When I decided to take the plunge and write a blog, I pondered on where to begin for quite a while. My life looks like a melting pot of family, hobbies, work, and not-so-close friends (I am an introvert after all). In my forty years on this earth, I have become an expert in many things, all centered around my various passions: project management, training and showing horses, showing dogs, and public speaking (thank you Toastmasters!). But throughout all my musing, I kept coming back to the same question: why did I choose historical fiction to write?
I know it will sound cliché, but I believe the answer is historical fiction found me and not the other way around. In fact, this may come as a surprise, but the first book I wrote was not even in the genre. It was a Janet Evanovich inspired novel about a girl who meets a cowboy online and falls in love while in the process of solving the mystery of her disappearing friend. Don’t go rushing to Barnes and Noble to purchase your copy though; it will never see the light of day. Yes, it was that bad!
As the years went on, I kept writing. But I never felt I found my true voice until I penned Shoes of War. I grew up on the outskirts of the Jewish community. To gain his family’s blessing of marriage, my mother had converted to Judaism. Regardless of this, when my sister and I came along, we bounced between temple and traditional Christian churches, never really finding a religious home. But I always loved hearing stories of my father’s family history, which includes so much sadness and loss during World War II.
Imagine two brothers sitting beside each other in the Auschwitz concentration camp, not even realizing they were related until after they had spoken for quite some time due to their physical deterioration. Imagine learning everyone you loved had died inside of a gas chamber. Think about being shouldered with the responsibility of sponsoring people you had never even met to come to America and work in your store. People who could not even speak the language of the place you had come to know as home.
Droplets of these things appear in Shoes of War, and I plan to expand upon them in the sequel, currently titled Shoes of Freedom in my head. They say those who tell the stories rule the world. I don’t know about that, but I believe with all my heart I have a story to tell. A story I hope will contribute to the education on what happened to the Jewish people. To my ancestors. And this is why I choose to write historical fiction.
Why Historical Fiction?
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