Elizabeth Wein's Blog

Release Day for The Enigma Game in the UK!

Welcome to #TheEnigmaGame virtual launch party and giveaway!

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Published by Bloomsbury Children's Books in the UK on 14 May 2020, The Enigma Game is a World War II thriller set in the world of Code Name Verity. If you’re familiar with that world, you’ll be familiar with Jamie Beaufort-Stuart, now flying Blenheim bombers, and Ellen McEwen, working as a driver for the Royal Air Force.

But you can pick up The Enigma Game without ever having read any of my other books. This one introduces teen Louisa Adair, half Jamaican and half English, as a major new character and narrator. Louisa, Jamie, and Ellen come together on a remote airfield in Scotland in the winter of 1940-41 to do some unexpected code-breaking that allows them to remain a few steps ahead of the enemy – but that enemy is closing in on them.

Where:

Here on my blog, crossposted on my blog at Dreamwidth (you can make comments there), on Twitter (@ewein2412), on Facebook (Elizabeth Wein), and on Instagram (ewein2412) – but also at my front and back gates! I have a few signed copies to give away, so if you’re on your daily walk in Perth, stop by and pick one up. I’ve made bookmarks, too. Take a selfie and post it to show you’ve gone to a book launch today!

      

 

From 7- 7.30 pm BST I'll be discussing the book with Sara Barnard on Twitter to celebrate the launch. Join us there!

Guests of Honour

Meet some of the real life airmen and women who inspired The Enigma Game!

The Caribbean women who served in World War II

Wonderful Pathe footage of aircrew and planes at a Bristol Blenheim bomber station in 1940. It really gets to me how young these airmen are.

Lilian Bader, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force 

Alastair Panton, Blenheim bomber pilot

Refreshments

Contraband butter from the Isle of Man, a pint of heavy if you’re of age (a wee dram of whisky will cost you two and six), spam sandwiches, or ersatz coffee. Louisa has decided not to drink any more coffee till the war is over or she goes back to Jamaica, whichever comes first.

You might also enjoy a PIMMS, which is what Jamie's flight section is named after.

Entertainment

Here I am reading a sneak peek from The Enigma Game! Thanks to Porter Square Books in Boston, Massachusetts, for originally publishing this video.

We're also running a blog tour all through this week and next. Feel free to stop by!

Here are links to some of my guest posts:

'Louisa Adair Takes to the Sky'

'Flying & Factories: Women & War'

I've also got an interview about The Enigma Game posted at School Zone on Readingzone.com.

Music is so important to Louisa – and to the airmen she plays for sometimes. Here are a few of the dance tunes they listen to:

'Moonglow' – Cab Calloway

'Jitterbug' – Cab Calloway

And Mendelssohn's 'Hebrides Overture' – it’s in the book trailer (above), too. It’s an orchestral piece, but I chose this amazing piano (8-hands) version because Felix Baer, the German pilot in The Enigma Game, plays it on the piano and makes Louisa cry.

'Ave Maria' – Music by Bach and Gounod. Johanna von Arnim is the stage name of the old woman Louisa cares for, and this 'Ave Maria' is her first record. I couldn’t find a recording of a mezzo soprano in her mid-50s made in about 1915, so I went for Maria Callas.

And of course, there's 'The Spitfire Song'!

Oh – and if you're looking for entertainment - how about a ride in a Bristol Blenheim bomber?

Ready to leave?

If you’re heading out, here are some virtual museum exhibits that might interest you:

The Montrose Air Station Heritage Centre:  Not far from the imaginary RAF Windyedge, RAF Montrose in Scotland was Britain’s first military aerodrome, opening in 1913 for the use of the Royal Flying Corps.

Pilots of the Caribbean: Volunteers of African Heritage in the Royal Air Force

Here’s the actual plane that inspired the German defectors in The Enigma Game, among the RAF Museum’s online collection.

And while you’re at it, take a virtual visit to the pub and the airbase that helped me visualize the setting for The Enigma Game: The Blue Bell Inn, Tattershall, Lincolnshire, England. (If you scroll through the picture gallery, you’ll find shots of the airmen’s coins stuck in the pub beams.)

Giveaway!

If you can’t stop by my back gate, I’ll post out three signed copies (international as long as your postal service is currently receiving mail from the UK – please do check if you’re not sure). To enter, please comment here on my Dreamwidth blog and let me know why you’re looking forward to The Enigma Game.

Mission:

And finally, here’s your War Work. Sometime in the next week, if you’re interested and able, order a book from your local bookstore or buy one on line. Then Tweet, Facebook, Instagram, comment on Goodreads, or blog about your purchase, using the tag #TheEnigmaGame – and ask your friends to stop by here. 

From your couch to the front lines, spread the word about the giveaway, and above all, enjoy!

You can buy The Enigma Game here.

Thanks for stopping by - hope you enjoyed the party - and that you enjoy the book!

Novel: The Enigma Game

First time in Asia

It’s now two months since my return from China, and how proud my mother would have been that I went there on my own. I thought of her so much, and her obsession with Chinese culture and communism – I wonder what she would have thought of the changes that have come to China, and which it has brought to the world, in the forty years since her death.

I went because I was invited to Shanghai to visit as Author in Residence at the Concordia International School, and after nearly a year of planning with librarian Jennifer Chapman, we finally managed to make it happen. We had two or three discussions and workshops every day for a week, as well as sitting in on the students’ after school writing club, where it was a real challenge for me to have to produce some flash fiction (my latest work-in-progress being over 100,000 words at the moment…). We talked about anime and inspiration and writer’s block and Buck Rogers, and we took selfies. My idea of a good time!

I loved the chance to talk to these talented and multilingual readers – mostly Chinese, but all speaking fluent American-accented English. The adult educators casually tossed around a term coined in the 1950s but which was never applied to me while I was growing up: TCK, or Third Culture Kid.


The BBC calls them “citizens of everywhere and nowhere.” Wikipedia defines them as “people raised in a culture other than their parents' or the culture of the country named on their passport (where they are legally considered native) for a significant part of their early development years.” Not only does this define ME (I spoke fluent Jamaican patois when I was eight), but it applies to my own Scottish-raised British/American children with their mid-Atlantic accents. And – revelation! – it is the single trait shared by almost all my fictional characters, from Telemakos to Julie to Rose to Em and Teo. So that was a surprising and wonderful connection I was able to make with a group of young people I didn’t expect to have anything in common with.

