Guest Post: Fred Stemme & historical fiction + giveaway!

I am hosting my first guest post today! Author Fred Stemme joins us with his new book The Lieutenant's Whistle and tells us a little about writing historical fiction.

Do you enjoy historical fiction? You can get a chance to win a copy of The Lieutenant's Whistle so don't forget to join the giveaway at the end of this post. Thank you Fred!

Synopsis of The Lieutenant's Whistle: Before America's entry into World War I, The American Field Service organized to help bleeding France. In thankfulness for France's aid during the Revolutionary War, young American males volunteered as ambulance drivers to repay their country's debt. Henry 'Hoop' Braddock is one such man. He and the boys of Section Two drive Model T ambulances, and are 'En Repos,' a unit awaiting assignment. One day, in a crowded, smoke-filled canteen in Bar-le-Duc, Hoop meets Kyla Laurens, a Scottish nurse. Her violet-colored eyes burn into his heart, branding him. As fate would have it, Hoop and Kyla end up serving at the same chateau-turned-hospital while the bloody battle to save Verdun ensues. At first, Hoop has precious little time to spend with Kyla due to the German attack. Instead, his time is spent driving his ambulance, all the while hearing the gruesome and touching detailed accounts of the fighting from injured soldiers riding in his cab. But later, once the pressure is off, a romance between Hoop and Kyla begins to flourish. Yet will experiences from Kyla's past prove fatal to their relationship?

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History is full of mother-loads left by the ages. My goal is to tap them and make history come alive, allowing the reader to sense another time and place. My intent is to transfer the images in my brain to that of the reader's via description and dialogue.

In my new book, The Lieutenant's Whistle, my intent is to show my first book's protagonist, Henry Braddock, what he feels as he becomes an ambulance driver in the Great War. The smoke of battle, the chaos of war with its hideous injures, his falling in love with Kyla Laurens a violet-eyed lass from Scotland, her frailties, the loss of love and the attempt to retrieve it. In a nutshell, the vagaries of life, love and war set in early twentieth century Europe.

In my first book, Beguiling Dreams, my purpose was to show the fabric of small town life early in the twentieth century with it's brick streets, its Midwestern values, its generosity and conflicting small-mindlessness as well as its nurturing cocoon-like environment.

At my website, Hourglass Historicals, you can read the first chapter of each book for free. (The books are written to stand alone - you don't have to read the first to understand the second.)

I hope you enjoy them!

Fred Stemme has always been interested in writing, but like many beginning writers he didn't know what to write about. He had always thought that he would write a non-fiction book in the history field. Then he enrolled in a master's program at Drake University and wrote a paper on the Lost Generation. (That paper was later published in the Lost Generation Journal along with his poem: “Montparnasse.) There was a book, he knew, lying in all of the research he had done to write the paper. But what kind of a book should it be? The answer that came back surprised him: “fiction.” 

Fred had often wondered in his history courses how the fluctuating economy and cataclysmic events affected the man in the street. Now he could apply that curiosity to historical fiction. 

While attending numerous writing classes and starting an insurance agency, he hammered out Beguiling Dreams, his first book. The new book, The Lieutenant's Whistle, is the second in the series.

Fred lives with his wife Jeannie, along their little dog Casey, near the Santa Fe Trail in Overland Park, Kansas. He has three children and four grandchildren who all live in Southern California.

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