Winter Duet
Echoes Rising book 2 - Sequel to
Shadowboxing
Germany 1944
Hunted for treason
and the information Kristopher carries, he and Michel leave the security of
their safe house to journey across Germany toward Switzerland. Caught in a series of Allied
bombings, they stop to help civilians and narrowly escape capture by German
forces.
While investigating a downed
aircraft in the Black Forest, the two men discover an injured RAF pilot. After they are separated, Kristopher and the
pilot are discovered by a German officer who claims he is not who he appears to
be. Determined to find Michel again, Kristopher has to trust the stranger and
hope he is not connected to those searching for him and the information he
carries. Meanwhile Michel is intercepted by one of the Allied soldiers he met
in Berlin. His help is needed to save one of their own.
Time quickly runs out. Loyalties
are tested and betrayed as the Gestapo closes in. Michel can only hope they can
reach safety before information is revealed that could compromise not only his
and Kristopher’s lives, but those of the remaining members of their team—if it
is not already too late.
Excerpt:
Kristopher jerked awake
with a start. Michel was leaning over him. His expression was grim. “What’s
wrong? What’s happened?” Kristopher asked. They’d been in Feuerbach less than
twenty-four hours. Surely Reiniger hadn’t found them already?
Before Michel could
answer, a loud explosion sounded nearby. Kristopher was on his feet
immediately, reaching for his gun, his eyes adjusting to the dim light of the
flashlight Michel held. The wooden beams groaned. The building shook. Dust fell
from the ceiling. He grabbed his satchel, not wanting to leave it behind.
“Bombing raid,” Michel
said, already on the stairs of the apartment building, heading outside.
Kristopher was only a couple of steps behind him. The wailing of sirens echoed
around them. “We need to get out of here.”
Outside, people were
running. A woman screamed. A baby’s wail filled the air. The top story of the
building next door was gone, rubble lying in the street in big chunks.
Engines roared.
Something swooped low above them. Kristopher ducked. Michel grabbed him and
dived, both of them hitting the ground and landing in the snow.
Kristopher coughed. He
wiped wet snow from his face and shivered. Luckily he’d slept in his coat and
boots. Smoke filled the air. “The river,” he gasped. “We need to get to the
river.” There was a tower shelter by the Feuerbach River. He was sure he
remembered someone talking about it the previous evening.
The ground moved, or
seemed to, as another explosion lit up the sky, this time in the distance, from
the center of Stuttgart itself. “Can you walk?” Michel helped Kristopher as he
struggled to his feet.
“I’m fine,” Kristopher
reassured him. “You?”
“Yes.” Michel retrieved
the flashlight from the ground. It lit up for a moment, and then they were
plunged into blackness. “Damn it!” Michel shook it and switched it off, then
on, but nothing happened. He shoved it into the pocket of his coat and glanced
around. The streetlights were off—they would have been extinguished at the
first sign of attack. All they had for light was the waning crescent moon above
them and the fires burning as the aircraft dropped their bombs.
“What about the
ambulance?” Kristopher suggested. They’d left it parked out of sight but
nearby.
“I’m more worried about
us surviving this than the ambulance,” Michel said. He gazed up at the sky. “I
think the river is this way. We can’t stay here.”
“I don’t remember where on the river the shelter is,”
Kristopher said.
A boy pushed past them.
He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. “The shelter’s this
way,” he yelled. “Follow me.”
Kristopher hesitated.
What if the boy was wrong? And even if he wasn’t, there was no way of knowing
if he might lead them into more of this.
“We don’t have a
choice,” Michel said. “Keep close to me. I don’t want to lose you in this.” He
began to run, Kristopher close behind, his eyes adjusting to the little light
there was.
The boy tripped and went
sprawling. Michel stopped just in time before he too lost his footing.
“Oomph,” Kristopher
grunted when he ran into Michel. “What happened?”
The boy groaned loudly. Michel pulled out his flashlight and
tried it again. A dim light shone from it, barely enough to see by, but it
would have to do. Remains of a shattered chimney from a nearby house were
spread across the ground just ahead of them. The boy lay next to one of the
larger pieces, half on top of it. In his haste and with the lack of light he
wouldn’t have seen it until it was too late.