But of course there was plenty to connect with, because we are all writers and readers engaged with the world. (Most unexpected question from a Chinese 7th grader: “What is your opinion on Brexit?”) I visited with 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th graders in English and Humanities. We talked a LOT about Ravensbrück, as the students were getting ready to do projects on the Holocaust. I loved how interested, appreciative and attentive everybody was as I showed off my World War II artefacts and encouraged people to make up stories about them. At one point, when the students seemed to be chattering during a period when they were supposed to be doing individual writing projects, it turned out that they were helping each other with their English spelling.

I borrowed a bicycle from my hotel and rode to the school and back each day. I had a foot massage in a local massage parlour, and was treated to a meal out in the Former French Concession neighbourhood by Jennifer and the Concordia library staff. On the way home in the dark, the huge city was alight – the futuristic towers of Pudong glowed and sparkled with changing colours like fireworks.






I also fit in a visit to the Aurora Museum, full of two thousand years’ worth of blue-and-white porcelain and jade, and a trip to a posh supermarket – the Chinese equivalent of Waitrose, perhaps? I bought noodles and tea and a lot of mysterious snack food, most of which I couldn’t tell from the wrapper whether it was candy or beef jerky. I bought some stuff just because it was so pretty.



 

The highlight of my time as a tourist in Shanghai was wandering around the Bund and the Old Town on my own – amazed by the variety of life as people hung washing on telephone wires, set up impromptu barber shops on the street, visited with friends.












I found my way into the Yu Yuan Gardens, hidden behind high walls in the middle of a furiously busy shopping district – five hundred years old and focused on Feng Shui, meaning wind and water.








Pagoda after pagoda, rocky little stairways and waterfalls, covered wooden bridges and stone bridges (zigzagged because evil spirits travel in straight lines), huge koi in all the pools, tiny banzai cherry trees blossoming everywhere, birds singing in the mature trees, secret nooks and crannies, benches, mirrors, windows, and a grove of “metasequoias” or “dawn redwood” trees, deciduous conifers which date to 60 million years ago and were thought to be extinct until someone found one growing obscurely in 1941.




Every time I thought I’d finished I’d go through another tunnel or archway or staircase or bridge and there would be a whole new section of the garden that I hadn’t seen before.

And that is a good metaphor for the whole visit, really. Shanghai is so huge (23 million people) and China is even huger, and the tiny little 625-square-kilometre sample that I saw scarcely scratches at the surface – it’s like looking at the moon of someone’s pinkie fingernail and counting that as meeting the person whose hand it is part of. YOU HAVEN’T EVEN SEEN THE WHOLE FINGERNAIL.

So – many, many thanks to Jennifer Chapman, and to the Concordia International School and the wonderful students and faculty there – you made me so welcome and shared such a busy, exciting week with me!

When Jennifer dropped me off at the airport, we realized we didn't have a picture of the two of us together! So we took a selfie. XD




Tourist tip: Fancy chopsticks make the BEST souvenir present ever. Back in Scotland, they are exotic and unusual and thoughtful, and they are really easy to pack.

 

Remembrance

“I loved yesterday,” said Sara on 12 November, and she was talking about the Remembrance Day Service at Dunkeld Cathedral on 11 November 2018. In the UK, the Armistice is traditionally marked on the 11th, as it used to be in the USA – it is not a holiday. At 11 a.m. during the normal workday, whatever the day of the week, a two-minute silence is held nationally to remember the Armistice that ended World War I, and to remember those who served throughout the past century. There is a worship service held on the Sunday closest to the 11th, known as Remembrance Sunday.

Coincidentally, this year Remembrance Sunday fell on the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Armistice, and it was marked nationwide and throughout Europe. (The ceremony under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, with world leaders gathered side by side, is AMAZING. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRFRsX-KhWE)

Because it was such a special moment in 1918 when the church bells in the UK rang out to mark the end of the war, there was an effort to ring bells wherever possible, and that was where we came into things. We rang “half-muffled” before the service at Dunkeld (muffles on the clappers cause every other stroke to sound quietly, as an echo, a symbol of mourning), and with the bells open after the service (the muffles off, the bells in full voice, ringing for life and joy).

I am sure there is no place I would rather have been than Dunkeld Cathedral in Scotland on this particular day. For the service, the choir started off singing “They Shall Not Grow Old” and then a piper began “The Lament,” left the church, and as the sound of the pipes faded into the distance, it was eleven o’clock, a hundred years on from 1918. Complete silence in the old cathedral for the customary two minutes, eleven o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a hundred years to the day and minute that the guns stopped.

It made me sad – makes me sad – (“Don’t say it!” Sara exclaimed, when I began to tell her this. “Of course twenty years later –”) Of course it is nearly twenty years since I first went to a Remembrance service at Dunkeld, in Scotland, and the veterans are all gone.

They were eighty and ninety when I first came here and now they are gone.

But it was a lovely service. They structured it around readings of stories by local people about local boys who were killed in the war – very focused on the First World War. Someone’s grandfather, someone’s father. A former headmaster read aloud the Headmaster of Breadalbane Academy’s address from 1921 on the dedication of a memorial plaque to former pupils. “Some day these will just be names, but to me they are individuals, young boys I knew.” One woman had inherited a box of letters from her grandfather, killed before his child (her parent) was born, and his fiddle, which he’d taken along with him to the battlefields of France. She’d had the fiddle restored, and a local musician had written a piece for her grandfather and played it on that fiddle there in the service.

And it was incredible. Because a musical instrument is a voice, not just an object that spoke in the past, but that spoke for someone - and still speaks. This fiddle was that dead soldier’s voice. It was there in the trenches and it is here now and it spoke there and it speaks here.

The tune was like a traditional folk tune – a Strathspey – and it was just beautiful.

When it was done, nobody knew what to do. There was a ripple of scattered applause. It quieted down. Then behind us, someone began to clap loudly and everyone joined in.

