, jobs changed, my husband retired from the military and we stopped moving. It was time for a closet purge. I stripped hangers of glittery formal wear saved for the next military ball. I unclipped my skirt and jacket suits, brushed the dust off the shoulders, catching a whiff of the cologne I used to wear to work at my office job – it seemed like a lifetime ago.

I worked my way to the coats. I pulled two leather jackets, bought for a song when we lived in South Korea, excess raincoats, bought when caught in the rain while traveling, and hip length ‘tween season jackets. The last coat to go into the donation bag was my classic camel coat. I held it up to my body and looked in the mirror. Even though my skin has grown fairer as I’ve aged and my formerly dark brown hair has lightened with streaks of grey, camel still isn’t my color. Into the bag it went.

There were no second thoughts as I pulled the yellow tie cinching the plastic bag closed just as my husband came in. Patting the bag I said, “These can go to the coat drive.”

End of story, right?

Purges are often hard for me. I spent 26 years as a military wife moving every 2-3 years. With each move I gave up neighbors, houses, gardens, and social groups. I lost my dentist, hairdresser, and church community replacing them with new people at the next location. But I had my stuff.

The items I collected were familiar to me in their new surroundings. They helped make my new house feel like home. I became a maximalist collecting anything I loved, saving cards, letters, and love notes, acquiring twenty-eight chairs (the guy from the moving company told me he counted them!) I saved curtains and area rugs – one never knew when they might work in the next house. And I saved coats – after all, we lived in a variety of climates.

Millie, the camel-colored dog, passed away many years ago. I no longer find her fur on my sofa or in my car. I hadn’t worn my classic camel coat in 15 years. It was time to pass it on.

No regrets, right?

Well, no immediate regrets anyway, until I attended a nephew’s wedding on a cold day in January. I watched two young women come into the church together. They were the spouses of two of my other nephews who were groomsmen.

I enjoy being around 20 somethings. It’s fun to notice the styles they wear and hear the language they use. That day both women where dressed in tea length floral dresses. Trendy, I thought. Over their pretty dresses they were both wearing coats. Classic camel coats.What? Wait a minute – is the classic camel coat popular with young women? Did I give away my coat 2 months too soon? I felt a twinge of regret.

The January wedding was the beginning of an informal study. I began seeing classic camel coats everywhere! I saw young women in airports, bookstores, at the grocery market, even at the gas station wearing classic camel coats. The styling didn’t differ much from coat to coat although the length varied from hip length to mid-calf (like mine). One thing was certain, the classic camel coat was trending.

A few weeks ago, when a frigid polar vortex hung over Kansas, I thought about my donated coat. I’m always hopeful that my donated coats are keeping someone warm, but this year was different. I hoped that my coat was snatched up by a young woman on a budget, delighted in finding such a stylish coat.

I’m over the regret. At least I think I am, until I counted five sightings in one hour at the Kansas City Airport this morning.

Do you own a classic camel coat? If so, did you know you’re trending?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Magic Carpet Ride by Saralyn Richard

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

At a recent interview, I was asked whether I’ve always been attracted to mysteries, even as a child. That’s not the first time I’ve answered the question, but the more experience I have as a mystery writer, the more I’ve seen the power of mysteries, and I want to share my thinking.

I’m an eclectic reader and teacher of literature. I like to read all genres and nonfiction, plays, poems—you name it. But mysteries draw me in more than any other genre, and I think that’s because in no other type of book are the reader and writer so closely connected.

The intellectual puzzle of a mystery novel is a carefully planned path laid out by the author and followed by the reader. The steps, the clues, the evidence, the red herrings—all are set forth in a grand treasure hunt, and the reader is invited to join in. In accepting the invitation, a reader becomes complicit with the scheme. He enters the story as an ally or a sidekick of the sleuth, and he solves the mystery along with the character.

In order to enjoy the mystery fully, the reader must pay attention, not only to the intellectual puzzle, but also to the emotional puzzle. How do the characters relate to one another? What motivates one or more of them to commit a crime? How will the truth be discovered, and how will justice be administered?

The mystery is less about the actual killing of a person and more about the process of decision-making and problem-solving that will restore order to the world of the book. Yes, bad things happen in life, but clever people can overcome these bad things and find stability again. And if characters in books can achieve successful outcomes, people in real life can, also.

When I’ve read a good mystery, I feel I’ve connected with the author’s heart and soul. I know she’s an upright person who believes in doing the right thing. She’s taken me along with her on the journey, and, even if she’s dazzled and bewildered me, even when she’s twisted my thinking into knots and tossed me around the landscape of the novel, she’s held my hand throughout, and she’s taken pleasure in the fact that I’m still with her at the end.

I know these things because my favorite part of being a mystery author is doing those same things with my readers. The writer-reader connection is central to the mystery, and that’s what makes both reading and writing so much fun. Let’s hop on the magic carpet together and go for a ride.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Saralyn Richard writes award-winning humor- and romance-tinged mysteries that pull back the curtain on people in settings as diverse as elite country manor houses and disadvantaged urban high schools. Her works include the Detective Parrott mystery series, two standalone mysteries, a children’s book, and various short stories published in anthologies. She also edited the nonfiction book, Burn Survivors. An active member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America, Saralyn teaches creative writing and literature. Her favorite thing about being an author is interacting with readers like you. If you would like to subscribe to Saralyn’s monthly newsletter and receive information, giveaways, opportunities, surveys, freebies, and more, sign up at https://saralynrichard.com.

