Information Warfare Web site

Any readers or potential readers of The Shadow Warriors might want to learn more about Information Warfare.  This is a great site that has all the latest hacks and attempted hacks.  
Information Warfare Web Site 

The info warriors have to stay on the cutting edge, no, make that the bleeding edge of technology. 

Göttingen Schützenfest

Here is the loaf- where are the fishes?

The Best of the Wurst

1962 Schützenfest in Göttingen

Göttingen, Germany is  wonderful small city, a university town with brio, culture, and bustle.  I found these old photos taken out of the 3rd floor window of the Commerzbank back in 1962 on the occasion of the Schützenfest parade down Prinzenstrasse.  My in-laws lived in Göttingen since after World War II, and it was always such fun to visit.  In fact, we  visited so often that when I was writing The Shadow Warriors and needed a university for Professor Mittelstadt,  Göttingen's came to mind immediately.   I felt relieved that there was no "Institute for Advanced Computing," and I could make it up.  I made up a lot, but most of it was based on fact, including the "Stern Marsch"  and  the resulting riot.  A visit to the library's michrofiche department provided photos of police, helmets down, dogs straining at the leash.  
An  author always looks for the most dramatic setting possible, and naturally  a university always has the town/gown controversies and professors, their wives, grad students, all the things I put into The Shadow Warriors.  One day, knowing I needed certain characters for my novel, I sat in the Marktplatz and jotted down descriptions of interesting people who walked by.  I found Jakob, Marlies, Claudia, Marcus and others.  Petra was a long time coming, and I finally saw her at Roche Brothers supermarket in Wellesley, MA, but her scuffed velvet jacket came from a relative.  

Did you know the Brothers Grimm were professors at the University and were even protesters way back when?    Another interesting fact that went into The Shadow Warriors.  My nephew took me bar-hopping one night, and  again, the pubs went right into the book, but under different names.  One of them is picturered in this blog in an earlier post.  Another sidewalk cafe became Cafe Amalfi of Boston fame, now defunct.  It's a cool name, don't you think?  

If any of this sounds interesting, and you are a German who reads English, you might like The Shadow Warriors.  Other scenes are set in Berlin, Frankfurt, Baden-Baden and Singapore.  Also Hong Kong and Cambridge MA where I worked at the time.  "Warriors" is available on the German Kindle and also as a trade paperback.  Of course the Kindle version is 'way cheaper. 

Schuss!                              

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?