After the service, we bell ringers rang a quarter peal of Plain Bob Doubles, and then we all had lunch together. And in the evening we watched Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, in which original footage from the trenches has been colorized and speed-corrected – and to complete the documentary, there is a voice-over soundtrack of actual veterans, recorded some years ago when they were alive as old men. The immediate urgency of the restored and enhanced film was stunning.

Here's the list of ringing events connected with the Armistice Centenary - quite impressive:
https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/event.php?id=9128


And scroll down here for a map showing ringing-related events throughout the UK:
https://armistice100.org.uk/events/

Amphibious

Tim had an invitation from his instrument-flying instructor, Stewart Houston, to “mount in his hydroplane” (as Fitzgerald puts it in The Great Gatsby), and asked me if I wanted to come along.

Well, of course I wanted to come along. But throughout the weeks of scheduling, I did not really take on board that I was going to be the one doing most of the flying. This became abundantly clear when we got to the airport and Stewart made Tim pump out the bilgewater in the floats while I was told to familiarize myself with the instrument panel.

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This lovely jumped-up Cessna 172 – registration G-DRAM (LOL), complete with variable-pitch propeller and retractable amphibious landing gear, doesn’t actually belong to Stewart. But he’s one of about half a dozen licensed seaplane instructors in the UK and has an arrangement with the owner. And you know… there really isn’t a better way to spend a sparkling May afternoon in Scotland than practising your water landings on a couple of remote lochs in Ayrshire.

Prestwick, where G-DRAM is based, was from 1941 the Eastern Terminus of the North Atlantic Ferry Route during World War II. I have a collection of fairly amazing (and random) personal associations with this airfield. In addition to setting off on commercial flights to Paris and Oslo and Malta from Prestwick, Tim and I once had to use it as our diversion airfield when cloud prevented our small plane, packed with small children, from reaching our planned destination on the Isle of Mull. On that occasion we landed after a vintage Lockhead Super Constellation which just happened to be finishing up an incredible transatlantic journey at the exact moment of our arrival. (I remember the ATC dude making a once-in-a-lifetime radio call to us with great enthusiasm, “You’re number 2 after the Constellation.” And we were like… What on earth does he mean? OMG! IT REALLY IS A CONSTELLATION!)

 

I also once made a solo flight from Perth to Prestwick in a Cessna-152, landing here on my cross-country qualifying exam for my pilot’s license. That gave me a great talking point for reminiscing with my uncle’s Uncle John, a D-Day transport pilot who lived to the ripe age of 100 – he, too, had once landed at Prestwick. His flight was a bit more dramatic than mine, having crossed the war-torn Atlantic, and been greeted in the air by an escort of Spitfires when he arrived!

So this month I got to take off from Prestwick in an amphibious plane with a variable-pitch propeller. These technicalities are in fact all dauntingly out of my league. But Stewart did most of the monitoring and let me concentrate almost entirely on learning how to take-off and land on water.

Which I did! We flew (I FLEW) first to Loch Doon, and then to Loch Bradan, over some lumps of rock in between. Both the day and the scenery were incredibly beautiful. We had to (I had to) do a lot of flying very low over the lumps of rock, to which I was paying more attention than to the beauty.

(The little attol in the foreground is the former site of the castle in the background, which was moved when they flooded the glen with a reservoir in the 1930s)

I made five water landings in all. I don’t feel I can write about it adequately – it is a very physical thing, feeling when the plane is “porpoising” on the water and pulling back the controls a little to ease that off – the release you feel in the split second you become airborne.

After we landed on the second loch, we had a go at “sailing” – with the engine off – using the tailplane as a surface to catch the wind.

Then Tim and I swapped places (he’d been in the back seat as ballast), which meant climbing out on the floats in the middle of the loch, which was jolly good fun. Then Tim also got to have a go at taking off and landing on water.

Finally, Tim flew us back to Prestwick and I was very glad it wasn’t me doing the runway landing. There is no give in the undercarriage and the plane is so nose-high on the floats that it’s difficult to judge the flare as you touch down. But we made it in one piece.

You know what is awesome about seaplanes? It combines flying with messing about in boats!

(The blue line is my actual flight track from the surface of the water on Loch Doon to the surface of the water on Loch Bradan)

CommuniTEEN in Portage, Michigan

Today I ground up the last of my Kalamazoo Coffee Company peaberry that was part of the Portage Library bag stuffed full of gifts which was waiting for me on my bed when I arrived in Michigan exactly four weeks ago, reminding me that I really ought to write a blog post about my wonderful visit there before it becomes ancient history!


When Olivia Pennebaker, the Teen Services Librarian at the Portage District Library in Michigan, got in touch with me a year ago about using Code Name Verity as their 2018 CommuniTEEN Read title, I couldn't have been more delighted. I'd just come back from a week discussing Rose Under Fire as Central Pennsylvania's chosen One Book, One Community read, and I'd pretty much decided that there is nothing more satisfying in life than talking about your own story with a bunch of excited people who have read your book and want to bombard you with questions.


The annual Portage CommuniTEEN Read program is relatively new; I was only their third speaker. Essentially, it is a collaboration between the Portage District Library, Portage Central and Portage Northern High Schools, and Bookbug Bookstore in Kalamazoo. The high school students read a chosen title together, discuss it with each other and with their families, and finally get to meet and talk to the author. Some readers went a lot further than this and used Code Name Verity in their written English projects, or to inspire sculpted artwork, and even as a theme for their sewing and knitting clubs (World War II inspired skirts and Queenie's scarf!).


I got to engage with the students and community even before I got to Michigan, with a Skype call to a packed auditorium at Portage Central High School, in addition to phone and email interviews with students and a local radio station (those interviews are online  and  and ). But the real fun started when, for three days in March 2018, I got to visit Portage in person.

My visit began with another interview, this time with Midwest Electric, one of the CommuniTEEN sponsors, for their company newsletter. We met up at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo and I seem to recall talking a lot about flying bombs - put it down to jet lag! At last I got to meet Olivia Pennebaker and her colleagues Sara Brown and Jeanna Walker, the Media Specialists at Portage Central and Portage Northern, and when the interview was over we all went together for a tour of the Air Zoo - the fantastic air museum that had agreed to let us host a public event related to Code Name Verity in the same week.