My Word for the Year: Communicate

by Paula Gail Benson

Last month, I wrote about receiving the book One Word that Will Change Your Life, which advocates that you select a word to focus upon for the year instead of making resolutions. In the comments to that post, Saralyn Richards and Gay Yellen responded that “gratitude” and “kindness” were words that had significance for them. Debra H. Goldstein asked me, “have you found your one word and has it been sustainable?”

After a month’s delay, Debra, here’s my answer: “the word ‘communicate’ seemed to find me and keeps returning to my attention.”

From Google’s Oxford Languages Dictionary, the first definition of “communicate” is to “share or exchange information, news, or ideas.” The sentence illustrating this definition is “the prisoner was forbidden to communicate with his family.”

At my church, we are anticipating a visit from an Estonian pastor whose grandfather (also a pastor) spent years in a Soviet slave labor camp. I’ve read some of the book Grandfather Pastor Harri Haamer wrote about his prison experience, We Shall Live In Heaven. When he was housed with hardened criminals, one of them asked if he was a “smasher.” He did not know that meant “burglar.” He quickly learned that these inmates claimed fifty percent of any package received by someone in the cell. When a package came for Pastor Haamer, he demanded they give it to him, which earned him respect. Then, he proclaimed, “I’m sharing all the contents of my package to you.” Some protested, only fifty percent, but Pastor Haamer insisted they take all. The oldest criminal told him, “at least come and share with us.” That formed a bond between them.

Pastor Haamer also heard the odd terminology of calling one of the prisoners a “cow to be milked.” He learned this inmate was a spy for the prison officials, who withdrew him from time to time to “milk” him for information he heard in the cell.

The Google Oxford Languages Dictionary’s second definition of communicate is “to convey or transmit (an emotion or feeling) in a nonverbal way.” This reminded me that even when people speak different languages or have no language at all, they may be able to communicate through expressions or gestures. We humans sometimes receive our most delightful and useful nonverbal (at least not “spoken”) communications from our pets that purr in delight or bark in warning.

Communication also may falter if translation is missing. One of my former law clerks was blind. He loved science fiction and fantasy stories. I remember discussing the initial Star Wars (now known as Episode IV) with him and stopping myself after mentioning how I felt seeing one of the opening scenes as a space vessel seems to be traveling overhead. I apologized thinking I had intruded in an area he could not share, but he told me he knew exactly what I meant because a version for the blind had descriptions of the visual actions taking place.

What I have noticed in my own communications this year is that what may be clear in my mind is not always successfully conveyed by spoken or written word. Often, I’m in a rush and leave directions that indicate there are multiple steps, but don’t adequately spell out each one. I rely that someone else remembers as I do, which may or may not be the case.

Already, just by focusing on “communicate,” I’ve noticed areas where I can improve clarity. It’s a continuing process, but I do find myself stopping to ask, “did I make that understandable for the person who will be reading or hearing it?”

Debra, so far, the focus on “communicate” has been sustainable. I’ll keep you updated as the year progresses!

donalee Moulton

I found my bliss — in the bathtub

This is my second blog as part of the gang. I realize we’re still getting to know one another so I thought I would share a little something about one of my favorite activities. This piece originally appeared in The Globe & Mail.

 

I’m a splish-splash person. I relish the warm envelope of water that embraces you in the bathtub. I enjoy being able to put my head back, relax, and wash away the day. I like taking my time, meandering in my mind, and humidifying at my own pace.

I understand the appeal of showers. There is a functionality and practicality to stepping in, under and out. How efficient. How equally unimaginative and boring. In the shower, there is nothing to savour except getting the hell out from beneath 50 pounds per square inch of pulsating water. The fact that showers are measured in psi (as opposed to bubbles) speaks volumes.

Baths were a way of life in our house. There was a dangling thing above the tub that was occasionally used after my dad mowed the lawn in the relentless summer sun, but other than that showers were simply something other people took, mostly people we did not know. So, I grew up turning on the faucet, spreading out the bathmat, and stepping, gingerly, into a steamy pool of water with welcome delight.

I kept this tradition up even after I moved out of my parents’ house, into a marriage, and through the divorce that followed. It wasn’t until years later, however, that I discovered my understanding of the bath and its possibilities had been severely limited.

It started with a gift. I can’t remember if it was my birthday or Christmas. I can’t even remember who the gift-giver was (although they will surely go to heaven), but I remember the gift. Or rather, its life-altering implications. I’m sure the packaging said something underwhelming, like Bath Set or Bubble Break, and the presentation did not spark interest or inspiration. I opened the present to discover bubble bath, a bath bomb, exfoliating lotion and glove, and moisturizer. Two of these I’d heard of. The scent was lavender, which I associated with wrinkled aunts and my grandmother’s underwear drawer.

Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

 

 

At the next bath, I decided to try out my new gift set. I filled the tub with steaming water, and the most wonderful scent filled the room. I smiled, bent down, and breathed deeply. Not my smartest move. Inhaling bubbles is not generally recommended. But it didn’t matter. I was happy. And about to get happier.

