Seven (7) Suspenseful Sentence Sunday

Visit all the 7 Suspenseful Sentence Sunday authors at:  7 Suspenseful Sentence Sunday   

Emma, the narrator, is astonished with  one of the book's bad guys, Georgi Balakov, sits down at her table in the outdoor cafe in Göttingen, and starts his rambling soliloquoy. 

The tranquil garden, with orange nasturtiums cascading along the fence, and subdued classical music soothing the diners, emphasized the unreality of this encounter. . . .

            Balakov, sitting as impenetrable and in-your-face as the Wall dividing Germany, continued to talk. "When I first traveled to the West, my earliest business took me to Berlin. It was February, so cold and dismal, and yet, I wondered if I had arrived in a time machine with everyone, men and women walked about wrapped in leather or fur. What a wonderful Stone Age tribe—so elegant, so brisk. I was eager and raw then, an underdog hungering for the opulent capitalist bone, so meaty and full of fat. There would, I hoped, be no more gristle to chew.

 

Looking for a cool Kindle read?   The Shadow Warriors, a novel of international intrigue with technology run amok.  Here is the link: The Shadow Warriors on Amazon, Kindle and Trade Paperback 

My Research for The World of Mirrors

I have always hoped that my research would inform and enrich this novel.  Here is what I read.  I'm hoping the publisher will take the novel. 

For an author, nothing beats firsthand visits and interviews, but steeping myself in the background and history of the period were also of prime importance and will, I hope, inform the writing in World of Mirrors.

Childers, Erskine, The Riddle of the Sands, New York, Dover Publications, 1976

Dodds, Dina and Allen-Thompson, Pam, editors.  The Wall in My Backyard, East German Women in Transition, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1994

Ellis, William S., Germany —The Morning After, National Geographic, Vol. 180. No. 3, September 1991, 2 – 41.

Garton Ash, Timothy, The Magic Lantern, New York, Vintage Books, 1990

Garton Ash, Timothy, The File, A Personal History, New York, Random House, 1997

Kramer, Jane, The Politics of Memory, Looking for Germany in the New Germany, New York, Randon House,

Köhlers Flotten-Kalendar 1994, Das deutsche Jahrbuch der Seefahrt, Herford, Koehlers Verlaggesellschaft, 1994

Markovits, Inge, Impefect Justic, An East-West German Diary, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995

Müller, Christine & Bodo, Über Die Ostsee In Die Feiheit,  Bielefeld, Delius Klasing Verlag, 1996

Philipsen, Dirk, We Were the People, Voices From East German’s Revolutionary Autumn of 1989, Durham, Duke University Press, 1993

Schneider.Peter, The German Comedy, Scenes of Life After the Wall, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991

Vesilind, Priit J., The Baltic: Area of Power, National Geographic, Vol. 175, No. 5, May, 1989, 602- 635.

Von Der Porten, Edward, The Hanseatic League, Europe’s First Common Market, National Geographic, Vol. 186, No. 4, October, 1994, 56 –79. 

Winkler, Hermann, Zeesboote, Rostok, Hinstorff, 1990

Wolf, Christa, The Author’s Dimension, Selected Essays, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993

Wolf, Christa, What Remains & Other Stories, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993

Wolf, Marcus Man Without A Face, The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster, New York, Random House, 1997

Marcus Wolf's autobiography provided the title, World of Mirrors.  Peter Schneider provided information about the North Vietnamese and the Wall dogs.  Timothy Garten Ash had a lot of interesting things to say about the Stasi and the Stasi files.  I learned so much researching this novel.  If you think this book sounds interesting,  you will also like The Shadow Warriors which is actually available.  World of Mirrors, soon, I hope.

The Shadow Warriors, Auf Deutsch

“The Shadow Warriors” beschreibt Information Warfare. Hacker aus allen Winkeln der Welt, wollen entweder bösartiges Software (die Schattenkrieger des Titels) erfinden oder stehlen. Sie können Kraftwerke und den Luftverkehr stillegen, sogar die Verteidigung eines Landes in die Knie bringen. Die Handlung spielt hauptsächlich in Göttingen, aber auch in Asien und Europa, einschliesslich Berlin bevor die Mauer fiel. Dennoch sind die Gefahren heute genau so akut wie damals, wenn nicht noch grösser. Emma Lee Davis, die Heldin des Romans, beschreibt die Hackerkultur in ihrer respektlosen Stimme. Sie riskiert ihr Leben und Ehe und muss sich fragen, “wenn wir Computerverbrechen verhindern sollen, wieso helfen wir denn dabei?

The Shadow Warriors Now Available on Amazon Germany

The best news yesterday.  The Shadow Warriors, set in Germany, is now available on the Amazon Kindle in Germany.  See link to the right of this post.  I am nearly beside myself, because logic would dictate that a book set in Germany (Goettingen) should be available there.  And a book set at a university might tempt university students and faculty who read English. 

Other good news this week:  The literary journal Kansas City Lights is publishing  memoir piece about my grandmother.  My grandma was proudly from Kansas.  So is my heroine, Emma.  She always stops to notice flowers and gardens.  

Sometimes the stars do seem aligned.  The lilac has flower buds.  Last year, not one, and the year before only one.  This year, it looks loaded.  A pair of cardinals in the yard, and the cute little swamp (?) sparrow has a mate.  Ducks in the slough.  My cup runneth over.  Spring in New England.  Glorious.  The cats sleep upstairs in the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window.   They sniff spring at the open window.

Now I'm thinking of putting my Ruegen book onto the Kindle, too.  Set mostly on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic in midsummer,  with different characters, and also a computer crime novel (loosely), the story  hasn't found a home in the U.S.  By now it is an historical novel of technology.  Remember CD-ROMS?  That generation.  Before skysat phones. Before lots of technology.  

Here's a scrap of a Shadow Warrior's scene from a somewhat drunken university party on the occasion of Verna's graduation.

Raucous-voiced onlookers toasted Verena as she frugged wildly next to a man with bleached blond parted-in-the-middle-hair and a dark, bored face. Earlier, they had swept across the floor in an inhibition-shedding Lambada. Interesting that Verena celebrated her intellectual achievement with such a blow out. Vivacious and happy, she looked good tonight, with clear skin and legs slimmed by dark stockings. 

Every novel has a crazy party, some skinny dipping and a little weed.  Popular culture reigns.  

Street Sceme in Göttingen in the Weenderstrasse, the Fussgängerzone

Cafe Amalfi

Cafe Amalfi

The original "Cafe Amalfi" was around the corner from Symphony Hall in Boston and served uninteresting food, if I may damn with faint praise.  I did like the name.  I set several scenes in Goettingen at the above cafe.  The scene below is the last time Emma the narrator sees Lumomir Titov, "Luby," the Bulgarian spy and Hacker who has bedeviled her throughout the book, mocking her as "Mrs. Robinson," a reference from the movie The Graduate.  The name "Luby" came from a very nice man at my old tennis club in suburban Chicago, nothing like the real character.  A writer  is a shameless thief and books are all the better for it.  When Luby mentions the Berlin film festival, I had recently been there and he is mouthing my impressions, to a degree, but of course from a East Bloc country's point of view.   Here is the scene.   

The tranquil garden, with orange nasturtiums cascading along the fence, and subdued classical music soothing the diners, emphasized the unreality of this encounter. Later the memory of this lunch would be like a fantasy that rose genie-like out of my wineglass.

            Balakov, sitting as impenetrable and in-your-face as the Wall dividing Germany, continued to talk. "When I first traveled to the West, my earliest business took me to Berlin. February. So cold and dismal, and yet, I wondered if I had arrived in a time machine. Everyone, men and women walked about wrapped in leather or fur. What a wonderful Stone Age tribe! So elegant, so brisk. I was eager and raw then, an underdog hungering for the opulent capitalist bone, so meaty and full of fat. There would, I hoped, be no more gristle to chew.

            "The film festival occupied every theater. I joined the audience, and gazed at the images on the screens until late into the night. In a cafe on the Kurfürstendamm, I ate a bowl of strawberries from California, large red berries with tasteless white centers, completely void of the essence of strawberry. Consider. The illusion of strawberries in winter. A miracle to a man used to cabbage, carrots and potatoes!"            

            "Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

            He didn't answer.

            The waiter cleared the table, and looked mournful when he noticed my barely picked at plate. I ordered a double espresso.

            Balakov lifted his glass again, and with a faint smile said, "And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson..."

            He cut off my protest. "I will always think of you as Mrs. Robinson."

            "That night at the disco…” I began.

            "With your young friends. You danced with that cyber-punk from the Institute. Your little group was very drunk. I envied your camaraderie, your carelessness. The young man was quite enchanted, and I thought, what a dangerous woman, my Mrs. Robinson." 

            Balakov slid two twenty mark notes under the olive oil cruet and stood up.

            "Auf Wiedersehen, Emma Lee Davis-Robinson. Give Mr. Weber my regards. Do not ignore my counsel. Good fortune is a variable, not a constant."

            "I don't understand,” I said, almost pleading.

            His bitter smile conveyed nothing. Later I tried to think if heeding his or Marlies' warning would have changed the progression of events. Nothing would have changed. The clocks ticked on. The daemons waited. Momentum and inertia are forces with their own immutability.

            I never saw Georgi Balakov again.