 

Ready for take-off in a Ford Trimotor. With Olivia Pennebaker, Jeanna Walker, and Sara Brown.

Afterward I got to meet the CommuniTEEN Committee in a very pleasant and informal meal at OneWell, a local brewpub. Considering that it was pretty much snowing half-heartedly the whole time I was in Michigan, the warmth of my welcome by everyone I met definitely made up for the weather.

Part of a welcome banner from Portage Northern High School!

Wednesday, March 14, was the day of the nationwide school walkout in memory of the Parkland shooting victims and in support of stricter gun control across the USA. I live in Europe and write freelance - what are the chances of me working as an educator in an American school on this day of all days? I was so happy and proud to be able to join the Portage Northern students in their own rally and was moved to tears by their eloquent speeches. We went straight from that walkout into the auditorium for my first CommuniTEEN presentation, and I had to start off by telling the students how inspiring they all were - and apologizing for dumping this burden on their generation. No, when I was in high school, I did not have to hide in the toilets because I was scared I'd be shot at a pep rally. WHY SHOULD THEY????

Then we talked about Code Name Verity and fighting Nazis. And how fiction and history are SO. VERY. RELEVANT to our own lives.

With students from Portage Northern High School

Each of my school visits consisted of a speech to an auditorium full of kids, and then a more intimate discussion with a smaller group. At Portage Northern, this was an International Baccalaureate English class who'd read Code Name Verity instead of Anna Karenina! I was EXTREMELY FLATTERED to be considered a worthy substitute for Tolstoy.

The evening event at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo was wonderful. There was an audience of close to 200 people, a really mixed group of ages including teens and seniors - as well as a former commercial pilot and a Penn graduate who'd studied with MacEdward Leach (Penn folklorists take note!). There were even a few kids who'd already heard me speak earlier that day, coming back for more! I had to stand in the shadow of a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (which can fly from London to New York in an hour and a half) to give my talk, which was kind of cool. Bookbug was there selling Code Name Verity and - appropriately - Taking Aim, a collection of stories about teens and guns edited by Michael Cart, in which I have a short story. And there was A.MAZ.ING. artwork on display by the students who'd done their sculpting projects on Code Name Verity.

"Fly the Plane, Maddie," by Matthea Lenardson of Portage Central High School

"Code Set from World War II" by Ally Griffin of Portage Central High School. It is life size - all in clay! (a "wireless set in a smooth and pleasing case")

"Kiss Me, Hardy" by Tana Neeb, Portage Central High School

On Thursday, I visited Portage Central. Here, I did another interview, this time with Karen Woodworth for K-12 360, a program reporting on local schools. (You can see my part in it here.) After being made welcome and presenting to the students there - in large and small groups - the visit finished with a prolonged, relaxed and happy lunch in the staffroom with organizers, educators, and librarians.

I really hated for the visit to come to an end! But the good news was that now I got to spend the weekend in Washington DC with family and with my friend Amanda, to whom Code Name Verity is dedicated. We visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and went to Great Falls, where we attempted to recreate this picture we found on the information board at the scenic outlook. Notwithstanding our photographer didn't quite get what we were trying to do and that the season is all wrong, at least we are all wearing cool hats.

"Two women sit on rocks overlooking the Great Falls of the Potomac circa 1920" and 2018

As I said in one of those interviews - I am so lucky to be able to have a job that I love.

A Pearl Thief Tour by Rail

Because The Pearl Thief made its debut in the middle of exams last May, we’d postponed doing a school tour in the UK until September, and I’ve just returned from a sweeping visit of Northeast England and the Midlands – three days, three cities, six schools, and around about 1500 teen readers. Most of the travel was by train, which is one of the things that is so awesome about living in the UK. I walked to the station in Perth, changed trains in Edinburgh and Newcastle, and arrived in Sunderland four hours later. VERY CIVILIZED IF YOU ASK ME.

Lizz Skelly, Bloomsbury’s lovely Children’s Publicity Manager, met me at our hotel on the Sunderland seafront, where we arrived in the midst of a howling gale. But it was bright and cloudless over the North Sea the next morning – I had exactly fifteen minutes on the beach before we headed to our first school! I need to share this picture of ACTUAL DOG FOOTPRINTS in the sand – dogs clearly have so much more fun than humans.

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But humans know how to have fun, too. At St. Anthony’s Girls’ Catholic Academy we met Mariana Mouzinho, a dynamo of a bookseller representing Blackwells and extremely knowledgeable about the area schools. (Our taxi driver told us that Sunderland is bigger than Newcastle, and Mariana is responsible for both in terms of school book sales, so that’s saying something.) At St. Anthony’s we were welcomed by the school librarian Marguerite Jackson – I do enjoy a chance to encourage a roomful of girls to write and fly!

Mariana’s amazing book set-up at St. Anthony’s, Sunderland

At Thorp Academy in Ryton, we had a school dinner (quite a good one!) with our host, the Learning Resource Centre Manager, Beth Khalil. Then I got to entertain and be entertained by a big group of very enthusiastic Year 7s and a few Year 8s. Here, one student asked me if I’d ever been pearl fishing myself. I haven’t, so I told Hilary McKay’s pearl fishing story instead:

:: When i was little, 5 or 6, my dad showed me a pearl in a mussel he fished out of the river.  It was about __ that big and pink.

            Hilary McKay (@hilary_mckay), March 10, 2017

 

:: NO WAY. SO COOL.

            Elizabeth Wein (@EWein2412), March 10, 2017

 

:: I dropped it in the long grass of the river bank.  And we didn't look for another ever because we both agreed it was too cruel.

            Hilary McKay (@hilary_mckay), March 10, 2017

 

:: My poor dad, he used to get up very early to go fishing & I used to think how awful, so lonely & early, & insist on going too...

           Hilary McKay (@hilary_mckay), March 10, 2017

 

 

Thank you, Hilary!