I stepped into the tub and unwrapped the bath bomb. This is never as easy as it sounds. For many manufacturers, I have since learned, it is a point of honour to ensconce the baking soda/essential oil blend in a plastic sheath that has no identifiable opening and the tensile strength of tungsten. I persisted. The result was a round, heavenly little orb that exploded when it hit the water. Gently, of course, and with a colour infusion that filled the tub with a lovely glow.

As with the bath bomb, I had to read the instructions for the exfoliating lotion and glove. Apparently, we have dead skin that sticks to us like a June bug on a hairy leg. The exfoliating duo will do away with it all. You feel the resistance of the glove on your skin. Perhaps even a snag or two. Then you feel softness.

That was my first shrine. That’s the word a friend once used to describe my bathing ritual, and it stuck. Indeed, when friends and family call, they’ll often ask if I’m about to enter the shrine. There’s an unspoken apology to this question. They really don’t want to interrupt this sacred time.

Sacred may be too strong a word, but it hits the mark. I’ve come to realize this time I spend with bubbles, bombs, and bath salts is as much about ritual and reverence as it is about self-care and luxuriating. I realized this one blissful Saturday night as I was about to lower myself into a meringue of eucalyptus suds and my husband strolled into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid, and got ready to whizz.

He won’t do that again.

In the space between shock and despair, and a few choice words, I realized there is a rhythm to what happens between closed bathroom doors. There is a pattern and a process. Nothing is rushed, there is a natural flow to the shrine; there is room to inhale and time to exhale. When that natural rhythm is interrupted, I’m jolted. Getting back to bliss becomes more difficult.

The rhythm has also gotten more complex and sophisticated over time. Another friend once gave me a candle for Christmas, a gift I appreciated, but admitted to my husband that I was unlikely to use. He suggested I use it in the shrine (and all was forgiven). When that candle burned down to a wax blob, I mentioned to my father, a flea market regular, to pick me up a few more candles if he saw any on his weekly jaunt. A great believer in quantity, a belief he has passed on to his only child, my father arrived home with two over-stuffed bags of candles. All sizes, shapes, scents. All of me smiled.

Today, a shrine includes 10 burning candles: five small, three medium, two large. There is also a tealight candle that burns inside a Himalayan salt holder, another gift from a good friend. (I am blessed with friends who indulge my bathroom bliss.) In addition, I discovered aromatherapy, so there are now diffusers and candle tarts. And there is music, most recently with the chirps and tweets of birds in the background.

My commitment to ritual and reverence hit home when my husband and I decided to do some redecorating. The intent was to brighten and upgrade the kitchen and living room. Somehow, we found ourselves with the decorator in the bathroom. She had ideas. I love this woman.

The result: cabinets with inset lighting, a reflective glass sink, heated flooring. And a tub. This is not an ordinary tub. Who knew paradise came in porcelain. This tub has jets that shoot heated streams of water at select body parts, LED lights infuse a delicate glow, and there is a heated backrest for two. (Like anybody else is getting in this tub.) There is also an aromatherapy unit that sends little fragrant clouds aloft every 20 seconds. Poof.

The bathroom, and the tub in particular, is an expense I no longer attempt to justify. But I have spent some time trying to understand it. Logically I know that self-care is important. That taking time for oneself is time well spent. I’ve read the books (okay, an article or two) about the benefits of taking a breath, treating yourself, and finding space from the pressures of daily life. But that sounds clinical, and what happens in the shrine is anything but. It’s about connection – and distance. It’s about finding oneself – and forgetting about the self for a few hours. It’s about feeling pampered – and humbled.

The need to exit my universe and enter nirvana has, admittedly, led to some unfortunate incidents. There was the episode with the whizzing husband. An apology later – on his part – concluded that rather nicely. However, there was one night, lights low, candles lit, Himalayan salt lamp subtly emitting negative ions. I turned on the tap, poured the juniper bubble bath and Epsom bath salts into the tub and waited to be enveloped in a fragrant mist.

And waited.

Finally, I acknowledged to myself and the woman on the other end of the telephone line that I did not have hot water. Ultramar’s message centre assured me help was on the way. I felt a nudge of joy.

That did not last. The repair guy apparently wasn’t ruining his Saturday night because some woman’s bath water wasn’t hot.

Buddy eventually showed up. But by now I’m in my pajamas. Resigned, and a little ticked. Of course, the fuel guy needed a part he didn’t have in his truck, so why bother having a truck, I wondered. Bottom line: there would be no shrine until at least Monday. I did not hide my disappointment. Buddy did not hide his indifference.

He also noted I’d have to pay for the part and the emergency service call. I noted that was par for the course. Despite having a service maintenance contract to cover such contingencies as this, nothing has ever been covered except a furnace cleaning. I suggested to Buddy perhaps the company should simply call it a furnace cleaning charge. I think he flipped me the bird on his way out.

Monday came, of course. The water heater was fixed, the bath was full of hot, inviting H20. I stepped in and inhaled a heartfelt whiff of chamomile bergamot. But I breathed in more than the latest release from Bath and Body Works. I realized in that moment that my shrine, wrapped in relaxation, and reverence, is really about gratitude. It’s about being thankful to be here, and thankful to be.

Over the next few weeks and the candlelit shrines that followed, I came to understand that gratitude isn’t just about being personally thankful and appreciative. It is about extending that thanks to the world around you. It’s about grace.

I have taken that insight to heart. I remind myself to smell the rose water before I speak out; to soak up the moment before rushing to the next task; to turn off autopilot and turn on an aromatic awareness of what lies before.

