Stan R. Mitchell

Here’s the background behind the book.

As most writers know, you want to start a book with a “what if.”

Such as, what if you were a guy and you lost your job and you were on the verge of a divorce already?

That’s a what if, but it’s pretty blah. So you want to make it much worse. Far more intense, if you can.

Thus, imagine the “what if” was this… What if you were a guy and you’d been watching the news for months about a female serial killer operating in the area and then you start to realize it could be your wife, but you’re not sure. But your gut tells you that you are sure and she just walked in the door.

So, clearly, that second option was far superior. And obviously, the more extreme your “what if,” the better.

And the book I just published has one of the greatest “what if’s” I ever created…

Let’s begin with the unimproved version. What if you were a soldier in the middle of an incredibly horrific war? That’s pretty good, but that’s been done a few million times, so what if you magnified it further? Let’s doom the characters to this: What if you were soldiers in the middle of an incredibly horrific war, and you were on the losing side? Oh, and better yet, let’s say you were on your home ground and your families might all be dead, as well.

That, to me, was one of the most intimidating ideas out there for me, as a rifle-carrying vet. Especially for we Americans. We have so rarely faced losing a war on our homeground… And I took that “what if” and started a novel about the German Army at the end of World War II.

I started this in college, fresh out the Marine Corps, while I was nice and messed up in the head.

For the past nine years or so, I’ve worked on it, dropped it, worked on it, dropped it. In the end, I usually cruelly would have all/most of the men dying or seriously getting wounded. But that seemed way too depressing, and way too much like literature, which I define as being like real life: Sucky, painful, and often boring beyond belief.

But a few weeks ago, I had an epiphany on how to end it, so it’s finally published and ready to buy.… (mehr)