I found the photo below, and the article to which the photo was attached, in the Sonntags Zeitung - 5 November 2017. The Sonntag's Zeitung is a weekly evangelical publication, and it appears in our postbox every Friday. Several of its articles have grabbed for my attention because the stories... Read more →
Feeling the Distance
11/04/2017
10/16/2017
Inspiration from the past - beauty and horror on Monte Pasubio
Three old friends and assorted family members set off to climb Monte Pasubio just over a week ago. There were 10 of us. The youngest was just 11 years old. The oldest was 67. We spent the night at 1900 metres in the WW1 military refuge shown in pic 4... Read more →
09/08/2017
Inspiration for "Feeling the Distance" - fathers and sons
Some years ago, I was entranced to see a TV programme dedicated to children whose fathers were killed or crippled during WW1 and how the absence of a father affected their lives. The interviews with the "children" must have been done in the 80s or 90s when the sons and... Read more →
08/03/2017
The importance of theme.
The theme of a novel is the heart of the story and will have a universal human appeal. Your theme must not only appeal to the reader, it should animate and inspire you if you are to spend so much time working with it. Examples of themes in my own... Read more →
07/13/2017
Origins of the Places in "Feeling the Distance."
In Feeling the Distance much of the story takes place in the Bavarian town of Oberwald and the mountains that dominate the town – Kreuzberg and the Widderstein. It is in the refuge on the Widderstein that the protagonists come face to face with their father’s past. Are these places... Read more →
07/12/2017
Every Photo Tells a Story! Inspiration for Feeling the Distance.
Old photos have always been an inspiration to me. Who were the people in the above photos? What are they doing here? What happened to them? These questions are particularly relevant to these two pictures. Why? Because I know who some of these people were. One of the girls is... Read more →
06/28/2017
Thoughts and words
Where do authors get their ideas? What inspires them to spend all that time writing a novel that, perhaps, only a few people will read? These questions – and some suggested answers – will be my subject in this blog. I’ll share the source of many of my ideas and... Read more →
