Fifth in the video series is up!

This episode focuses on treatment of the Romany (Romani) people and the seldom-discussed Lebensborn project. If you thought you knew enough about the Nazi era, think again. 

Video #2

...and there will be more...

New release!

The conclusion of the story I began in Risking Exposure will be released this Thursday, November 15th! Historical events included are the Nuremberg Rally, Kristallnacht, and the Kindertransport, all seen through the eyes of my teenage characters.


This amazing cover was created by Michael Rausch.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today, I'm taking a break from my usual blog in which I highlight one right thing done by an individual. The reason? Today, April 24 2017, is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Because of its origin on the Hebrew calendar, the day falls on a different Gregorian calendar date every year. Unesco has set January 27th as Holocaust Remembrance Day, so I suppose that makes two dates each year in which we are to remember. Either way, the date's purpose is to give us pause so we can remember victims of the Holocaust and to refocus on the pledge: Never Again.

Twenty years ago, Holocaust survivors talked with school students and civic groups, putting a personal face and story to the greater horror. Fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors are alive now to share their stories in person. Thankfully, many documented their truths via the archives at US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, and numerous books, articles, and videos. There is great wisdom there, free for the asking.

And so here we are, a third generation away from those horrible events, and the question is as relevant as ever - have we learned the lessons of history so we can, with confidence, say 'Never Again'?

Prejudice and racial/religious profiling still exist worldwide, including right in our own country, our own towns. People are still lumped into categories and weighed against a popular standard in an assessment of worth. Genocide, wiping out entire populations based on some defining feature, still happens around the world.

In addition to the prevalence of anti-semitism in today's world, the 'other' victims of the Nazi regime also continue to be viewed as lesser human beings, still fighting for basic rights and basic dignities. This includes people who are homosexual, disabled, Roma Gypsies, or anyone who resists their government's status quo.

So no, even with two recognized dates in which to examine our prejudices and our actions toward one another, we haven't learned. The possibility of another holocaust is quite real.

God help us.

And that's why I continue to read and write about those years. I can't change history, and I can't fix the world. But I must do what I can to share what I've learned with subsequent generations. Anyone who reads Risking Exposure and its sequel (my work-in-progress) will hopefully see how dreadfully simple it is to move from feeling prejudices to verbalizing them to acting upon them (or turning a blind eye while others do so.) Only awareness of the historical cost will prevent us from going down that road again.

I'm back, I think

For a variety of personal and work-related reasons, I haven't blogged in months. Hopefully, I'm getting back in the groove now. 

 

Tomorrow night, I'll join others from the Dietrich Theater's Endless Mountains Writers Group at Open Mic Night! I'll read the opening scene of my current WIP, the sequel to Risking Exposure, tentatively titled The Path Divided. Stop by the Dietrich at 7:00, pull up a chair, and have a listen. Hope to see you there!

An unbelievable honor

In one of my book give-aways last year, Ramisa the Authoress, a blogger from Australia, scored a copy of Risking Exposure. Lucky for me. She read it, loved it, and placed it on her Favorite Books of All Time list.
She blogged about my book, sponsored a give-away contest, and in general has been unbelievably supportive of my debut novel from half a world away.

In her most recent blog post, she reviewed and categorized some of her 2014 favorites. Risking Exposure figured twice into her list of Best in Books - books you 'pushed' the most to your friends, and books you found thought-provoking/ life-changing.

Whoa.Thank you, Ramisa.
As a writer, that's amazing. Humbling. An unbelievable honor.

If that weren't enough, she mentioned me again under the Looking Ahead category, listing my as yet unfinished, unnamed sequel as one of the books she is anticipating the most, hopefully in 2015.

I'm anticipating the book also. I know my story line, the characters and their interplay, where the story ends, etc. Even so, the process of the story revealing itself as I write is astonishing, confusing, exhilarating. It requires the delicate balance of my conscious mind's need for control and my muse's need for creative license.

I hope the result garnishes fans as loyal and enthusiastic as Ramisa and others who have encouraged me on this adventure.

Last post of 2014!

As I actively work on the research and writing involved in the sequel to Risking Exposure, I'm also trying to keep up this blog, my website, marketing, presentations - oh, and a job and family and a house and LIFE!

