Author: Helena P. Schrader

ISBN: 978059444717

Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Helena P. Schrader, PhD in history and author of Chasing the Wind, Sisters in Arms, The Lady in the Spitfire , General Friedrich Olbricht:Ein Mann des 20.Julis as well as other publications.

Dr. Schrader is commissioned in the U.S. Foreign Service and is currently serving in Oslo Norway.

Good day Dr. Schrader and thanks for participating in our interview.

It is my pleasure!

Norm:

Please tell our readers a little bit about your personal and professional background.
 

Dr. Schrader:

My father was a professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Michigan and traveled on academic exchange programs to Japan, Brazil and England when I was growing up. In fact, I had circumnavigated the globe by the age of four, and I had developed an interest in history before I left grammar school. By the time I was studying history at University, however, I knew that working as an academic was very confining and not very lucrative, so I decided not to try to make a career of either history or creative writing. Instead, I got a degree in International Business, had training as a stock broker and worked in Investor Relations and Venture Capital before settling into a career in the U.S. Foreign Service. My writing, both non-fiction and fiction, is an avocation, something I do “on-the-side.” That way it remains fun and I retain the freedom to write what I want rather than what the market wants.  

Norm:

In fiction as well as in non-fiction, writers very often take liberties with their material to tell a good story or make a point.

But how much is too much?

Dr. Schrader:

I have a PhD in History, so I don’t believe in taking liberties with known facts at all. History is, however, rarely perfectly documented and even very recent and comprehensive documents are open to interpretation. Ancient history is known to us primarily from archeological evidence, for example. Other periods and events are know to us only from inaccurate translations or transcriptions of earlier works – in short, from fragmentary evidence that is no more than the tattered remnants of sources lost to fire, storm, flood and war over time.

Then there is the problem of bias in surviving documents. Too often, history is recorded by the victors – or at least the more literate participants. We know of the Vikings first and foremost from their victims, not themselves, for example. Even in cases where we appear to have extensive “evidence” (e.g. the archives of the German Wehrmacht in WWII) the existing documents contain little or no information about emotions, motives or relationships. A historian, and particularly a novelist, is always justified in interpolating between known facts and interpreting evidence as long as in doing so he does not violate the rules of logic or disregard the fundamentals of human nature. One of the most irritating things historians (more often than novelists, incidentally!) do is to ignore human nature when analyzing “objective” evidence, making too little allowance for what real people in any given situation must have been feeling or attempting to do.

Norm:

How did Chasing the Wind come about? What kind of research did you do to write Chasing the Wind?

Dr. Schrader

Chasing the Wind has been almost 30 years in the making. I lived in the UK in my youth and became interested in the Battle of Britain then. I even started a novel, but gave it up relatively soon because I recognized it was too important a topic for my modest abilities. But the story continued to fascinate me, and I read every first-hand account I could find as well as histories.

Eventually, I knew the material so well that standard works brought me no new insights. Then, while working on my dissertation on the German Resistance to Hitler, I learned a great deal about the German military in WWII. I wrote a novel about the German Resistance to Hitler and one of the minor characters was a fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe. He led me back to the Battle of Britain and I took up the story again, weaving in a German storyline – although the emphasis remained the British side of the Battle. At this stage, I re-read many of my earlier sources and selected more recent works and then started writing.

With only one major exception, the raids – including the timing, targets, casualties etc. – are based on the historical record. Perhaps more important, I read a large number of memoirs and social histories about the period as well as the Battle, because it is vital to me that the characters be authentic – not modern people dressed up in costume. The motives and mores of the generation that fought the Battle of Britain are very different from our own and “political correctness” can only be attained at the price of authenticity. I prefer the latter.

Norm:

How do you come up with ideas for what you write? What methods do you use to flesh out your idea to determine if it’s salable?

Dr. Schrader:

You will probably have heard this before: my books write themselves. My characters have their own ideas and lives and they expect me to be their voice to the public. I let them have their say, and then after they are finished I am faced with a monstrous manuscript into which I – with the help of an editor – must restore order, focus and coherence. No doubt, some will say I have failed in this purpose. But the price of a leaner book would have been the amputation of limbs and the silencing of voices.

I didn’t have the heart for it – not with these characters. Salability? I am the kind of fool who thinks that a good story well told will find a market no matter what the current fashion is. I have always been miserably inept at trying to predict trends or ride waves of popularity in any case.

Norm:

Have you had any downfalls or negative experiences working with a publisher/agent, such as rejection letters? If so, how did you handle it?

Dr. Schrader

I have never had any success with agents. I was turned down by a score of agents with respect to a manuscript I had written about women pilots. Frustrated, I decided, to write directly to the handful of publishers that might be interested. Half of them liked the manuscript! So much for agents! You pay them money and they don’t even know the tiny niche market that is appropriate for your book! Since then I have not bothered with agents.

Norm:

What obstacles did you have in trying to tell your story in Chasing the Wind? How did you overcome these obstacles?