And I have apologized to the man from Ultramar.

Susan, An Extraordinary Story—by T.K. Thorne

Susan had never told her family about her experiences. In fact, before Louisa Weinrib called her in 1990 for an interview, she she had never talked about what happened to anyone other than those who had gone through it with her. Hers is a true story of amazing strength, resourcefulness, and friendship.

Susan Eisenberg’s childhood was full of promise. An only child, she was born in 1924 into a family that proudly traced their Hungarian lineage back a hundred years. She grew up in the small town of Miskolc, where her father had a successful business buying and exporting livestock and grains for a farming cooperative.

Susan was aware of anti-Semitic sentiment, but it didn’t touch her early life. The Jewish community was well integrated into Hungarian society, and she had many Christian friends. She spoke Hungarian and German, loved to ice-skate and ski, and wanted to go to college, but by the time she was of college age, Jews could not attend.

Her loving and close-knit family gathered after synagogue at her home, where they also celebrated the Seder. On weekends, they offered a tradition of high tea for family and neighbors.

Trouble began in 1938 with a small Hungarian Nazi party that grew in strength, paralleling the party’s growth in Germany. After Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, Polish refugees fled into Hungary, bringing what seemed unbelievable stories of what was happening in Poland. Without a birth certificate validating birth in Hungary, officials shipped the fleeing civilians back to Poland. An army friend confided to Susan that, in reality, the Poles were taken across the border and shot. Even when people began wearing brown shirts with swastika armbands and spouting slogans, Susan recalled, the Jewish community just ignored it.

In 1940 Hungary became an Axis power. Hitler, who invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, demanded that Hungary join that war. Susan’s uncle died when he was forced to walk with others into a field between the German and Russian armies to test for the presence of land mines. Her father was taken to a work camp. Released the following year, he was ill and depressed and died soon after at 44. After his death, Susan and her mother moved to the city of Budapest to live with relatives.

Although the Jews in Hungary suffered under tightening restrictions, Hungary’s regent protected them for a time from Hitler’s “final solution”—extermination—until Hitler discovered the regent was secretly negotiating an armistice with the US and the UK. On Easter Sunday in March 1944, Susan was having coffee with a friend on a cafe terrace and saw German panzer tanks rolling over the bridges into Budapest. The Germans occupied and quickly seized control of the country.

The Nazis rounded up her family members who were still living in the countryside. The relatives sent postcards—which Susan and her mother later learned the Nazis forced them to write—advising they were well and going to Thersienstadt (a concentration camp/ghetto in Terezin). All of them perished in that camp.

In Budapest, Allied forces regularly bombed the city. Everyone carried bags of food at all times, never knowing when they might have to run into the air-raid shelters. Jews were required to wear a yellow star patch on their clothing and live in designated housing. Restrictions dictated when they could leave the house and forbid them to go to public parks or even walk on the sidewalks. They could work only in manual labor positions. Jewish professionals, doctors and dentists, could only practice on Jewish patients.

Susan was 19, with light blonde hair and blue eyes. She pulled off the yellow star from her clothes and snuck out into the country to get food. Once, on her return, Germans soldiers in a vehicle, not realizing she was a Jew, picked her up. They asked for a date. Heart pounding, she agreed, lying about where she lived, and promised to meet them later. Safely home, she looked down at her clothes and realized that a closer inspection would have revealed the stitch holes from the star she’d removed.

When the Russian army was approaching Budapest, the Hungarian Nazis ordered Susan to report for labor with her age group and sent them to dig foxholes. Their Hungarian Nazi guards were 14 or 15-year-olds. When a young girl working at Susan’s side sat down and cried for her mother, those guards immediately shot her.

For two days and nights in the cold and rain, with no food, the guards ran them back to Budapest to work in a brick factory where she met two girls her age, Ferry (Ferike Csato) and Katherine (Katherine Goldstein Prevost). Susan pretended to be crippled and part of a group of sick and injured destined for Budapest and death. She escaped and made it to her aunt and uncle’s house, but the following day Hungarian gendarmes (police) rounded her up with others. The gendarmes forced even mothers from their babies to join with those in the streets.

Their Hungarian guards told them they were taking them to Germany to die. “The one who dies on the road is lucky,” they said. Over a ten-day period in October, they walked in rain, ice, and cold from Budapest to the German border (125 miles) to Hegyeshalomover. Thousands were shot for lagging behind or collapsing. A few country people along the way gave them a piece of bread. Others stripped them of their clothes. Guards kicked them. They slept in flea-invested hay.

Anyone who had anything of value traded it to the peasants for food. They fought for a share of rare carrot or bean soup.

One night, the guards packed them onto a barge on the Danube River. Overwhelmed by the press of dying people, Susan escaped by swimming to the bank in the freezing river. She begged a man she encountered to help her or just get her something dry to wear. He agreed but instead returned with police who escorted her back to the prisoners.

At the German border, they marched another ten miles to trains. Jammed into cattle cars, they traveled for days but couldn’t see out because black slats covered the cars. She was only aware of repetitive stopping and starting.

Finally, in October 1944, the trains arrived at Dachau concentration camp in Germany, their destination. The smell of the crematorium camp would stay in her nostrils for the rest of her life, as would the shock of her first sight of the skeletal prisoners who mobbed them, begging for bread. Guards beat the prisoners back.