Thorp Academy Year 7s asking questions

Matthew, Year 8 at Thorp Academy, waited patiently for the queue to die down so he could get this picture with me. :D

Lizz and Mariana and I parted ways at the Newcastle rail station – Mariana on her way home, Lizz back to London and me on to Leeds. The taxi driver and I learned something from each other. I told him how I learned random facts from books, and used as an example the origin of the road name “Green Lane” – how it turned up in Dodie Smith’s The New Moon With the Old and turned out to be an old cross-country byway from village to village, now preserved only in the name – and the cabbie said that he thought it must be the origin of a sport he’d just found out about called “green-laning,” where you drive all-terrain vehicles off-road. (He was a great guy. He explained that he likes his reading short and sweet. No time for hooptedoodle.) (Actually, it was my use of the term “hooptedoodle” – which I believe was coined by John Steinbeck, for poetic filler in your text – that made the cabbie leap into the conversation.)

On Wednesday morning I was collected from my hotel by Debbie Moody, the Youth Librarian at the Leeds Central Library, who took me to the Roundhay School. There we were welcomed by Nazia Ansari and the librarian Emily Corley. They’d put together a fantastic display of my books and even presented me with a bunch of flowers for my efforts! The students I spoke to here were mostly Year 7s, a wonderfully attentive and lively group. Rory O’Connor of Orinoco Books gamely provided the book sales for the day’s visits.

Roundhay readers

If I remember one thing from this trip ten years from now, I hope it is the Roundhay student who was too shy to speak to me himself – I had to get him to whisper his comment to his friend who spoke aloud for him. I’d asked if the kids had any experience with Travellers or of living without a fixed home. This boy turned out to have travelled to the UK from Syria.

When I heard this, I said, “WHOA. So I guess you know something about difficulty and living on the road – you must be very – ”

I paused, struggling for an appropriate, inadequate word, and the kid from Syria supplied: “Unstoppable!”

And I said, “YEAH! UNSTOPPABLE! That is exactly the right word. Keep on going!”

What an amazing, wonderful thing it is that he is sitting in class, in school uniform, in Leeds. The absolute BEST of Britain. And I got to meet him.

Flowers from Roundhay

Debbie took me to lunch in a little café in Otley, West Yorkshire, before our next school, which was Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley. This was a group of Year 9 students. The school has the distinction of having the best A-Level results in the Leeds area. Smart kids!

Speaking to Year 9s at Prince Henry's Grammar School, Otley

Ruth Wyss, the librarian there, enjoyed the coincidence of spotting a Spitfire – the kind with four wheels, not two wings – after one of the students asked me what my favourite World War II aircraft was and I’d waxed lyrical about the iconic beauty of Spitfires.

The kind with four wheels - wouldn't mind flying one of these, either!

So then I caught the train to Birmingham, where I spent the night, and after fighting our way through the commuter traffic the next morning, met up with Phyllis Gaunt of the Solihull Group of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups. Phyllis was my guide and bookseller for the day, which we started by meeting Eileen Clitherow of the Lode Heath School. There, I spoke to two groups of Year 9 students in a couple of all-too-brief presentations, since there were too many students to bring together in a single session. Lode Heath also kindly provided us with sandwiches before we moved on, in a downpour as ferociously torrential as the one I’d started the week with in Sunderland.

Our final school of the trip was in Chelmsley Wood. Vera Gardner, the incredibly vibrant Learning Resources Manager at John Henry Newman Catholic College, welcomed us to her fantastic library and then I spoke to a group of about 300 Year 7s – among whom, for the first time, were half a dozen or so students who actually identified as Travellers. I was really delighted to hear that none of them felt any kind of social pressure because of this.

I got to meet a specially selected group of Year 9s afterward, and drink many cups of tea, and John Henry Newman even blogged about the event themselves.

With Year 9s at John Henry Newman in Chelmsley Wood

And then Phyllis dropped me at Birmingham Airport, the only leg of the whole trip not made by public ground transport, which I think is kind of cool.

We flew along the west coast the whole way from Merseyside and Manchester to the Clyde before turning east to Edinburgh, through a clear sky and a glorious glowing sunset, and I knew where I was the whole time, which I also think is kind of cool.

“NOW THAT THINGS ARE BACK TO NORMAL, I CAN GET SOME REAL WORK DONE.”

-    Harriet (Welsch, not Vane)

(Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy)

Novel: The Pearl Thief

Author Namedropping

SCOTLAND seems to be a hot tourist spot for writers on vacation this summer, and I am kind of stunned and flattered at the luminaries who have purposefully put “Connect with E Wein” on their itineraries. Or maybe the word is leaking out that I am an excellent tour guide, having had previous experience as the “Infomistress” at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire over a quarter of a century ago (I wish I had paid more attention to the rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots that was the theme that summer).

ANYWAY, here’s who’s come to see me in the space of two months:

Kim Brubaker Bradley, Newbery Honor winning author of The War that Saved My Life was here at the end of May – her husband and son were golfing at Gleneagles, so I whisked Kim and her daughter Katie away for a single delightful morning to Stirling Castle. It was Kim’s desire to see the reconstruction of the Unicorn Tapestries that were made there and now hang there in the restored state rooms. We also had tea and cake in the Stirling Castle café. Much discussion of current projects occurred, and Katie was gracious in putting up with the Writers’ Craft stuff.

Then in June I had a much-anticipated and all too brief visit from Ellen Kushner - of Tremontaine & Riverside fame - and Delia Sherman, most recently the author of The Evil Wizard Smallbone, both of them old friends and mentors in many ways. Ellen and Delia, who had a bit more leisure time than Kim, got a proper afternoon cream tea at the Gloagburn Farm Shop and then a tour of Huntingtower Castle (both just outside Perth) - Sara came along for the authorly banter. And before they took the train back to Glasgow, they got served an actual evening meal by yours truly IN MY OWN HOUSE, something of a wonder, and in addition to catching a glimpse of the elusive Tim and Mark, they even got to meet my father-in-law! And they left a souvenir pencil from their 20th anniversary party, which I did not discover until this week. I very stupidly did not think to give them the Francis Crawford Tour of Perthshire (it was pouring), though we did whiz past John Buchan’s birthplace in the car.