Dr. Schrader:         

First and foremost, there has been so much written about the Battle of Britain, that I was intimidated and found it hard to convince myself I really had anything worthwhile to contribute to the vast body of literature. How could a novel ever compete with first hand accounts, of which there are so many? But a critical experience in my life occurred on the North Sea aboard a British merchant vessel during the Middle Watch when two petty officers, both veterans of the War at Sea, disagreed violently on what WWII had been like.

Suddenly I realized that there wasn’t one reality. Both men had experienced the war first hand, but when they told “what it was like” the pictures were almost irreconcilable. Gradually I understood that while there were many individuals with equally valid memories of the Battle of Britain (and the War at Sea or D-Day or any other historical event), a novelist can, by selectively integrating key elements of an historical event into a single story, give to the uninitiated a more coherent picture. I set out to write a book for modern readers that would explain and describe the Battle of Britain as a whole – not just the tiny slice that one person’s perspective inherently constituted.

At the same time, I knew that many veterans of the Battle of Britain had been offended by the popular novel Piece of Cake. When I read Piece of Cake I too was outraged. I kept saying to myself: “That’s ridiculous. I could have done better than that!” So I sat down and wrote Chasing the Wind. Then I spent five years re-working it - throwing out some story-lines in favor of others, testing it with different readers, leaving it while I wrote novels about Ancient Sparta, and then returning to look at it again with “fresh” eyes. As some point, I realized that “perfection is the enemy of the good” and I took it to market. I’m sure I’m not the first author to hope I wasn’t over hasty!

Norm:

How did you create the characters of Robert “Robin” Priestman and Baron (Christian) v. Feldburg in Chasing the Wind?

Dr. Schrader

First, let me thank you for asking about Christian. He is indeed Robin’s counterpart, but in fact the only major character whose voice is never heard. I.e. the reader is never taken inside his head, only allowed to see him through the eyes of Ernst and Klaudia. Yet Christian is the real hero on the German side. He is the younger brother of the lead character in my German Resistance novel, An Obsolete Honour. I would never be so presumptuous as to suggest that I created him; rather he allowed me to write about him. Robin is the same in spades. There are characters that I created – notably Klaudia, Emily, all the peripheral members on the squadrons. But Christian, Robin, Ernst and Ginger are for me people, whose story I have the privilege to tell – not my own creations.

Norm:

What are your hopes for Chasing the Wind?

Dr. Schrader

That readers will fall in love with my characters as I have done, that they will learn about a fascinating episode in history, and that they will want to go back and re-read the book more than once as they gradually come to appreciate the many different levels on which the novel operates. I even hope that some people will become intrigued by the ideas hidden in the story. You see, I believe that writing is about inspiring people to go on living – or strive to be better people. I believe a good book inspires us to try to make the world a better place. So I hope that the characters in my novels will inspire readers to look at the world a little differently or even to behave differently in a critical situation. Ideally, readers of Chasing the Wind will not only be inspired but want to re-read it more than once to learn more each time.

Norm:

When you write novels, do you have a particular audience in mind?

Dr. Schrader:

Not really – an intelligent, open-minded public, I suppose.

Norm:

What was the first piece you ever wrote? What was the reaction?

Dr. Schrader:

My first novel was a story about an Indian in the Amazon. I was in second grade and going to school in Brazil. I think I showed it to my mother, but I’m not sure. If I did, I’m sure she said something nice. My first publication was a biography of General Friedrich Olbricht, a leading member of the German Resistance, and originator of the plans that culminated in the July 20^th, 1944 coup attempt against Hitler.

The book received rave reviews from several major German newspapers including Die Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Neues Deutschland. As a result, the first edition was sold out in weeks. Unfortunately, my publisher was close to bankruptcy, and only issued a ridiculously small edition, was unable to bring out a second edition until more than a year later and the entire positive “buzz” around the book was wasted, never to be retrieved.

Norm

Was there anyone who really influenced you to become a writer?

Dr. Schrader:

Not that I can remember. It was too long ago.

Norm:

Is there anything else you wish to ad that we have not covered and what is next for Dr. Helena Schrader?

Dr. Schrader:

Chasing the Wind is not about the Battle of Britain – it is set in the Battle of Britain. I hope that readers will take away a greater understanding of this critical historical event, but what Chasing the Wind is really about is how good men and women cope, grow and develop into more mature souls when confronted by the challenges of war, command and loss.

Those are themes repeated in all my novels, and I use different historical periods for the settings of my novels because the diversity of setting enables me to explore a wider range of situations, circumstances and constellations of personalities. At present, I have three completed, unpublished novels and three novels “in progress.” I want to release my German Resistance novel, An Obsolete Honour, next year, but I have not yet decided on a publisher. Because of the interest generated by the two novels set in Ancient Sparta that I have already published, I may release a third Spartan novel, For the Love of a Slave, with iUniverse later this year. My non-fiction book on the Berlin Airlift, The Blockade Breakers, will be released by Sutton Publishing Ltd. in the UK next year to commemorate the start of the Airlift. For an overview of my various projects, I suggest people visit my website, Helena-Schrader.com, which I try to update regularly to reflect new publications or just news.

Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

To read Norm's Review of Chasing the Wind CLICK HERE

To learn more about Dr. Helena Schrader CLICK HERE