The newly arrived assembled in a large open field, waiting to go in. But even with bodies being constantly cremated, there was no room for them in Dachau. Susan and her two friends, Ferry and Katherine, went with other girls to Camp Two and then Camp Eleven (nearby work camps). They slept in bunkers below ground on a wooden floor and a pallet of straw. Camp Two, they quickly learned, was the “sick camp.” The next stop for Camp Two occupants would be the crematorium in Dachau.

At the satellite camps, they were given striped uniforms. About 500 people lived in each barrack with a block leader in charge. Food came once a day in a big wooden barrel with hot water and big hunks of sugar beets. At night they received a piece of bread that “oozed sawdust and a piece of artificial marmalade.” At first, she couldn’t swallow it. The older inmates encouraged her to “eat it, no matter what.”

Each day, the prisoners were called out to stand, sometimes for hours, in the cold for a count and work assignments (Appell). “If you fell out, you were beaten or shot. If a friend was dying, you made sure that she stood up, no matter what, and wasn’t left in the barracks.”

In the first Appell, Susan was picked to work in a kitchen where she peeled beets. Germans brought in prisoners for punishment, hanging them from rafters and beating them. She and the kitchen workers constantly cleaned the blood from the floors. She hid beets inside her baggy shirt and shared it with her camp mates and the Muselmann—the starving, skin-and-bones prisoners resigned to their impending death.

Susan was transferred to different camps for work assignment. At one, German engineers of the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces), instead of SS troops, ran the camp. More humane, their military task masters distributed pieces of food to the workers, food that kept Susan alive. Barehanded and dressed only in the thin striped uniforms and sockless wooden clogs, Susan and her fellow prisoners pulled wagons of wood in the Bavarian winter mountains. Sometimes she was taken from the camp to wash clothes for German housewives. She also worked in the Sonderkommando (work groups at crematoriums) to remove teeth from the corpses of the murdered for the gold fillings.

Her health was deteriorating. She had lost weight and suffered from reoccurring high fevers. Typhoid broke out in the camp. There was no medication. To isolate the prisoners, the guards stopped letting them leave, throwing beets and bread over the fence.

In early March 1945, after the epidemics, a female guard beat her for speaking defiantly to a camp commander. People all around her were giving in to despair, but she refused to do so, vowing she would survive.

At another work camp, Susan joined women prisoners building an underground airplane hangar. They were forced to carry 100-pound bags of cement across a catwalk several stories high. The Muselmann went down instantly under the burden, falling to their deaths. “There was,” Susan said, “as much blood and flesh in that hanger as cement.”

An inmate orchestra played as she and other workers left the camp and on their return. Guards made the orchestra watch and play during beatings and hangings and while starved prisoners–who had tried to grab potatoes from a wagon—were strung up between the electrical barbed wire, potatoes stuck in their mouths.

Once, the Germans spruced up a barracks, putting in furniture and stocking it with people they found “not in terrible shape” for the Swiss Red Cross, who had come to inspect the treatment of prisoners. As soon as they were gone, the Germans took the untouched piles of canned foods, condensed milk, and chocolate the Red Cross had left for the prisoners.

One barrack’s occupants were expectant mothers. They were allowed to give birth to their babies and tend them. Then one day, without warning, all the infants were taken away and the women sent to the work groups.

To use the open trenches to relieve themselves, Susan had to walk through knee-deep mud at night, sometimes stepping on top of the bodies of those who had fallen there and died in the mud. Survival, she knew, depended on not allowing yourself to feel and thinking only of the moment.

Her last assignment was in a dynamite factory. By this time, the air raids were almost continuous. Landsberg, a nearby town, was under siege by the Americans. In April 1945, guards took her and her friends to the main camp in Dachau. They spent a night in the showers at Dachau, believing they would next be taken to the crematoriums, which were still “going strong.” But the next day, with thousands of young people, they were marched out of the camp. As they left, they could see the trains that continued to bring prisoners from other camps [to keep the Allies from discovering them], many already sick and emaciated. When the doors opened, dead bodies fell out. Inmates stacked them like mountains in front of the crematoriums to be burned. But the Germans had run out of time. The American guns were days away.

They marched from Dachau, walking at night and hiding in the woods during the day. Allowed to dig in the fields they passed for roots and potatoes, they ate them raw. All understood the guards’ orders were to march them into the mountains and kill them in the forests where the Allies would not discover their bodies. Guards shot in the head anyone who lagged or fell. Susan was sick and feverish. She could not walk on her own, but three friends, Katherine, Ferry, and another supported her, keeping her from collapsing.

As they struggled through the mountains and meadows of Bavaria, guards began deserting in the cover of night. American planes flew low enough Susan could read the insignia on the wings. The pilots, who surely saw the striped uniforms, refrained from dropping bombs.

Five days later, what remained of their group arrived at a work camp for Russian prisoners in the small German town of Wolfratshausen. The first task of their remaining Nazi guards was to take the Russian prisoners of war and shoot them. Knowing they were next, Susan lay on the roadside, too sick and exhausted to react. Then she heard a roar—the first American jeep of the Third Army coming down the road—liberators.

The German guards fled, but the liberators were combat troops, unable to care medically for the freed prisoners. The Americans moved on, and the liberated were left to fend for themselves.