In July, I spent most of a day with rising star (or maybe just plain old STAR) Emily Kate Johnston who’s probably most famous for her Star Wars young adult novel Ahsoka but is most recently the author of That Inevitable Victorian Thing and writes something ridiculous like 10,000 words a DAY. SHE got whisked away for lunch at the Winter Garden of the Crieff Hydro, then a tour of Drummond Castle Gardens (where they were selling small but perfectly formed fruit from the walled garden hothouse, including grapes off a vine that is certainly 100 years old), and then a trip to the wonderful Innerpeffray Library, c. 1680 and appearing in The Pearl Thief as “Inverfearnie,” which is currently my Favorite Place In Perthshire. Sara and Mark joined us for our final tour venue of the day, Elcho Castle. All this within 20 miles of home - we never left Perthshire.

And finally, last week I had dinner in Edinburgh with Steve Sheinkin and his family – partner Rachel and their two young children. Steve’s awards and honors for non-fiction are too numerous to mention here (his latest book is Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team) and I do kind of feel like I am in the presence of genius when I’m around him – modest, friendly, dedicated genius. We ate at a restaurant on the Royal Mile, walked up and down a ton of stairs and closes, and rode the Ferris Wheel in Prince’s Street Gardens. Rachel filmed us as Steve interviewed me for his occasional “Walking and Talking” feature on School Library Journal’s Fuse #8 Production blog. Ok, that was really hard work because I was JUST SO SELF-CONSCIOUS and in awe of Steve and his many talents and also I was trying to do my Edinburgh Tour Guide thing AND not be boring to the kids. I hope he pulls it off because I reckon that being made into a comic is true immortality.

A feature of these visits was the children in attendance – plus or minus theirs or mine. Coincidentally, none of the Author Children ever managed to meet each other. Everyone will have to come back.

The Pearl Thief Comes to Perth

My latest YA novel, The Pearl Thief, was released in the USA on 2 May by Disney Hyperion and in the UK on 4 May by Bloomsbury. To celebrate the UK release, we had a belated launch so close to home that we were able to walk to the venue. Mark and our neighbour Betty came along with me and Helen – my college roommate to whom the book is dedicated, who’d travelled up from London for one night so she could be there – it was a gorgeous evening for walking. Tim joined us when he got home from work. (Poor old Sara the film student was stuck in Salisbury.)

Helen & E Wein

The event was held in the Perth Museum. The Pearl Thief, a mystery and a coming of age novel featuring the title character from Code Name Verity, is set in rural Perthshire, and it felt most appropriate to connect the living and real local heritage to the fictional cultural landscape of the book. There was a little reception gearing up when we arrived at the museum – Lizz Skelly and Charlotte Armstrong from Bloomsbury Kids’ had set everything up ahead of time with cooperation from the museum and Waterstones. At this point a ton of people I knew began to arrive – other writers, SCBWI folks, my book group from Perth, friends and neighbours, bell ringers – and Jess Smith, my co-star.

Left to right - a true assortment of guests: Alex Nye (author), Bess (student & reader) & her mum Lara Haggerty (Keeper of Books at Innerpeffray Library), Joan Taylor (Secretary for Friends of Innerpeffray and Mark & Sara's voice teacher), me, Gavin Lindsay (Perth & Kinross Heritage Trust), Lizz Skelly (Marketing, Bloomsbury), and Jess Smith (author & Traveller)!

For the launch, we’d dreamed up a panel event framed as a conversation between me and Jess, whose many books and whose background as a Scottish Traveller had proved invaluable to me in the creation of The Pearl Thief. Held in the museum’s lecture hall, the event was moderated by Gavin Lindsay of the Perth & Kinross Heritage Trust, whom I’d met as a result of volunteering at the Moredun Top hill fort dig in September 2016. Jess and I had spent literally hours on the phone last year, but we’d never met in person, so this conversation in front of an audience filled with our friends and family was the first time we’d ever spoken face to face! We had complementary slide presentations – Jess’s showed photographs of Travellers in the past, and mine showed contemporary Perthshire landmarks and vistas. The soundtrack to Jess’s images was her poem “Scotia’s Bairn,” a lyrical tribute to a Traveller childhood in its difficulty and its beauty. We talked about history, and landscape, and the difference between writing fiction and non-fiction. Jess spoke of the prejudice she’d been subjected to as a child, and to which Travellers today are still subjected.

The conversation was thrown open to the audience toward the end to invite questions, and I was struck by the comment made by a cousin of Jess’s, about how the cultural legacy of your heritage can affect you even when you aren’t raised in the traditional circumstances or land of your ancestors.

Afterwards Jess and I both signed our books and were given many floral tributes from well-wishers and from Bloomsbury – I feel obliged to single out fellow writer and SCBWI member Sheila Averbuch. Not only did she grow her bouquet in her own garden, but she has now been shortlisted for Scotland’s Gardener of the Year! She included the lilacs specifically with Rose’s VE-Day lilacs from Rose Under Fire in mind. Sheila, incidentally, wrote a very thoughtful blog post of her own after the event, bringing together threads from her recent reading and themes that came up during my discussion with Jess.

Sheila's flowers

The thing about the launch that really, really appealed to me in a million different ways was how self-referential to The Pearl Thief it was – often in ways I wasn’t expecting. Gavin, who’d just begun reading the book, told me in such a deadpan voice that he’d driven over from Brig O’Fearn that I almost didn’t catch that he was talking about a place I'd made up, having so accustomed my own ear to the place names of my imagination (the real village is called Bridge of Earn). Through a series of coincidences, one of the guests who came along was Lara Haggerty, the Keeper of the Innerpeffray Library – the oldest free lending library in Scotland (circa 1680) – and the one on which I based the imaginary Inverfearnie Library of the novel. (Also, coincidentally, Lara featured in one of my slides). And, in another complete coincidence, the Carpow Bronze Age log boat – on which the significant log boat of The Pearl Thief is based – had returned to the Perth museum for the first time in five years, where it is now on permanent display – Jess and I posed for many pictures in front of it!

E Wein, Gavin & Jess with the Carpow Bronze Age log boat

I am so grateful to Bloomsbury, the Perth Museum, Waterstone’s Perth, the Perth & Kinross Heritage Trust, Jess and Gavin and Lizz and Charlotte for pulling it all together – to Helen and everyone else who came to enjoy the buzz and the banter – and to Debby Harris and Elizabeth Kerner Ewing for wearing their pearls.

