Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Well, given the locale of my third Clubmobile Girls novel, my heroine might more readily exclaim: “Cobras and Tigers and Elephants, oh my!”

Yes, we are headed to exotic and mystical India in my next WWII romance novel. Many readers won’t remember that Americans fought and died in India during WWII (or why), so I’m composing a prefatory note to set the stage. Trying to distill the high points into a succinct summary has impressed on me just how complex a situation my hero and heroine will face. Nationalist protests, riots and strikes roil the country during these waning days of the British Raj, famine results in suffering and starvation on a mass scale in large swathes of the country, intrigue abounds as the Indians, British, American, and Chinese jockey to advance their favored military and post-war strategic interests, guerrilla forces battle the enemy and the environment in the steamy jungles of Burma and northeast India, and Hump pilots making daily trips over the Himalayas in the worst airspace on earth face untold hazards to keep China supplied with vital food and military supplies.

My heroine is delighted and enthralled from the moment she catches sight of Bombay from the harbor. India is as far away from her small hometown in Missouri and her troubled past as it is possible to imagine. And while she initially focuses on the potential for adventure and a fresh start, she must all too quickly confront a myriad of challenges to her worldview of India and to her goals and plans.

By contrast, my hero wants nothing more than to escape India at the earliest possible opportunity. A son of American missionaries to Burma who attended boarding school in northwest India, he is anxious to return to America and his future in the ivy-covered halls of academia. He had, after all, already done his part for the war, flying combat missions with the Flying Tigers in the earliest months of the war. But escaping the lure of this labyrinthine land he had called home most of his life, not to mention a call of duty he is uniquely qualified to offer, proves difficult. The bright and brave young woman he cannot evict from his heart complicates things all the more.

            I would love to say that this more sequestered and slower paced life I’ve been leading has translated into huge daily word counts. Alas, that has not been the case. But I am nearing the end of my research process, have a good solid start in the early chapters, and have committed to start meeting that 1000-1500 word count daily goal again this week. I know I’m not the only author who has had difficulty with overall focus and productive habits in these challenging times. And the research required to corral the myriad competing potential plot points for this vast and complex setting has been an enormous undertaking. So that’s a long way of saying I am trying to give myself permission and space to let this story bloom gradually, rather than second-guessing whether I ought to have more to show for such an extended period of being largely housebound!  

I hope all of you continue to take care of yourself and your loved ones and stay in good spirits as we continue to adjust to a new normal.

You can learn more about me and my novels on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

You can purchase my first two Clubmobile Girls novels on Amazon.

Accentuate the Positive by Eleri Grace

Celebration – celebrating yourself in particular – is our theme this month. Like Luanna blogged last week, I tend to indulge in rewards or treats when I reach goals I set for myself or achieve a special milestone, but as she notes, I’ve not really thought about it as celebrating myself so much as celebrating the achievement. Perhaps I really should try harder to give myself credit – get out of the “box-checker” mentality to borrow a phrase from Michelle Obama’s memoir and instead focus more on cultivating self-love.

One facet of finding self-love is practicing mindfulness – being fully present and not in a constant state of reaction and over-reaction to what’s going on around us. Heightened awareness of life’s small joys is one of the many blessings I’ve counted during these pandemic times.

Goals and milestones don’t have to be momentous or consequential to merit a celebration – a distinction that is more important than ever right now. I know I’m not the only writer or creative type struggling to find creativity within the chaos around us these days. But instead of berating myself for not using this time to storyboard or brainstorm my next novel, I’m trying to focus on what I am accomplishing rather than what I’ve not done.

I may not have plotted the next Clubmobile Girls novel, but I have done quite a bit of background reading. That novel is percolating, and its characters will burst to life any time now.

I may not have used this time to get into the habit of posting new and enticing content on my social media accounts on a regular basis, but I have done an online class relating to author advertising that I think will improve my ability to promote my new release later this month.

It’s worth celebrating the small things every bit as much as life’s larger moments. A positive mindset is one powerful tool toward truly experiencing gratitude, self-love, and living more fully. It's a habit I hope I will have cultivated enough to carry forward once we return to "normalcy" or more aptly the "new normalcy," whatever that may look like.

 As Johnny Mercer sang so memorably in 1944:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive

Eliminate the negative

And latch on to the affirmative

Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

And speaking of accentuating the positive, I have a new release coming out on May 22nd -- just in time for Memorial Day weekend. Pre-orders for the ebook version are live on Amazon here.

In love, as in war, truth can be the greatest casualty.