Typhoid once again thinned their ranks. Her friends held out tin cans for food the passing American soldiers threw to them. Survivors that were able, brought supplies from the town and cooked soups. Reports that Americans fed and clothed German prisoners, playing baseball and basketball with them in the prison camps, ignited bitterness and anger. Many Jews took abandoned weapons and hunted the German SS who had tortured them and killed their friends and families.The sound of gunfire in the surrounding forests peppered the nights.

They spent the summer in the woods, slowly regaining their strength, then Susan, Katherine and Ferry trekked to a displaced persons camp. Although her friends wished to immigrate to Israel, Susan wanted to go home to Hungary. And they chose to go with her.

They walked to Prague, a journey of 145 miles, where a Russian troop train allowed them to ride. Arriving finally at their destination of Budapest, they found it devastated. Susan couldn’t find her house in the rubble . . . or her mother. They tried to find work. Inflation made money worthless. A friend of her uncle finally gave her a job in the ministry [government] which paid the workers in potatoes and bread. They lived in a room open to the elements; bombs had destroyed the windows and doors.

Ferry convinced Susan to go with her, Katherine, and two Sabra (Israeli) agents who were attempting to get fifty Polish Jewish children to Israel. The children had survived by hiding in Christian homes. Susan and her friends rode with them by train to the Hungarian border where they had to walk about 200 miles.

The friends, with the two Sabra agents and three other men, accompanied the children through heavy snow in the fields and woods. Twice, they paid off Russians who stopped them, but the third time, at the German border, they had to make a run for it. They abandoned all their belongings in their dash for freedom. Older children carried the younger ones. Russian bullets followed them. Once safely across, the children continued through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus and then into Israel. But Susan still did not want to go to Israel.

Later, Susan said she regretted that decision and felt pride in what Israel stood for. “You know, even if you have to die, if you die on your feet fighting, it’s a heck of a lot different than to be shoved into a gas chamber [to] die like mice or cockroaches, or whatever.”

Susan lived in Germany for three years, then married a GI and came to America in 1948, becoming a U.S. citizen. She had two children, Diane and Leslie, and lived on Long Island, NY. Struggled with multiple health issues, she worked in various factories to pay her medical bills before getting a clerical job on Mitchel Air Force Base, which turned into a civil service career of 30 years.

She divorced and eventually married another serviceman. With his transfer to Maxwell Air Force Base, they moved to Montgomery, Alabama.

Ferry and Katherine joined relatives in America, and the three friends kept in touch for the rest of their lives. Finally locating her mother, who had returned to Budapest, Susan brought her to Montgomery in 1956.

Susan Petrov Eisenberg died in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2008.

Note: I had the privilege of compiling Susan’s story. She was one of the survivors who made Alabama their home after WWII. Others’ stories and a wealth of educational material about survivors and the Holocaust is available at the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center website—bhecinfo.org

T.K. Thorne photo T.K. Thorne writes about what moves her, following a flight path of curiosity, reflection, and imagination. Check out her (fiction and nonfiction) books at TKThorne.com

Bethany Maines drinks from an arsenic mug

Valentine’s Noir

Noir? No Are? Nwar?  What now?

I occasionally participate in an author event called Noir at the Bar. Local writers bring crime and “noir” themed stories to scandalize listeners with tales of the seedy underbelly of society.  Oh, and also to drink, socialize and terrorize ourselves by reading in public.  This time around our date falls on the day after Valentine’s Day and our ring leader has decreed it to be a night of lost love, long hangovers, and doomed romance.  It’s Noir at the Bar – Heartbreakers Edition.

So What Kind of Noir Are You Writing?

True confession time… I’m terrible at noir.  I have a general lack of depression and tend to write characters I like. And since the nihilistic outlook seems to be the hallmark of noir that kind of makes me Noir-light at best.  So usually I write crime stories about characters who have managed to get themselves into a little bit of a pickle or are trying to get ahead for once.

Story Time…

This time out I’m reading The Rage Cage. I got the idea for this story from a therapist friend of mine who mentioned that one of her clients worked at a rage cage, and then of course, I had to ask, “What’s a Rage Cage?” It’s an establishment that let’s you smash everything.  If you’ve ever wanted to reenact the printer beat down scene from Office Space, they can make that happen for you.  They have enumerable objects to smash and lots of things to smash them with. I don’t know if it’s any cheaper than therapy, but you might get a work out.  And they find those smashable items in auctions of online storage units.  If someone forgets to pay their storage unit, the storage company will auction off the units.  Usually, someone will buy these contents sight unseen, pick through and sell what they can for a profit.  But a rage cage business is looking for breakable items. But that got me thinking about just what kind of items might turn up in those storage unit collections…

The Rage Cage

When Amber, the manager at the Rage Cage, stumbles on her ex-husband’s belongings among the items from a storage unit auction, she learns a secret that changes everything about her marriage and concocts a plan for revenge.

So wish me luck as I venture forth out into… gulp… the public and read The Rage Cage to it’s very first audience.

**

Bethany Maines is the award-winning author of action-adventure and fantasy tales that focus on women who know when to apply lipstick and when to apply a foot to someone’s hind end. She can usually be found chasing after her daughter, or glued to the computer working on her next novel (or screenplay). You can also catch up with her on TwitterFacebookInstagram, and BookBub.

Let the Good Times Roll!

Even after the extra day for leap year, February is the shortest month. But that doesn’t stop these 29 days from being chock-full of things to celebrate. Especially this week.

Due to a quirk in the 2024 calendar, there’s a danger of overdosing on special occasions. I live in what’s often described as the most diverse city in the U.S., where owners of all kinds of businesses (bakers, costumers, bars, restaurants, and delivery services) are working overtime to cash in on money-making opportunities.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Thriving Asian communities and hundreds, if not thousands of restaurants, are serving that continent’s exotic cuisines to the rest of us for Lunar New Year. The exact official date can vary from culture to culture, but highly enjoyable ceremonies abound, including special foods, fireworks, music, and the boisterous Lion Dance.

Sunday, Super Bowl LVIII

Unofficially dubbed the Taylor Swift Bowl, this celebration of grit and brawn was finally played. It was a good day for grocers and purveyors of fast food. Did you watch? Did your team win? And did you appreciate any of the over-priced  commercials? The BMW/Christopher Walken spoof made me chuckle, and the Dunkin’ Donuts spot was amusing, too.

Next up: Leftovers Day

Not an official holiday, yesterday offered a little respite from the clash and clatter. It also gave us a chance to work through our leftover flamin’ hot chicken wings and Chinese moon cakes. And it was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, a nice opportunity for quiet contemplation before the rowdiest hoopla of all descended upon us today.

Today: Cue the parades!

Cue the beads, the drinking, and the debauchery! Today is Mardi Gras! Fat Tuesday, when celebrants here and around the world are encouraged to laissez les bon tons roulez. So, let the good times roll! Wear the gaudy costumes and watch people behave badly. Catch some trinkets and cheap bling from a parade float. Eat, drink and be merry, and make sure to grab some King Cake while you can, for tomorrow is all ash and penitence. Unless you prefer to keep to fun going, because…

I ♥ U!

…tomorrow is Valentines Day! If, after indulging in all of the above, you’re still in the mood for rich food and booze (and your liver can take it), you can opt for a lovely restaurant in which to ply the object of your affection with oysters and champagne, and maybe some serious, not-so-cheap bling.

TGIWSBT!

Thank goodness it will soon be Thursday, which is National Singles Awareness Day, in which we’re encouraged to celebrate the joy of being alone. After the week we will have had by then, it feels like an appropriate antidote to the bacchanal we might have endured. A good day to tend to our spiritual side. Or, depending on how well your Valentine’s dinner went, perhaps to try a new dating service.

There’ve been countless Valentine’s dinners in my life, some more meaningful than others. But I’ve never attended a Super Bowl.

I have enjoyed local Lunar New Year celebrations (lots of noise and fun). I’ve been to a Mardi Gras ball and three years of parades in New Orleans: first, among the raucous street crowd (never again), second, from a private balcony on Bourbon Street, and another atop a float, tossing beads in my homecoming queen regalia.

Here’s hoping we all have many more special days ahead to celebrate. In the meantime, let’s try to make every day a celebration.

How about you? What’s your favorite day in February?

Gay Yellen is the author of the  award-winning Samantha Newman Mysteries include The Body Business, The Body Next Door, and The Body in the News!  Contact her at GayYellen.com.

Fearless Creating: AKA Develop a Stubborn Streak

By Donnell Ann Bell

It never fails. I can be talking to friend Lois Winston via phone, topics ranging from world events to some mundane ailment we’re experiencing. Then always. . . always before we hang up, the next 15 minutes segue into critique partner Lois Winston.  This is the point in which we discuss writing and what we’ve learned or experienced over twenty-plus years.

Let’s face it, publishing has exploded since the early 2000s from the statement that e-publishing isn’t a legitimate form of publishing to printing and mailing off our synopses and manuscripts, then waiting and waiting and hoping for “The Call.”

In this morning’s phone conversation, Lois and I discussed my hack (more on that in upcoming posts – the saga is interesting and educational, I promise you) and why Lois, a traditionally published author turned indy author and marketing guru will likely never be on social media or hire a personal assistant.  As I listened to her very valid points not to enter this realm, I thought why should she? She does everything from writing, to hiring a narrator for her audio books, to designing and selling Anastasia Pollack merchandise herself! The woman is a machine!

Today’s phone call had us laughing, and somehow morphed into the importance of trusting our instincts. These instincts often lay dormant in the beginning of our careers because we haven’t yet learned or challenged the craft of writing. Further, so many experts (and many who think they are) stand ready to expound on how they do it.

One of the things I believe in is Fearless Creating. Am I suggesting never to take advice? Absolutely not. But what’s the point of writing if we don’t stay true to our vision, enjoy the process while we’re creating, and see what our imaginations and brains can come up with first?

I’ve witnessed authors taking a fine piece of writing, albeit a draft, in which the whole room applauded. An agent in the room requested a full. Later, when I saw  the piece again, I hardly recognized it.  Why did you change it, I asked. Oh, X had a problem with this. Y said it was too long, too short, the characters flat. Z suggested I write it this way.

This way is another person’s vision that usurps the creator. Doubt has a terrible way of worming into an author’s psyche from the moment we open a blank page. Further, there are so many outside forces these days willing to help us with our writing.

Author Sylvia Rochester

I had a dear friend who painted as well as wrote books.  Author and Artist Sylvia Rochester, who passed in 2022, had a wonderful saying. It’s one I think about when I’m writing, tweak my work, screw it up, and can’t get it back again. “The First Stroke is the Freshest.”

