K. Lang-Slattery's Blog, page 15

Using Family Stories—or Not

From the very beginning, I was fascinated by the stories my uncle told of his experiences during WWII. But, as I began to write Immigrant Soldier, I wanted the book to be more than just a war story. I wanted to write about the forces, both political and personal, that changed him from a frustrated teenager into a confident man, and I wanted to show what it was like to be a refugee in the United States in the 1940s.

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Life in Nazi Europe through Historical Fiction

I have always loved historical fiction and, naturally, books that take place in Europe just before or during World War II fill my shelves. They helped me have a feel for the era, something that was invaluable as I wrote Immigrant Soldier. Here are some of my favorites, all books that depict life in Nazi-occupied Europe or in Germany itself in the 1930s and 1940s. They are all well researched and explore the issues of daily life during times of political oppression and war, often from a woman’s perspective.

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A Book in My Hand—A Baby Past Due

What a journey this has been! More than 15 years gestation and birth is just around the corner.

It has been an exciting two weeks as my editor, my designers, and I send a flurry of emails back and forth. But we have accomplished our goal. Immigrant Soldier was uploaded to the publication arm of Amazon (CreateSpace) on Friday, January 9. After that, a short wait while they review the files, then days of anticipation as I await the arrival of the proof copies of my book.

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A Very Big Man

One common memory that almost all the Ritchie Boys share is of the oversized instructor of hand-to-hand combat, Man Mountain Dean. He obviously made an impression commensurate with his size. Dean, who stood over six feet tall and weighed in excess of 300 pounds, must have seemed, to the young soldiers he instructed, a literal giant straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

I have no statistics on the average height of the Ritchie Boys, but my personal observations conclude that most are somewhere between 5’1” and 5’10”. Standing at attention on the parade ground, anticipating an order from the towering Master Sergeant to demonstrate a throat-hold on him, must have been a frightening experience. Yet all the men I have talked to remember Man Mountain Dean with fondness.

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The Only African-American Ritchie Boy

If you have ever heard a recording of William Warfield singing “Ol’ Man River,” from the musical Showboat by Jerome Kern, you will not have forgotten his deep, rich, bass-baritone voice. Warfield’s emotional rendering of this song about the hardship and despair of black laborers in the late nineteenth century makes my heart ache every time I hear it. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Warfield, the Arkansas-born son of African-American sharecroppers, was a Ritchie Boy. I immediately wanted to know how he came to be at Camp Ritchie and what he had done there.

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Crossing the T’s and Dotting the I’s

When I sent what I believed to be a clean, mistake-free copy of my manuscript to a Ritchie Boy who had promised to write me a review, I was amazed when he found not only some German language that needed correction, but a few other small errors.

I conveyed my distress to my editor, and she sent me the following discouraging reply. “We will find more errors in the PDF and more errors in the paperback proof and then cringe when we find errors in the real book. I’m such a perfectionist, it doesn’t comfort me to know that even traditional publishers who use 20 different people for editing/reading/proofing, know there is a 10% margin of error.”

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