I really couldn’t have dreamed up anything more appropriate if I’d been 15 years old again and wishfully imagining my future as a Scottish author.

The Pearl Thief – 4 Days, 4 Schools, 4 Cities

I am incredibly lucky to have Disney Hyperion as a publisher. Someone once described them as giving you the attention and care of a small publisher – backed up by the juggernaut that is Disney Publishing Worldwide. (I use this as an excuse for my love of Disney animated films and The Lion King stage play: “Disney owns me!”) One of the ways they continue to support me is that they’ve sent me on tour during the launch week for each of my last three books.

The Pearl Thief came out on Tuesday 2 May 2017, and for the rest of that week I did a whirlwind sweep across half the USA – starting in Washington, DC, taking in the suburbs of Boston and Chicago, and ending in Austin, Texas, on Friday 5 May 2017.

The wonderful bookstore Politics & Prose in Washington was the starting point for this tour. They have hosted me before, and this time indulged me in serving up birthday cake for my aunt Susan during a book signing. When I came in and introduced myself to the staff, the first thing they said to me was, “Your college roommate’s parents are coming!” I said, “You know The Pearl Thief is dedicated to my college roommate!” and they said, “We know! Her parents are so proud!” Fortunately Betsy and Ron Sanders arrived a little early so I was able to chat with them (Helen, who lives in London and wasn’t able to be there in person, had called them that morning to encourage them to go)!

And there was a mother/daughter team who’d just finished listening to Code Name Verity in the car that day. The girl was 13. Probably the greatest pleasure I get out of these visits is discovering people who share my books – and in meeting young people who love them. Encounters with 12 and 13-year-olds who’d read and enjoyed Code Name Verity turned out to be a hallmark of this trip.

Tuesday was a marathon, with a flight from Washington to Boston at 6 a.m., two school visits in the Wellesley area courtesy of Wellesley Books, and then a flight from Boston to Chicago at 6.10 p.m. But it was well worth the effort – talking to a group of middle school English and history students at Nashoba Regional High School in Bolton MA about women’s roles in World War II and the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück, and then addressing a large group of 7th and 8th graders at Wilson Middle School in Natick MA.

Nashoba Regional High School students

Some of the Wilson 7th graders had read and worked through Code Name Verity together and were anxious to ask questions about it – “Why did you use such a complex narrative structure?” and “Did you get confused trying to keep the plot and the timeline straight?” Plus a few more curious questions I hadn’t heard before! “How old is Anna Engel?” and “What was the significance of Theo and Kim Lyons?” (For the answer to that, read my short story “Something Worth Doing” in Firebirds Soaring!)

These kids had done a great project on suggestions for working through problems in learning and reading comprehension, relying heavily on discussion and encouragement from others. I know, from previous experience, that Code Name Verity is a difficult book, but I have also learned that one passionate reader can often change the entire group’s experience of the text. It was inspiring and gratifying to hear and see this very young audience working hard at understanding and appreciating a complex read, and I told them so. They said, “Thank you! Thank you! It is so great to be appreciated as intelligent readers!” (Man, I LOVE middle school readers. I really do.)

 

YaY! This upbeat little cartoon summarizes the 7th grade CNV book group's reading efforts.

The following day I visited two schools in the Chicago area:  Harter Middle School in Sugar Grove IL, and Quest Academy in Palatine IL. The Harter School was having a Career Fair for the 7th grade and I was presenting as the Author (I am not sure who all the other presenters were, but I know that the Naperville Sheriff was there because there was a SWAT vehicle labelled “Sheriff” parked out front, as well as a travel agent and someone dressed in scrubs!)

At Quest Academy I did a presentation to a Language Arts and Social Studies class of 7th graders, but I also got to experience a cross-section of the rest of the school – the 4th grade was so excited about the idea of meeting an author that they were allowed to come and bombard me with questions during lunch (“Where do you get your ideas?” My standard answer to this is always "Star Wars,” which cracks them upthey love). And I got to see the pre-schoolers present their engineering play! My guides for the day were a gracious pair of 7th grade readers, Shambhavi and Allison, who together made a pretty amazing presentation to their class about my life and my books.

With Quest Academy guides Allison and Shambhavi

In the evening I gave a talk at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville IL, who provided the books for the area school visits. This was fun because it ended up being very informal and intimate, as we all sat around a table together and discussed various literary matters (mostly relating to Code Name Verity). I was delighted to meet In Real Life a person I had done some online role-playing with ten years earlier! Drew Shilhanek, the Language Arts and Social Studies teacher who’d invited me to Quest Academy but who hadn’t been able to be there that day, came along to this event; there was also a school librarian who shared with me that she’d used CNV as a means to convince the history teacher that young adult fiction had a valid place in the classroom. There were a pair of 13-year-old CNV fans here, too, a brother and a sister, whose presence – as always – made the whole event worthwhile.

I know it is kind of considered the kiss of death to have your book “taught” in class, but I have heard nothing but GOOD things from educators and students alike who are able to use fiction as a jumping-off point for learning both history and current events. And I think it is wonderful, wonderful that young adult literature is seen as such a valuable resource – and also that classroom readings, encouraged by open-minded educators, give kids a chance to engage with a book on their own terms. (Consider this tedious discussion of last August. Yeah, right, whatever. 7th grade readers are the front line in this battle, and it looks to me like YA is WINNING.)

Friday’s events all took place at The Book People in Austin TX – starting off with a wine & cheese book club meeting where the book being discussed was (you guessed it) Code Name Verity. The group leader Meghan and her team had set up discussion stations labelled with different aspects of the book to get people going, but everyone kept congregating around me to hear the Official Line on “Is Maddie & Julie’s relationship romantic or not?” and “Who switched their identity papers?” (both questions I don’t have an official line on, because I love the debate and engagement it engenders to keep them open-ended). Eventually we gave up on the stations and just sat around in one big group until it was time for the public event in the main bookstore. There was another teen reader, Xander, at the book club meeting, and we’d met before on my Black Dove, White Raven tour in 2015!