When her New Orleans editor refuses to grant war correspondent credentials to a woman reporter, Hadley Claverie finds another route to the front lines: overseas duty with the Red Cross. She wants nothing more than to carve out a career as a respected journalist, but a sexy pilot set on playing by the rules undermines her determination to expose truths about the war, no matter the cost.

Struggling to overcome emotional trauma linked to Pearl Harbor, once-freewheeling B-25 bomber pilot Skip Masterson longs to prove he is worthy to carry on his brother’s legacy. Duty compels him to avenge the horrors his brother and friends suffered aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, but all Skip really wants is peace on a quiet porch back home. His heart has other plans, in the form of an intrepidly curious Red Cross girl who threatens his resolve to fly straight and subvert his hell-raising past.

As Allied forces wrest control of the Pacific, one island at a time, and the military taps skilled pilots for a highly-classified and unprecedented bombing mission from which Skip may not return, Hadley’s journalistic fire places her squarely in an ethical drop zone where truth harms, secrets protect, and love just might be the most harmful weapon of all.

From the sunny beaches of Australia to the lush and oppressive jungles of New Guinea, Carry a Crusading Spirit is a sexy and thrilling continuation of Clubmobile Girls, a series that champions the trailblazing role of women in WWII.

Learn more about me and my writing on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

You can purchase my debut novel through the links below.

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon CA  ~  Amazon AU  ~  Google ~ Nook  ~ Kobo

A Teaser Chapter You Say?

I am excited to report that I’m currently putting the final touches on the second novel in my Clubmobile Girls series (look for a cover reveal on Diary of an Eccentric: Writings of an Eccentric Bookworm next week and on my social media thereafter).

So while many of us are experiencing trouble summoning our creative muse or focusing generally (count me in both camps), the tedium of inputting line edits provided the perfect (and productive) distraction from the news and my worries. I received my line edits in late February just as everyday life began to shut down for many of us. Aha! Line edits: this I can focus on. With far less to do in my other lines of work than typical, I was able to turn those edits back to my editor much more quickly than might have been normally the case, and now I’m putting in the final round of line edits/copyedits.

Wonderful, right? Well, this past week, I dusted off the various components of front matter and back matter Word documents from my first novel so they would be ready to go with the manuscript to my formatter this week. Publication pages for both print and e-book, a dedication page, a quotation page, reviews/praise for the first book, the call to action (plea for reviews/ratings), the author’s historical note, the acknowledgments section . . . and then, I realized what I did not have at all: a teaser chapter for the next book in the series. Oops.

I spent a few days convinced that I could dash off at least a first scene, if not a full-fledged chapter. I know the third book will take place in India! But, no, wait, it might end up being in Burma. Okay, but if the heroine arrives in early 1943, she won’t go straight to Burma, which was then under Japanese control, so I can still show her arrival in India. Sure, that seems reasonable. So, will I open with her stepping off the ship into the steamy streets of Bombay? Wait, did the troopships dock in Bombay at all or only Karachi or Calcutta? I don’t know. The back-and-forth with myself, as I say, went on for a couple of days last week.  

Panic eventually gave way to reason. I’m not going to have a teaser chapter by next week (or even by next month when the book officially releases), and I just have to make my peace with that. Rather than hastily throwing something together that might ultimately have to be scrapped entirely, I think it makes more sense to just eliminate that stress from my writing life in these trying times.

I may write a short note to my readers explaining that I spend several months reading widely and deeply about the theater of the war in which my novel will be set before I begin any writing at all. I have read all the available Red Cross Girl memoirs from the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater, but I now will turn to exploring online oral histories that will shed more light on the experiences of the ARC staff in these remote and challenging locations. And I’ve truly only begun the reading that will bear on the hero’s story.  So . . . no teaser chapter.

As many of us are noting on this blog, this is a good time to simply be kind to yourself and to others around you. We’re all dealing with much more than the ordinary stress, so there’s no point making things worse on that score. I hope all of you are taking time to get some fresh air each day, relax as you can, and spend time with your family and friends, whether physically in your household or virtually. Take care everyone!

Learn more about me and my writing on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Remember, you can check these sites later next week to see the cover and read the sales blurb for my second novel in the series.

You can purchase my debut novel through the links below.

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon CA  ~  Amazon AU  ~  Google ~ Nook  ~ Kobo

Capturing the Memories by Eleri Grace

Well, this month’s prompt definitely presented problems. My favorite first –writing or non-writing – experience. So many possible angles!

