Author’s Inspiration ~ Michelle Saftich #HistFic #WW2 @MichelleSaftich

Please give a warm Coffee Pot welcome to Historical Fiction author, Michelle Saftich. Today, Michelle is going to share with us her inspiration behind her fabulous series…

Port of No Return

A family is forced to flee their Italian city of Fiume when Tito and his Yugoslav army come for it at the end of World War II. Separated, then homeless and starving in war-torn Europe, they struggle to survive. A story of friendship, family and hope.

Wanderers No More

An Italian family escape Europe, seeking a fresh start in Australia. But they bring the past with them… dreams, love, friends and an enemy. Follow their son Martino as he faces 1950s’ racism and other struggles, in and outside the home, while never giving up on what seems like an impossible dream. (While a sequel, it can be read as a standalone novel).

Author’s Inspiration

Not many people know about the little but devastating conflict that happened at the end of World War II, in the north-east corner of Italy.

While the rest of Europe was preparing for peace at the end of the long, cruel war, north-east Italy was preparing for yet another war, a local one with Yugoslavia. This resulted in a battle that saw thousands killed and then as Tito’s Yugoslav troops moved in, a style of ethnic cleansing began.

Afterwards, even Italy wanted to suppress stories about it, needing to maintain peace with its Communist neighbour, Yugoslavia, throughout the Cold War.

It wouldn’t be until 2004 that the Italian government finally declared a Memorial Day in remembrance of the killings and the displaced Italians.

My grandparents lived in Fiume and my grandfather was named on a Yugoslav Partisan list for execution. They, like thousands of others, had to flee the city.

In researching this history, my father took me to meet an old Italian woman in her suburban home in Brisbane, Australia. In her dimly-lit kitchen, with a cup of tea in front of her, she recounted her memories of Tito’s troops coming down the hills into Fiume to claim their city. She was speaking in Italian while my father translated for me.

Even though I had to wait for the translation, I could tell by her whisperings that she was re-living it, that she was afraid to speak too loud as though Tito’s spies were still around to hear her.

She was only sixteen at the time.

“There were rumours,” she said. ‘We heard them.”

‘What did you hear?” I asked.

She wouldn’t answer. I waited, gave her time. At last, she said… “old mines. They were pushing them alive down old mine shafts.”

She would say no more. My father had told me that when Fiume was taken, the Yugoslav Partisans had “put Italians against the wall and shot them”.  I knew executions had taken place, but I didn’t know the full story.

I took to the internet and searched for information. And that’s when I first learned about the “foibe”. Not just old mines, but Italians were taken up into the mountainous karst regions and thrown down natural chasms in the ground. It was chilling.

Now I wanted to write not just about my grandparents’ experience but what had happened around them.  

To do this, I shifted from writing a straight family memoir to historical fiction. I was now being inspired by my father’s family and keeping close to their journey but adding fiction to cover and reveal more history.

It was a tough assignment on many levels. But approaching the story through my eyes, the eyes of a granddaughter, with love and sensitivity, I tried to deliver a human tale, a family tale against a harsh historic backdrop, and one that to me should not be forgotten. I had thought to call my book Fiume not Forgotten, but I settled on Port of No Return, a fitting title too, as my grandparents would never return to the beautiful portside town of Fiume, now known as Rijeka.

Wanderers No More is the poignant sequel. In its pages, I tried to explore with open eyes what my father and his family encountered on migrating to Australia; their struggles to adapt and eke out a living while dealing with 1950s’ racism in a much less sophisticated and uncultured country than what they were used to. There is a family tragedy here that was the hardest of all to write…

And yet the novels are essentially about love, hope and inspiration. Times of war, loss and displacement can bring out the worst in people but also the best in people, making them great stories to tell and uphold.

These two novels were a privilege to write.

Links for Purchase

Port Of No Return

Amazon US Amazon UK

Wanderers No More

Amazon US Amazon UK

Michelle Saftich

Michelle Saftich is an author who resides in Brisbane, Australia.

She holds a Bachelor of Business/Communications Degree, majoring in journalism, from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

She has had a rewarding career, working in communications, including print journalism, sub-editing, communications management, media relations and marketing.  However, writing fiction has always been her first passion.

Her debut historical fiction novel, Port of No Return, was published by Odyssey Books in 2015, and its recently published sequel Wanderers No More completes the series.  The series was inspired by her Italian-born father and his family and their experiences after World War II.

Michelle is married with two sons and writes with her black cat by her side.

You can find Michelle on…

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Author’s Inspiration ~ Milana Marsenich #HistFic @milanamarsenich

Please give a warm Coffee Pot welcome to historical fiction author, Milana Marsenich. Milana is going to share her inspirations behind her fabulous book…

Copper Sky

 

Set in the Copper Camp of Butte, Montana in 1917, a time when mining accidents were common, Copper Sky tells the story of two women with opposite lives. Kaly Shane, mired in prostitution, struggles to find a safe home for her unborn child. Marika Lailich, a Slavic immigrant, dodges a prearranged marriage to become a doctor. As their paths cross, and they become unlikely friends, neither woman knows the family secret that ties them together.

Author Inspiration

The initial inspiration for Copper Sky came from a dream that I had after reading A. Den Doolaard’s 1958 novel The Land Behind God’s Back. The story talks about a young engineer who builds a bridge over the Tara Gorge in Montenegro just before World War II. The war starts and he blows the bridge up to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy. He is later captured and hanged over the Gorge. My dream was about a woman who loved him and waited for him to come home. In the dream she was a healer and she couldn’t understand the brutality of war. I woke up and wrote the dream down which became a short story, a story that was far too expansive to be so short. I decided to turn it into a novel.

When I presented the beginnings of that novel to a teacher, he asked if I’d ever been to Montenegro. At the time the answer was no, but my great grandparents had lived there, and I knew their stories. He suggested it would be difficult to write a book placed in country that I’d never been to, and that I should place it closer to home. Immediately I seized on the idea and set Copper Sky in Butte, Montana, my hometown. I’ve lived and worked in many places but my heart has always returned to Butte. I wanted to write something that represented the courage and generosity that I’ve witnessed through out my life, and first experienced in Butte, Montana.

My father was a great storyteller and I grew up listening to his stories of Butte and Montenegro. My paternal great grandmother in Montenegro saw the white wolf following her. She could stop a snake with a whistle. She had once crossed a mountain haunted by the ghosts of unburied soldiers to save a child’s life. From these stories I deducted that she knew how to heal through herbs, folk remedies, and all of the mysteries of the invisible world. I drew my inspiration for Marika’s character from that initial dream, the stories of my paternal great grandmother and all that I’d imagined her to be. I felt so close to her, a woman I’d never met, that I can’t help but wonder how many of her stories got mixed up with the stories of my maternal great grandmother, a woman I did meet. She was a midwife in Philipsburg, Montana and delivered over 500 babies. She had eleven children and outlived all but two of them, dieing when she was 93. She was also as a healer, using natural and herbal remedies to kick out disease and promote recovery, and when they didn’t work, she saw the white horse—as I remember it—as an omen of death.

More inspiration for Marika came from my father’s side of the family. In Copper Sky Marika dodges a prearranged marriage to become a doctor. My paternal grandparents’ families put them together in a room to discuss a possible marriage. The conversation went something like this: “Do you want to get married Jovanka?” “I don’t care Milosav, do you?” “Well if you do.” “Ok then, if you do.” And they got married. Ultimately they did choose, but the idea of it came from their parents. They stayed married until my grandfather died, about 45 years later. My grandmother was significantly younger than him and, as I wrote Copper Sky, I wondered how did she get to “yes”. Was it really that simple? Or did she have time to think, fight, and decide? 

Kaly Shane is orphaned as an infant. Things don’t go so well for her and she ends up working as a prostitute in Butte’s Red Light District. She retains a professional distance which becomes much more difficult when she finds herself pregnant. She wants a good home for her child, something completely different than her own upbringing. The inspiration for her character comes through my many years of working as a therapist with children in the foster care system. I’ve had the opportunity to witness their courage, self-reliance and fierce fights for survival. Many of my clients have developed grit and determination in learning to trust and work through a multitude of traumas. The spirit of this work informed Kaly’s character. I tried to imagine what experiences in the early 1900’s would push a woman to live the dangerous life of prostitution. I thought about how the traumas of our lives affect us, as well as the traumas of a town, and maybe even the traumas that happen before we were born. I thought of all of the ways that love heals and transforms pain as cornerstones for Kaly’s character.

Throughout Copper Sky a white dog wanders the streets of Butte, representing the good heart of the town. He is a guardian, both alive and ghostly, who watches over Kaly, her deceased twin sister, and others. He travels through time with “an old time miner on the edge of his last dust-filled breath”. The inspiration for the white dog came from my paternal great grandmother’s white wolf and my maternal great grandmother’s white horse. Many years after I wrote the first draft of Copper Sky the town of Butte erected a statue to a dog named Auditor. He belonged to the town and the miners who fed him. He lived 17 years. I knew nothing about Auditor when I first wrote Copper Sky and the four short chapters from the white dog’s point of view. Now I think maybe the inspiration for the white dog also came through an opening to the invisible world that somehow allowed me to find Auditor out there, keeping the miners company.

Butte is a town with a lot of trauma. Like all mining towns, accidents fill its history, the accidents affecting everyone. In 1895 a warehouse, where dynamite was secretly stored, caught fire and exploded, killing at least 51 people. In 1917 a cable caught fire in the Speculator Mine, killing 168 men. In 1979 my brother died in a tragic motorcycle accident. Each of these tragedies inspired the framework for Copper Sky. I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to make sense of death. The inspiration for the mystical parts of the story come from my own search for the invisible world, the other side, the quest to find heaven and God, to put the dead to rest and understand love. At its heart Copper Sky is a mining city love tale, inspired by fierce, loyal, and disturbed love, love that is ultimately a reconciling force in a community laced with tragedy.

Links for Purchase

Open Books

Amazon US

Amazon UK

B&N

About the author

Milana Marsenich lives in Northwest Montana near Flathead Lake at the base of the beautiful Mission Mountains. She enjoys quick access to the mountains and has spent many hours hiking the wilderness trails with friends and dogs. She has an M.Ed. in Mental Health Counseling from Montana State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. She has previously published in Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, The Polishing Stone, and Feminist Studies. She has a short story included in The Montana Quarterly book: Montana, Warts and All, The Best From Our First Decade. Copper Sky is her first novel.

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Author’s Inspiration ~ Paula Lofting #HistFic #mustread @paulalofting

I have historical fiction author, Paula Lofting, on the blog today. Paula is going to share with us her inspiration behind her fabulous series…

Sons of the Wolf

Sometimes the enemy is closer and far more shadowy and dangerous than any battle or war…

Sons of the Wolf is a series set in the years leading up to the end of Anglo-Saxon rule when the ineffective and indolent Edward the Confessor sits on the throne, indulging in such pleasures as hunting, feasting and praying, whilst his leading earl, Harold Godwinson administrates the kingdom for him, working hard to ensure the safety of England against those who would attack her.

Against this backdrop, Sussex thegn and king’s warrior, Wulfhere, is caught up in a feud with his neighbour, Helghi, who casts his covetous eyes over Wulfhere’s homestead and plots the downfall of his family. When Lord Harold demands that the two enemies end the feud by wedding their son and daughter, Wulfhere fights to extricate himself and his beloved daughter, Freyda, from the bargain he has been forced into entering, without compromising his honour and loyalty to his lord.

Can Wulfhere save Freyda from Helghi’s evil clutches and remain true to his lord?

Will Helghi’s evil intentions stop at Freyda or will he want more of what Wulfhere has than is daughter?

Author’s Inspiration

Books have always been more than just words on a page and paper in a binder, for living inside those pages, is the magic that exists inside all of us. Everyone has within them the power to create anything they wish – worlds with all kinds of amazing wonderments: islands, cities, undulating hills; snow-capped mountains surrounded by lush forests with their hidden magic; sun-reflected lakes; waterfalls that cascade into deep blue lagoons that stretch into rivers that snake through valleys of green marshy slopes. I could go on, but it would take forever to list all the amazing things that a story or a fairy tale brings to our imaginations. These were the places inhabiting my mind as a child finding escape and adventure in a book.

I was a huge bookworm. I remember Dad would take me to the library on a Saturday, and I spent ages there, looking at the books and grabbing the ones with covers that caught my eyes. I would choose books by Rosemary Sutcliffe, C.S. Lewis and anything that looked fascinating with a historical element and I especially loved stories about dragons, faraway places, and animals that could talk, like in Rupert Bear.

By the time I was a teenager, I had discovered one of my most favourite authors. I was still reading books by Rosemary Sutcliffe, stories I adored. She kindled the spark that would one day turn into a fierce love of all things past. But by now, I had found Leon Garfield, who managed to captivate my imagination, and took me from the post Roman-British world of Rosemary Sutcliffe to the streets of London in the 18thc. Sutcliffe and Garfield both wrote books in historical settings for adolescents, and these books were extremely erudite for my tender years, even for a seasoned reader, but oh how they sparked my imagination, leaving me to fulfil my desire for more, by creating stories of my own which I would write down in an exercise book. I went on to read and discover many more wonderful authors as I grew older.   

Like most avid readers, I wrote a lot. One day I started on a post Roman-Britain epic about Ambrosius Aurelianus, that I never got around to finishing, but wrote 500 pages or so by hand. By the time I was in my 20s, I’d lost my aspirations of writing forever when I sadly chose to forget ever being a writer because, a) I thought I wasn’t good enough b) I would never be able to afford a typewriter that was worth its salt, and c) life events took over.

It was not until a lot of water and hardship had gone under the bridge that I reached an age where I was in a position to actually do something about my dream of writing a historical novel. After dealing with some personal issues, I found myself at college learning to use a computer which opened the door to a lot of things for me. For some reason, I’d stopped reading for a while and when I started again, I realised my old passion for history and books had never gone away, remaining in a corner of my mind for years, just waiting for me to call to it again. I’d lost the impetus with the post-Romano book, so I decided to find a period I could write about that hadn’t been written about much before. I explored the medieval era and gained interest in the 12^th – 15^th centuries.

To keep a long story short, I began my journey to writing when I was training to be a nurse, but it wasn’t until a re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings that I found my new obsession. I was so affected by that day, all I could think about for days was what happened to those ordinary men a thousand years ago and the injustice of it all. I craved to have more knowledge, and no other dynasty would do. My heart was firmly stuck in the 11thc. Inspired, I found myself joining a re-enactment society which doubly enhanced my research of this period. Nowadays, I see it this way, what can my writing bring to my re-enacting.

The book that was to become my first baby was written in 6 years. 3 of those years coincided with my nurse training. It was the longest book ever, something like 320,000 words which I eventually made into two books. I decided that because it had taken me 6 years to write as it was, I wasn’t going to waste more time trying to find an agent and then waiting more years whilst they looked for a deal for me, that’s if I even managed to find an agent! Someone recommended an assisted publisher, which was not the best decision I ever made, due to the cost I was never going to recoup in sales. In those days, I was naïve and too eager to get my book published. I would not pay to publish again. My book was called Sons of the Wolf and was set in the years before the Battle of Hastings and was centred around a character called Wulfhere, the thegn of Horstede who owned the land almost a thousand years ago in a village near to where I live in Sussex. I read about him first in a book by David Howarth, 1066: The Year of The Conquest. I looked him up in the Domesday Book and decided that he would be my main character, creating a family for him and a backstory. The only thing known of him was that he held the village of Horstede (now called Little Horsted) and 5 hides of land and his property of ploughs and oxen, how many tenants he had owing service to him. The story I created for him becomes entwined with those of the historical characters, Harold Godwinson, and Edward the Confessor, being just two. It is a family saga in which we follow both the fortunes of Wulfhere and his lord, Earl Harold, and their families. Later I was to republish Sons of the Wolf and its’ sequel, The Wolf Banner under my own publishing imprint, Longship Publishing. I am much happier working under my own company with like-minded friends whom support each other and also publish under the name. I am currently working on the third in the series, Wolf’s Bane.

For me writing is a hobby, something to do in my spare time. It’s an escape, something I can do to bolster my self-esteem and help me get these wonderful characters and their doings out of my head and into their world. I work in quite a stressful job and it allows me to relax and do to people the things I couldn’t do to them in real life! I my writing I can go where I want to, be who I want to, and be part of the past, whichever past I would like it to be. I wish it could be my sole profession, but alas, that’s not possible right now. But who knows, maybe one day I will sell enough to establish myself part time. We will have to see

Links for Purchase

Amazon US

Amazon UK

About the author

Born in Middlesex, Paula emigrated as a child with her family to South Australia where she went to school and grew up. There she discovered her imagination and love of books. She returned to the country of her birth, the UK, and now lives in Sussex. She is a psychiatric nurse by day, re-enactor with Regia Anglorum by weekend, and a writing demon by night and in her spare time.

Paula’s advice to newbee writers:

"It’s a big world that writers live in, with lots of competition. This is what I tell myself, write for enjoyment, don’t write to make money. Write for yourself, regardless of what is popular and selling; for if you don't write what you love, then how can you expect others to love what you write."

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