The main bookstore visit took the form of a virtual tour of Scotland via PowerPoint. Questions were asked (including : “What do the Scots think of Brexit?”) and books were signed, but the best part of the evening for me was when my high school friend Kristyn Leftridge turned up with my annual order of Girl Scout cookies! We then sat in the Book People café until closing time – catching up on everything, until we had to leave and continue our conversation on the balcony of my hotel room until half past midnight.

E Wein & Kristyn, another YaY.

And the next morning I was on my way back to Scotland!

I’m now recovered from my jet-lag and looking forward to the launch for Bloomsbury’s UK edition of The Pearl Thief, which will be happening in the Perth Museum on Thursday 18 May 2017. You can register for this event here. My college roommate Helen is going to be there too. <3

Novel: The Pearl Thief

Tell the World: One Book, One Community and Rose Under Fire

This year my novel Rose Under Fire was chosen as Central Pennsylvania’s “One Book, One Community” read across a six-county region including over 90 libraries. The program is described in detail here. It’s essentially a great big geographically-organized book club, based on an idea that originated in Seattle in 1998. In Central PA, the campaign really got off its feet in 2004 when a couple of two-county groups combined their readerships. This is the twelfth year for a collaboration of library systems in Berks, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Perry and York Counties, along with several college libraries and the Pennsylvania State Library.

Needless to say, to have any book be chosen for this initiative is a phenomenal honor – and if I’d been able to wish this for any of my books, it would have been for Rose Under Fire. TELL THE WORLD! That was what the doomed prisoners at the Ravensbrück concentration camp shouted to their surviving companions as they were dragged to the gas chamber. Tell the world: the need to tell the world is what kept Ravensbrück’s victims of Nazi experimentation from despair in their darkest hours of imprisonment. Rose Under Fire is my own small attempt to tell the world what happened at Ravensbrück, and One Book, One Community has amplified my voice – and by extension, the voices of all the women, living and dead, who were imprisoned at this often-forgotten Nazi concentration camp.

During the first week of April 2017, I went along to a number of events connected with OBOC in Lebanon, York, Dauphin, and Berks Counties. Part of what made this mini-tour so wonderful was the fact that I was in my home territory – like my character Rose, I grew up in Central Pennsylvania. Rose’s fictional hometown is a thinly disguised Lebanon, PA. No doubt this hometown connection was part of the attraction for area readers – so in the Q&A I’d get really localized questions like, “Why did you include the paper box factory?” and “Who was your instructor at Reigle Airfield?” And my favorite comment: “This is the first book I’ve ever read that mentioned opera fudge!” In fact opera fudge doesn’t get mentioned in the book – that was either a test to see if I really am a local girl who knows what opera fudge is, or I did my job so well that the reader is lulled into the false impression that I sneaked opera fudge in there along with the Lebanon bologna, shoofly pie, fasnachts, and Cope’s dried corn.

The two big events of the week were an author talk at Congregation Beth lsrael in Lebanon, and a Readers’ Celebration held at the Reading Regional Airport. The Beth Israel talk was organized by Judith and Joe Clark, who’d invited me to appear as their annual speaker. They were superb hosts, taking me and my aunt and uncle to dinner at the Lebanon Country Club and putting me up for the night in the nearby Patriot House bed & breakfast in Annville – which just happens to have been built and owned by my great-great-great-grandfather, the town’s nineteenth-century carriage maker. He raised 13 children there - it is a very big house! My great-great-grandfather and grandfather grew up here, and my grandmother celebrated her birthdays here (a local girl for sure).

Patriot House B&B, Annville, PA

At Beth Israel, there was a beautiful reception ahead of my speech, which included as a lovely touch of bunches of pink and yellow roses - Maddie’s wedding flowers from early in the book.

The really wonderful thing about this talk, and indeed about every talk I gave over the week, was that so many people had actually read Rose Under Fire. They were engaged and prepared and interested. I got asked about Americans in Ravensbrück, about prisoner escapes, and if I’d ever had any former prisoners or relatives of prisoners contact me as a result of reading the book. We talked about why the book is considered young adult fiction. (There were not many young adults in the Beth Israel audience, but there were a few.) We talked about how I use my academic training as a folklorist to enhance my fiction writing!

In between the big events, there were some friendly little ones – lunch with Karen Hostetter of the York Library system, who was instrumental in planning my visit, and Mary Ann Heltshe-Steinhauer, Community Relations Manager for the Lancaster Library System, who coordinated the events and liaised with the OBOC Committee.

Gift basket of local York County-made products!

There was a private reception at the Martin Library in York; an unplanned visit to the Annville Free Library; dinner with three of my favorite teachers from Harrisburg Academy, where I went to high school; a meal out with the staff of the Midland Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, and a signing there afterward. There was another big bunch of roses waiting for me at the Midland Scholar that had been sent by my fourth grade teachers from Steele Elementary School in Harrisburg, Miss Golob and Miss O’Brine!

Midtown Scholar Bookstore

The final event of the week, the Readers’ Celebration, was a full afternoon in the departure lounge of the Reading Regional Airport (there were no departures going on but it felt faintly illicit to walk straight past airport security without anybody caring whether you opened your bags or kept your shoes on). Entertainment for forty or so guests included a lunch buffet, a slide show about Ravensbrück and the background to Rose Under Fire, informational displays and period and wartime artifacts, re-enactors in 1940s costume, and a silent auction – wow. When the Q&A and signing were finished, many of the visitors (including me and my aunts and uncles) drifted across the airfield to the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum for a tour.

The OBOC Readers' Celebration team - Mary Ann and Karen are on the right.

The whole package was undoubtedly the most moving and exciting celebration of my writing I’ve ever experienced – the combination of me and my character both being local girls was a bonus, but the real reward was without a doubt the enthusiasm of everyone who participated in the OBOC read.

I am so, so privileged and grateful to have been able to share this week with so many friends, family, and dedicated readers. Thank you, One Book, One Community!

PS We sent written invitations for the Readers’ Celebration to all our senators and representatives from the six or so inventively-shaped PA congressional districts represented by the OBOC community. None of them turned up.

PPS Here’s an odd little feel-good story from Berks County – at the end of this video clip there is evidence of the small but far-reaching reverberations of how One Book, One Community helps to Tell the World.

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