I wondered if I could highlight a “first” relating to one of my hobbies: reading, travel, scrapbooking, or genealogy research. And if you’ve been following me here, you’ve probably noted that I like to tie my blogs into my WWII-themed author brand.

Then I remembered that I created a scrapbook of my first visit to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans in 2016 and my first WWII travel tour a few months later.  The National WWII Museum graciously allowed me the opportunity to read through their holdings from one former Red Cross Girl while I was there. All told, I spent the better part of 3 days at the museum and still had the sense that I was rushing through parts of it. If you've not visited it, I highly recommend adding it to your travel bucket list!

Their exhibits, arranged thematically around the different theaters of the war in many cases, are incredibly immersive. In the Road to Berlin exhibit, one moves from the earliest battle scenes in North Africa and Italy to the reconstructed Nissen hut from an American bomber base in England,

to the hedgerow country of Normandy, and then through the icy forested environs of the Battle of the Bulge,

and on finally through the bomb-torn rooftops and crumbling ruins of Germany in the waning months of the war in Europe.

            This photo gives you a flavor of the Road to Tokyo exhibit.

Complete with audio of jungle sounds and clips of period movies on the movie screens, this portion of the exhibit vividly evokes the war experience in the Southwest Pacific. From a scrapbooking standpoint, I enjoyed the opportunity to play with textured embellishments and texture-themed background papers in this album.

            “Masters of the Air” by Donald Miller is hands-down my favorite non-fiction work on the Eighth Air Force in WWII Europe, and I’m still thrilled that I splurged on the Miller-led tour that took us from London to the old bomber bases in East Anglia, lovingly restored to their former glory by local villagers over the last few decades. At each base, we had a chance to meet and mingle with older locals who were children during the war. Their stories were captivating, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, but always related with a sense of awe and appreciation for the American boys who took the war to Germany years before D-Day and at such enormous cost.

            This bomber base was restored over the course of nearly 20 years, and I got a weird chill when I realized that I had attended a study abroad program not more than a few miles from this site in 1989, the year the local citizens began the restoration process.

Note the photos of original art that they were able to retain in the renovation. Living history is alive and well in England – at each bomber base, scores of re-enactors populated the base.

            The 100th Bomb Group at Thorpe Abbotts had a fantastic display of photos and memorabilia from the Red Cross Girls who had served at that location. One of the curators at the American Military Cemetery in Cambridge helped me locate the grave of a Red Cross Girl who died in a plane crash in Ireland late in the war.

            I enjoyed pulling out this album and sharing some of the highlights with you. Both these trips were a memorable first for me, and though I’m years behind with some of my scrapbooking projects, at least this one made it to the top of the heap.

Learn more about me and my writing on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

You can purchase my debut novel through the links below.

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon CA  ~  Amazon AU  ~  Google ~ Nook  ~ Kobo

Stepping Outside the Comfort Zone by Eleri Grace

Sometimes the prompt for the monthly blog stumps me, and I’m forced to ruminate for a few days before settling on the best theme and angle. With this one, I immediately knew how I would approach it. You see, both my heroines and I know a bit about marching to the beat of a different drummer.

            The Red Cross recruited extraordinary and accomplished women for overseas assignments. Even though the Red Cross eventually deployed nearly 6,000 women overseas during WWII and the occupation years, they had exacting standards for potential recruits. Only one in six applicants was successful in the application and interview process. Marked not only by higher education and professional experience than most women of the era possessed, the women selected by the Red Cross also possessed some or all of the following attributes in some measure: poise, charm, good conversational skills, self-assurance, independence, ingenuity, adaptability, stamina, and creativity. Even in the early days of the war, the Red Cross knew they needed self-starters who could draw on a range of varied life experience to do unprecedented work.

The women who served as Red Cross Girls were exceptional and ahead of their time. One Red Cross Girl writing back to one of her training instructors from Europe said, “Some fellas think we’re brave, but we really don’t know enough to be scared. Some think we’d be better off at home, where a woman’s place used to be . . . about 200 years ago.” I think most of us probably find it astonishing that this 1940s woman viewed the women-as-only-homemakers model as an outdated norm. For some of these women then, the war presented another way to break free of the strictures imposed back home. Based on memoirs, many of them did go on to start or continue a successful career outside the home, whether they married or remained single. 

Their unique qualities didn’t shield them entirely from fear or from experiencing profound anxiety, stress, and war-weary despair. The same woman writing to her teacher noted: “Red Cross hasn’t done badly at all in picking personnel. Working here is what you’ve been all your life, but disciplined and worn down smooth, so that you smile when you’re dying.”

