I’m a sucker for wartime romances. Especially World War II romances. I’m not sure if it’s the music or all those handsome boys in uniform (or maybe it’s the fact that I know how it’s going to end) but send me back to the days of Pearl Harbor and the Stage Door Canteen, of War Bond drives and Victory Gardens, and I’m happy.
So it’s no wonder when the opportunity to write a World War II novel about a New York family much like my own I jumped at it. I could sit in front of the television with a bowl of popcorn and watch Casablanca and Sands of Iwo Jima and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and call it research.
I love being a writer!
They say you only go around once but if you’re lucky enough to tell lies for a living, that isn’t exactly true. Writers get to live many lives and live them in times and places long gone . . . or yet to be. During the months I worked on my Home Front series (SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY takes place during World War II while STRANGER IN PARADISE picks up the story in 1953 after the Korean Conflict) today’s world ceased to exist. I was back in a time when words like sacrifice and courage had meaning that resonated in ways we can barely imagine.
Can you imagine what it must have been like to kiss your son or brother or husband goodbye and not know when or if you would ever see him again? To know that years would pass before you heard his voice or saw his face? There were no long-distance phone calls, no instant messages, no Skype, no Twitter or Facebook or YouTube. Nothing but fragile pieces of air mail paper filled with words of love and longing to keep your hopes and dreams alive.
Catherine Wilson, the heroine of SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, knows exactly how it feels. She and her fiancé Doug Weaver have only their love letters to remind them of the home they hope they’ll share one day soon. Her teenaged sister Nancy has started writing to a navy penpal named Gerry and before long what started out as a patriotic gesture turns into something much more.
One day they’ll be known as The Greatest Generation, but right now they’re young men and women in love who just happen to be about to save the world.
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY and STRANGER IN PARADISE are on sale now. I hope you love them!
STRANGER IN PARADISE can be purchased in eBook format for/from:
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY can be purchased in eBook format for/from: