The Resistance Girl Series: stand-alones with related content

During the initial phase of plotting a number of books about strong women in WW2, I didn’t spend much thought on whether the books would be stand-alones or a series. I knew the overarching theme would be The Resistance Girl Series, with every book having the same subtitle A Resistance Girl Novel. How many books I’d eventually write (still not decided🧐) and if they’d have related content was decided later. I hadn’t even planned In Picardy’s Fields at first, the WW1 prequel.

I know this all sounds rather haphazard but in fact it’s not as unstructured as it may sound.

I began with mapping out the initially 3 (now 6) heroines with their own stories. Young woman from different countries, with different backgrounds. While doing my research I stumbled - of course - upon the famous British spy Vera Atkins and found out she’d been a student at Le Manoir in Switzerland, a finishing school for young, upper-class women. If you want to read more on how young ladies were groomed for married life and running a grand home, I wrote a blogpost about finishing schools here.

That was unrelated! 😁

The idea grew to have the 3 heroines Lili, Océane and Esther meet at Le Manoir before the war. They’d become friends and would have to say goodbye when war broke out on 1 September 1939 following Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Then they’d promise each other to meet up after the war in Paris.

While I was writing The Diamond Courier, it came to my attention that it might be better to bring out a reader magnet for my newsletter and that’s how I decided to write In Picardy’s Fields, which was a thorough rewrite of an earlier book I’d written. It helped to let the romances that blossomed in this prequel result in daughters that would do their bit in WW2. The Diamond Courier and The Parisian Spy revolve around these daughters (Lili and Océane). Esther from the 4th book in the series The Norwegian Assassin has no relation to the WW1 novel. And now I’m making some cross connections withThe Norwegian Assassin to write a 5th Resistance Girl Novel. I just love this series so much!

Apart from the girls, there are some other characters that make a reappearance in the various books. So The Resistance Gil Series has become a series of related stand-alones that can be read separate from each other.