While they could request a transfer back to the United States after serving two years overseas, most of them felt a duty to continue on in their assignments. They had signed on for the duration after all, and they meant to see that through. Imagine being a young woman serving overseas near the front lines in France or Germany or on a bomber base in Guadalcanal or working on a train traversing Burma or Iran or at a cold and desolate station in Iceland. They had such courage, didn’t they?

So, I promised that I had something in common with my heroines, but I have to confess, I’m not sure I would have had the guts to do what they did. Sometimes when lying awake at night and thinking about a scene, I’m struck by the astonishing leap of faith it must have taken for them to board a troopship with destination unknown, duration unknown, dangers unknown, and even more by the courage it must have taken to stick it out.

But writing their stories is my own way of marching to the beat of a different drummer, for the industry professionals all said that WWII couldn’t sell as romance. Sure, there are WWII stories within Christian inspirational romance, and there are certainly plenty of mainstream historical fiction novels set during WWII (though the industry again says that too is glutted and out of fashion). I’m in uncharted waters to a large degree – though my novels are written with traditional romance novel beats and the expected HEA, they incorporate the serious historical research of mainstream historical fiction with a few hot and steamy interludes. Marketing has been a challenge, but reader enthusiasm tells me I’m on the right track. In any event, I’m living the maxim of writing what you love, and it is certainly making me happy.

Learn more about me and my writing on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

You can purchase my debut novel through the links below.

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon CA  ~  Amazon AU  ~  Google ~ Nook  ~ Kobo

All in Good Fun?

By Eleri Grace

Even a war didn’t stop crew and passengers from participating in a naval tradition dating back centuries: the Crossing the Line ceremony. Tradition held that as a ship approached the equator, those who had made the crossing before, trusty “shellbacks,” initiate equator-crossing virgins or “tadpoles” (I replaced the actual term used for the initiates, which has unfortunate racist connotations, with tadpoles in my novel).  

Charged with entering the domain of King Neptune without permission, tadpoles must earn a shellback card that will give them permission to freely roam the Seven Seas by surviving a series of time-honored rituals. At a riotous pageant with participants sporting outrageous costumes that is held the night before the ceremony, King Neptune and Queen Amphitrite, along with a few other members of the “royal family,” are selected by popular vote.

In the next novel in my Clubmobile Girls series, my heroine Hadley joins her fellow tadpoles in navigating through the various proscribed ordeals of the Crossing the Line ceremony. All the Red Cross Girl memoirs from women who served in the Pacific theater that I found described participation in the ceremony. It was – and still is – permissible to decline to take part in the tradition. However, Red Cross Girls are nothing if not adventuresome and fun-loving. Though I did not find any photographs depicting Red Cross Girls, nurses, WACs or other women as participants, you might like to view this restored color footage of a WWII-era Crossing the Line ceremony from aboard the USS Knox. 

National Archives

An obstacle course typically features first in the ceremony, followed by various stops leading to the court of King Neptune. The first stop is often the royal photographer, whose camera might take a picture or might unpredictably shoot dye in your face. Next up is likely to be the royal doctor who might swab your throat with hot sauce. The royal dentist might rinse your mouth with a foul concoction of eggs, beer, and fish soup or something equally horrendous. The royal barber is then apt to shampoo your hair with some foul substance bearing an odor guaranteed to linger long after you’ve earned your shellback card, or, worse, cut or shave off your hair.

At some point amidst these stops, the tadpoles reach the Court of King Neptune and are sentenced for the crime of entering his domain without permission. Punishments are often comical and theatrical: playing childish games such as Ring around the Rosie for the amusement of the court or singing the national anthem backwards.

The end of the ceremony unvaryingly involves immersion and dunking the initiates, a conclusion rife with symbolism.

Collection of Imperial War Museum (from Wikimedia Commons)

After shellback cards are issued to all the initiates, a raucous party with free-flowing alcoholic beverages typically ensues.

            Farcical yes, but many of the standard elements in the ritual themselves “cross the line” into hazing. Today most navies officially proscribe observation of a weakened version of the Crossing the Line ceremony – an attempt to keep the fun without the bullying. Some cruise lines now offer a slapstick version of the ceremony to passengers. A writer who endured the ceremony in recent years wrote an insightful account of his experience, including photographs and his discussions about the origin and purpose of the ritual with a folklore expert.

          #FunNotFun might be an apt hashtag for Crossing the Line experiences.  

Learn more about me and my writing on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

You can purchase my debut novel through the links below.

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon CA  ~  Amazon AU  ~  Google ~ Nook  ~ Kobo