I’m not entirely sure when the World War I bug first bit me. Perhaps when I was in high school, and my history teacher gave a rather stirring lecture about what life was like in the trenches. It always stuck with me, that lecture, and maybe that was the first little nibble from the bug. Later, as my interest in WWII developed and became very strong, I started studying World War I as a follow up. Because I feel one can’t really be an expert in World War II without at least knowing the basics of World War I. I think that’s when the bug really found a new host, and bit down a little harder.
Then, I wrote a book. This was all the way back in 2011, and it was the first time I had ever written a book. I remember when I typed the very first line on that very first page of my very first book. “I’m doing this,” I remember thinking to myself. “I’m writing a book.” That book happened to be about World War II. It was a long struggle, getting that book down on paper. The first draft clocked in at a whopping 189,000 words or some such craziness (its current word count is about half that).
That’s a lot of words, but the story wasn’t even finished yet. Because World War I was swirling in my brain pretty good by then. I had started reading books about it. Looking at pictures. Collecting images in my mind. One old volume at the library rapidly spiraled into several – especially when it came to the air war. So I did what any writer would do. I opened my lap top, stared at a blank screen for a while, then I started typing. Just like that, my second book was under way. And this time – it was World War I.
It’s a confusing and chaotic time period for many reasons. World War I was a conflict unlike any other that the world had seen or even fathomed up until that point. While some unlucky soldiers would get a ghastly preview of trench warfare during earlier conflicts, like the American Civil War, it wasn’t until the First World War that the concept really dug in (war pun? Is that appropriate? Probably not…). Generals and soldiers with ideas of battlefield glory in their minds promptly got their dreams blown apart. Literally. Because old-fashioned horses and swords were no match for modern, mechanized artillery and machine guns. The war quickly devolved into a deadly stalemate. Ground was won or lost in yards – each yard coming with a horrific, unthinkable death toll.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the weapons took a nasty turn in World War I. Technology, meant to assist mankind in more peaceful endeavors, quickly became a fast-paced instrument of death. Artillery guns shot farther, faster, and had more power. Machine guns mowed down entire regiments in minutes. Poison gas made its entrance into the world, and left permanent scars both physically and emotionally.
And the airplane… an invention still very much in its infancy, before it even really got a chance to show the world what it could do in times of peace, was quickly mounted with guns and sent over to the battlefields. Flying also brought the battlefields much closer to home than civilians had ever seen with bombing raids, Zepplin raids, and the like.
In short – World War I was an absolutely appalling and apocalyptic conflict. People of that time thought they were facing down the end of the world, which is very evident in the art works, poetry, writings, and music pieces that came out of this troubled period. It’s easy to see why this terrible war left a lasting impression, with ripple effects that continue well into the modern day.
My passion for calling attention to this sometimes-overlooked middle child of wars developed into a second rather lengthy book. Over the years, as the story shifted and morphed, research for this book eventually brought me all the way to the mostly empty but still torn up battlefields of France and Belgium. Pieces of earth that still bear witness to those awful days of World War I. A lot of it is still there. Old and flooded out trenches, ripped up hills, graveyards. So many graveyards. Fields crammed from end to end with white crosses. Hundreds of thousands of people whose lives got cut short by this grueling war. Many of them without even the honor of a name on their headstone.
All those experiences eventually found their way into my novel, which I had been working with on and off for several years at that point. The story, much like a World War I airplane, had taken many dips and dives and turned into something all together different than what it started as. After several sets of revisions and re-workings, it became, ultimately, a story of love. A romance story, with all the girl meets boy and falls in love bullet points that a romance story should have – but with the grim, chilling, and apocalyptic reality of “the Great War” as a backdrop.
I didn’t have many plans for the book, in all honesty. Because I would never consider romance my style, and I didn’t have the highest confidence in the material. So even though it had some die-hard fans amongst beta readers, with my husband especially taking a shine to it, the book sat mostly neglected in my files on my computer.
Everything changed when I wove through the dizzying query trenches and secured myself a literary agent in 2020. After my first book was published in 2022 (check it out here), it was time to start looking for the next project. Lindsay wanted to know all the other stories I had on the back burner. I admitted that I had a handful of other completed works sitting in my files. And I admitted, begrudgingly, that one was a romance story, although it had a unique twist in the fact that you could consider World War I the main character.
After a couple publishing strike-outs with other completed manuscripts (that’s a story for a whole other blog post….) my agent showed interest in that World War I book. She wanted to take a look at it. Despite my misgivings, I handed it over to her. Next thing I know, after a hasty round of edits, we’re putting the book on sub. Shopping it around to publishers, seeing if it will get any bites. Just like before, I had little to no expectations. But you know… somehow in life, it’s the things or people you expect the least from that really end up surprising you. Such was the case with my little World War I book that could. With a flashy new title compliments of my agent, and a couple more rounds of revisions, the book got a hit.
And so, my dear readers, it is my great pleasure to announce to you that my hard-fought battle to publish a second book has ended in victory. “As the Storm Clouds Gather” is a World War I epic romance, following Roland – a soldier who eventually becomes a fighter pilot, and Ilse – a Lusitania survivor who becomes a frontline nurse – as they meet, fall in love, and ultimately try to survive as the world around them dissolves into tatters. As I have a soft spot for the air war, many famous aviation faces grace the pages of this novel, and despite all my previous reservations, I am very excited to share this story with all of you. To introduce you to these amazing characters, and to give World War I its due.
So here we go again! The real work will begin as I prepare to put this story out into the world. Look for it in April or May of 2025!
And keep writing. Keep going. Don’t give up. Because dreams can and do come true, and as it turns out, lightning can indeed strike twice.
Keep an eye out here for updates as this book 2 process gets underway!
For more photography from my travels to the European battlefields, click here.