Thanks,
Michael, for hosting me today.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I live in
New Zealand, and work in a public library. I have a BA in English Lit and
Music, and a Bachelor of Teaching. I was a music teacher for ten years and now
play violin in an orchestra. I’m also a member—currently president because I
didn’t duck fast enough—of the Upper Hutt Science Fiction Club. I share my house with two cats, who are
convinced they run it, and so far it looks as though they’re winning that
argument.
When did you start to write and why?
I started
writing when I was at primary school and waiting for the next book in a series
I loved. I got impatient so began writing a story set in the same universe. This
was way before the internet, and I had no clue it had a name—fan fiction.
What experiences do you bring to your writing?
My
stories often include music in some shape or form, and/or my characters are
musicians. Two of the main characters in Winter
Duet—Kristopher and Michel—are musicians, and code written in music plays a
big part in the plot. The duet in the
title refers to not only the duet Kristopher and Michel promise each other
they’ll someday play on violin and flute, but that the action splits the main
characters into two groups for much of the book. The code phrases the Resistance uses are
taken from poetry by Müller, later set to music by Schubert.
I also
like to include a reference or a character connected to New Zealand. Leo Dawson
is an RAF pilot from Wellington, New Zealand, who is shot down over the Black
Forest, and joins the Allied team in Winter Duet.
What kinds of books do you enjoy?
I love
reading—so my job is quite the den of temptation. Although I read and watch
anything that looks interesting I have a particular weakness for fantasy, SF,
historical fiction, and graphic novels.
I’ve just
finished an MM urban fantasy series and now reading an historical romance set
in WWI. I also have contemporary
romance, crime fiction, and some DC graphic novels on my immediate TBR list,
plus some MM SF and fantasy, and a Christmas romance story.
What inspired you to write Winter Duet?
I write
what I want to read. I’ve always loved historical fiction, especially stories
set during WWII. I decided I wanted to
write something set in that time period, and had read about the race to build
the first atomic bomb. It wasn’t long
before I had a plot, and characters who wanted their story told. I knew from the beginning that it wasn’t a
standalone book. Winter Duet is the 2nd book of the Echoes rising series
that began with Shadowboxing, and the
story concludes with Comes a Horseman.
Do you do research, and if so, how did you go about researching?
Winter Duet was very
research intensive. I didn’t just need to get the historical facts right, but
also the geographical. The characters
travel from Berlin to the Black Forest area, and so I needed to research
several locations, and also work out the routes they’d take. At first I considered avoiding where the
Allied air raids had taken place, then realized it would be much more
interesting—at least for me—if the characters ended up at ground zero and
experiencing those situations first hand.
One of my beta readers is German, and she loaned me a huge
topographical map of Germany which hung on my bookcase while I wrote the book.
She also helped out with the German translations, and other bits of information
that were difficult to find out. It’s the everyday things that aren’t always
documented in as much detail, but I really wanted to get them as accurate as I
could.
Working in a library, I tend to use a lot of books and
databases when I research. Our library
has a great non-fiction collection, and I found the books with anecdotes from
people who lived through the war very helpful. I learnt a lot about the
different aircraft in use at the time. I also used several online resources,
including sites about different German towns where the characters stay or pass
through, and a slang dictionary so I could check they used words and phrases
appropriate to the time period. A great
find was a site that had a very detailed description of ‘The Big Week’, which
took place in February 1944 when the Allies bombed Germany night and day,
including specifics times and types of aircraft on the various bombing runs.
What did you discover about yourself while you were writing the
book, if anything?
Although
I tend to often freak out about the daunting amount of research it takes to
write an historical story, once I’m in the middle of it, I really enjoy it. I
love the way one tidbit of information leads to another, and then ends up
taking the plot in directions I hadn’t thought of. It’s like following a trail
of breadcrumbs.
What writing projects are you working on right now?
Lou
Sylvre and I have a contemporary romance for Dreamspinner Press’s World of Love series coming out in
June/July 2017. It’s called Sunset at
Pencarrow and is set in Wellington.
I’ve
recently finished Comes a Horseman
which is the final book in the Echoes
Rising series, and also One Word
which is a contemporary side story to my Hidden
Places fantasy series. Next up is
another co-written story with Lou which we’ve already started called The Harp and the Sea which is an
historical with a dash of magic set on Skye in 1745.
Then it’s
back to present day Wellington for The
Right Note for Dreamspinner’s Dreamspun
Desire series.
Blog:
http://anne-barwell.livejournal.com/
Dreamspinner Press Author Page:
DSP Publications Author Page:
