Would you like to meet her?

Clara is certainly being wheeled out now. She also appears in The House on Schellberg Street and that is coming out on 11 April.

On 17 April, I’ll be reading from both The House on Schellberg Street and Clara’s Story, along with my two very good friends and talented writers, Sarah Dobbs and Debz-Hobbs-Wyatt, who will also read from their work, at the beautiful International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.

We’re holding an event called Women’s Writing. We’ll be talking a little about our writing and reading some excerpts. Then we’ll also read from a project we’re working on together. We’ll also discuss what writing within the framework of Higher Education is like, whether studying at university helped our journeys as writers and what our relationship to the academy is like now and whether that helps or hinders our writing process. And we’ll do a Q and A session.

Is she taking over?

I found myself the other day considering a situation at work and asking myself what Clara would do – and then decided to take that very same action.

Does this mean Clara and I are alike?

Or am I doing as all good writers advise and writing what I know?

Getting it right for the readers

I’ve put the novel away for a short while. This has partly been enforced because I’ve had edits to do for The House on Schellberg Street and a heap of marking as part of the day job. Actually, though, this has been somewhat of an advantage. It’s given me some distance. Also, some of the issues that have cropped up there are also relevant here.

Who is the reader?

I’m concentrating now on getting this right for the specific readers. For this particular text the reader is quite difficult to define.

·         Is it someone who has read The House on Schellberg Street? Possibly, though that is a arguably a text for younger teen girls. Certainly, younger teens could read Clara’s Story if they’ve read The House on Schellberg Street.

·         Is it for a Transita reader? This is quite likely – except sadly, Transita no longer exists. This may be because middle aged women don’t like reading about middle-aged women. Possibly nobody does. Clara is right at the end of middle-age when her story really begins.

·         Is it for history-lovers? Or more precisely herstory-lovers? Almost certainly. It is after all, a biography, though written using fiction techniques. Her story has to be told, sad as it is, because she was such an extraordinary woman.

In the end, I guess, it’s just a matter of making it as engaging as I can. Thankfully, she is becoming more real. That has to be good.

The Schellberg Cycle

Working with an editor on The House on Schellberg Street has made me realise that I do in fact have another books to write. So, my sabbatical has led to a collection of five texts. I’d like to name this The Schellberg Cycle. The books can actually be read in any order. Three are for younger readers and two for adults though as long as someone has started with something for the right age, all others can be read. So we have:

·         The House on Schellberg Street

·         Clara’s Story

·         The BDM girl ( working title only)

·         The Woman Who Nearly Shot Hitler

·         The Class Letter

Quite exciting, really.     

Edit 2 underway

Looking better now

I’m thankful that what worried me when I read the text through the first time has largely been dealt with. It does seem convincing now and I believe the reader will develop an interest in and an empathy for main character Clara. The World War I scenes now work better though even in this second read through I’ve noticed some places that need developing a little more.  

Getting it all out there

Getting the sister novel out

Exciting times.  Well actually, it’s sister novel, The House on Schellberg Street, that has been accepted. So far, I’ve had some encouraging noises form the main editor. The nitty-gritty is yet to come.

Now, though, I’m working on all sorts of things – getting the web site up and running, thinking about a launch, approaching people who might sell it and getting a few school visits organised.

Links

Somehow, Clara’s Story becomes part and parcel of this.

As do the two blogs – this and the one about The House on Schellberg Street.

School visits and workshops  

I’m particularly interested in doing school visits and talks about these two slightly different Holocaust stories. I’m also preparing an interactive workshop about The House on Schellberg Street and as soon as Clara’s Story is ready, there’ll be one about that also.

Lecture on Representing the Holocaust  

I’m also busily preparing a couple of lectures for a course I’ll be teaching on at the University of Salford next year. I’ll be dealing with how I did my research and the ethical issues I’ve had to face in dealing with this material. The content for just one lecture and seminar might make a substantial part of a secondary book to go with this material. Rather like this blog now has almost 11,000 words.      

Meanwhile the editing continues

I’m almost at the end of the first rewrite. Literally just one scene to go, albeit a rather tricky one. Then I’ll be on to Edit 2.    

Interested in finding out more about a school visit? Contact me here.        

22 August 1942

Now I really am getting to the crucial points in this story. This the date on which Clara is transported to Theresienstadt from Stuttgart.  The Jews to be transported were gathered at the Killesberg exhibition grounds. I’ve almost finished writing this scene. It is the last crossover with  The House on Schellberg Street. The writing has convinced me that Clara was still not absolutely certain of her fate.  Even now she remains hopeful.

The Killesberg still has a big outdoor exhibition site. When I was a student in Stuttgart in 1973 I mainly remember it as being a pleasant enough park. For some reason, though, I didn’t like it. There was no logic to this at all. Was I picking up some bad atmosphere form the place? Or had I actually come across the story of its past and forgotten it again and this was my subconscious telling me this?

The Zeichen der Erinnerung web site gives some information about the transports and a quite interesting account by a German eye witness who saw the transportees depart. It leaves us wondering still: did they know or didn’t they know? Clara’s transport is not mentioned here but it is on the memorial at the Nordbahnhof.

Now I have to deal with the journey to Theresienstadt, life there, and then the transport to Treblinka. I’m not doing any scenes at Treblinka. The final scene will be Clara’s granddaughter, Renate, finding the letter that she wrote but couldn’t send from Rexingen.

I shall put notes at the end of the book about what we think happened to her and how her life ended. We do know though that she was taken to Treblinka. Until we found out about eighteen months ago the family had thought she went to Auschwitz.  

It’s a little shocking that I’m so near the end of the book. It’s perhaps going to come out a little shorter than I’d intended. I do have a couple of extra scenes that I might put in but this must be because they’re necessary, not just to make the book longer. I’ll soon be into editing and redrafting.          

The real dilemma

We’re moving rapidly into the Holocaust part of the story. The Hilfsklasse class has now received a second visit. Clara has her marching orders. She will now move to Rexingen. She will live amongst Jews even though she no longer considers herself Jewish. She loses her name and becomes Klara Sarah. She has to leave her home.   

Now I’m facing the real crux of this story. How can I make it palatable? If I do make it palatable am I in danger of sanitizing it?

I’m actually gradually discovering that there is an explanation as to why Clara did not escape. The story is uncovering what stopped her reacting to her situation in a more predictable way. Undoubtedly she had a great sense of loyalty towards the Hilfsklasse. She has a lot of faith in human nature. She is extremely optimistic. Surely it can’t get any worse. It has got to start getting better soon. She isn’t really Jewish. She has a sound religious faith.  

So now I give her a setting in Rexingen. Some of this still crosses over with The House on Schellberg Street. After that, though, it gets more challenging.  

Humour in a dark story

“Dark” is a good word for rather sombre, thought-provoking stories – just a “light” in this context means something that is warm and sunny but also something that  has a gentle touch. These two words work rather well together in the context of prose fiction because often depth is given to a story by including both rather like light and shade make a picture more three-dimensional. Have you ever noticed the darker, sober moment, perhaps a moment of pathos in a good sitcom? It usually comes at that Golden Segment point which is between two thirds and four fifths but never exactly three quarters of the way through. Without it, the sitcom doesn’t quite work.

In a darker story we need a streak of light. When I wrote Nick’s Gallery now republished as A Gallery forNick, the story about Barney coming to terms with the death of his best friend, I worried about my character Cynthia who is a bit of a punk and quite comical with it. I introduced her to my critique group and my writing teacher and the reaction was unanimous: everyone wanted more of her. Now, I can’t believe I ever thought she wasn’t appropriate.

I’ve just written a scene “stolen” from The House on Schellberg Street. I’m showing several of the same scenes included there, but from Clara’s point of view. Throughout Clara is shown as good-hearted and with a sharp sense of humour. Here, though she excels.

·         Whilst pretending to be the mother of the German man who has bought her house she claims that the Jewish woman who used to live there had excellent taste.

·         She says “Heil  Edler” instead of “Heil Hitler”

·         She says it is very sensible that her own name has been changed to Klara Sarah Lehrs.

·         She claims that the money her son gave to the Jewish lady was very fair.

·         When Hani, the young girl who helps in the house form time to time comes out with “Oh bugger old Fury-Chops.”, meaning Hitler of course, she laughs uncontrollably and decides form then onwards she will call him the same.

For the reader, hopefully, much of the humour comes from the way the SS officer constantly “puts his foot in it”.

Interestingly this comes at about 70,000 words. The novel / biography will be about 100,000 words.