If you think you have something brilliant but can make it better, I suggest keeping a draft file. That way you can compare the two later. How often do you write something in the evening, think this is garbage and delete it? Putting the text in a draft file, come morning, you may see things differently.  I know I have. 

I call myself an experienced writer who still has much to learn. I enjoy critiquing with Lois and often do beta reads for other writers. Rarely do I suggest an author change an entire plot, or worse, try to “rewrite” it for them. It’s their story, their voice. I believe there should be a Hippocratic oath for Authors – Help but “Do no Harm.”

When I read, I focus on pacing, goal, motivation, and conflict. Do I like the author’s voice, and can I relate to the characters? I believe in critique partners and the oh-so-valuable-editor. Through it all, though, I’m grateful my muse is a formidable force. I’m also blessed with a stubborn streak.

What about you? Agree/disagree?

About the Author:  Donnell Ann Bell writes both romantic suspense and multi-jurisdictional task force plots, keeping close tabs on her theme SUSPENSE TOO CLOSE TO HOME. Her single-title romantic suspense novels, The Past Came Hunting, Deadly Recall, Betrayed, and Buried Agendas, have all been Amazon e-book best sellers.

Traditionally published with Belle Books/Bell Bridge Books, Black Pearl, a Cold Case Suspense was her first mainstream suspense and book one of a series, and a Colorado Book Award finalist. Her second book in the series, Until Dead, A Cold Case Suspense, released in May of 2022 was voted best thriller in 2023 at the Imaginarium Celebration Conference in Louisville, Kentucky.  Follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter or follow her blog at https://www.donnellannbell.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clicking Our Heels – Our Favorite Lines from Books

Clicking Our Heels – Our Favorite Lines from Books

The words authors write are often called “Darlings.” Most of the members of the Stiletto Gang have written several books, stories, or reviews. Have you ever wondered what line we’ve written that is our favorite or what line we’ve read that we wished we wrote? We’re letting you in on our secret favorites:

 Lois Winston – A first line should be a tease that makes the reader want to continue reading the first paragraph, which for me is more important than the first line. One of my favorites is from A Stitch to Die For, the fifth book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series:

Two weeks ago my mother, Flora Sudberry Periwinkle Ramirez Scoffield Goldberg O’Keefe, took her sixth trip down the aisle to become Flora Sudberry Periwinkle Ramirez Scoffield Goldberg O’Keefe Tuttnauer. The groom’s daughter was a no-show. At the time of the ceremony her body was being fished out of the Delaware and Raritan Canal in Lambertville, New Jersey.

Gay Yellen – The current favorite is in my newest release, The Body in the News, when Samantha Newman says, “There’s a big difference between working in the news business and being in the news, and right now I wouldn’t give a dime for either one.”

Donnell Ann Bell – What a timely question. I read two great lines today from The Forgotten Man: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel.  One scene involves fourteen-year-old runaway Elvis Cole, who is hellbent on finding his father. The lines that struck me are: “Parents should come with a license.” Then one with stellar foreshadowing: “You have a knack for this, I gotta give you that. Here you are, a kid, and you track these bastards down like a professional. You’d make a helluva detective.”

Mary Lee Ashford (1/2 of Sparkle Abbey)- This was a hard question, but I’m going to go with the first line from Desperate Housedogs. “I don’t normally break into people’s home, but today I was making an exception.”  It will come as no surprise to my fellow writers that this wasn’t the original first line, but one that came after many passes through the story.

Debra Sennefelder – My favorite line so far is from my newest release, A CORPSE AT THE WITCHING HOUR, when Drew sees Hope’s ugly Halloween sweater.

“Oh. My. Ghouls.”

T.K. Thorne – I actually have two favorite lines, both from Na’amah, a young girl in my historical novel, Noah’s Wife. She is on the spectrum and wants only to be a shepherdess in her beloved hills. She begins her story with this: “My name, Na’amah, means beautiful or pleasant. I am not always beautiful, but I am pleasant.”

Na’amah was amazing with her sheep, but very bad at traditional women’s work. After an intense scene and having sex for the first time, she made a comment to herself that was true to her character but one I wasn’t expecting: “Maybe I will be better at this than sewing.”

Dru Ann Love – “And there she is,” I say, a moment later, “the Cyclone, standing tall for ninety-five years. Isn’t she majestic?” From “Ticket To Ride” from the Happiness Is a Warm Gun-Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of The Beatles anthology.

Saralyn Richard – Quinn’s family always joked about death, but that summer death stopped being funny. —from Bad Blood Sisters.

Bethany Maines – Well, I find myself hilarious, so that’s a tough call.  I’ve had some lines that I love, but oddly I’m probably most proud when I really get it right on my marketing materials.  Writing in a novel, while difficult, is like painting a wall sized mural –there’s a lot of space to work. Getting a line write in a marketing piece where you get maybe 5 seconds to catch someone’s attention is a lot more difficult to do.  So probably, I’m most proud of the line from my San Juan Island Mystery Series, “This island is full of private little wars. And murder.”

Barbara J. Eikmeier – It’s so hard to choose, so I’ll just say that I always love the line, in any book, that explains the title of the book.

Anita Carter (1/2 of Sparkle Abbey) – I can’t think of a specific line, but there have been times when I’ve reread a passage during edits and I’ve thought, hey that was pretty good.

Debra H. Goldstein – “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” (Rebecca)