So please excuse me if I've been off-schedule on posting here.

Today, I took some time to add a slide show to my website. It features photos Katie and I shot during the research trip to Munich. Each slide is captioned with either bits of history or personal thoughts. So check it out!

Hopefully I'll get back to Germany again. I'd like to check out specifics on the locations I'm using in the sequel, in person. Then I can share more pictures with all of you!

Best wishes for 2015. 

A fan, an interview, and a giveaway!

I had the great honor of being approached by an enthusiastic reader from Australia - dare I say it - a fan! Since Risking Exposure is on her personal list of favorite books of all time, she asked for an interview and for my permission to offer a giveaway on her blog. Of course, I said yes to both :)

So here's her blog, the interview, and the opportunity for you to win one of two free e-books. Have fun!

Goodreads giveaway!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Risking Exposure

by Jeanne Moran

Giveaway ends June 21, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Help our libraries!

This past Wednesday, I was The Author at the Susquehanna County Library Association's annual Author Luncheon. What an honor to speak in front of 60 attendees! The event is a fundraiser for the Library, and Susan Stone, Head Librarian, told me that library fundraising is becoming more commonplace than ever before. Even within the luncheon there was fundraising - a sale of 50/50 tickets, and silent auction for some lovely prints, flowering bulbs, jewelry, and a favorite among the attendees, a 'books and bubbly' basket. I am pleased to think that my presentation may have helped the library raise a few dollars.

What a shame it has come to that. Between deep state funding cuts (thank you, Tom Corbett), consumer demand and need for costly technology, and increased operating expenses for maintenance and heat, our public libraries have trouble balancing their budgets. And yet on a fundamental level, our very existence as a free nation depends on free exchange of ideas. Those ideas are cataloged and stored in our public libraries, and are accessible without charge to anyone who asks. It seems our Public Libraries joins our Public Schools as institutions present in virtually every community in America, providing free access to information vital to our continuity as a prosperous nation and doing so with ever-dwindling funds.

On a recent History Channel show, I learned that Ben Franklin 'invented' and established the world's first free Public Library. One commentator expressed a belief that the free Public Library was actually Franklin's greatest contribution to mankind. Long may our libraries remain free and public.

How we confront our fears

The other day, one of those black, hairy spiders, the ones that are over an inch long and look like a child of Shelob from Lord of the Rings, crawled past my co-worker's feet. She screamed and jumped back, and the now-frightened spider tried to hide in a corner. Startled, I hollered too, then grabbed a tissue box and chased the bugger until he was history. When I was done flushing his remnants down the toilet, I scrubbed my hands and shuddered. But my poor co-worker had barely moved from her frozen terror.

I'm not fond of spiders, and ones longer than my thumb and hairier than a chihuahua give me the creeps. But the incident made me think - why do we each react so differently to what we're afraid of? Some of us are temporarily paralyzed by our fear. Unable to react to or gain control over the object of our fear, it controls us and leaves us vulnerable. Thieves who use the victim's own fear as a weapon against them take advantage of this very human reaction.


Then there are people who fight against the object of their fear. This may be a positive fight, as I hope mine was, ridding my workplace of a totally gross critter. But others may exhibit their fight against the object of their fear in a negative, harmful way. In a recent op-ed in the NY Times, Nicholas Kristof says that Boko Haram, the terrorist group responsible for kidnapping over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls, is reacting to their own fears.

He says that they are afraid of the societal changes bound to take place when girls and women are educated. The result of education for girls is a society in which women are more able to provide for themselves and their families. This means a more robust economy which in turn strengthens the tax base. Educated women are less likely to be dependent on a male provider, and may not be willing to remain in a more traditional subservient role.

So maybe that's why Boko Haram is lashing out at the Nigerian schoolgirls. They are afraid that intelligent, educated women will not put up with their bullying and will not go along with their propaganda.

Image from Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn 

The most frequent questions, Pt. 3

Will there be a sequel to Risking Exposure? What are you writing now?

When I finished writing Risking Exposure, I was tired. I had spent several years reading everything I could get my hands on about the Nazi era, watching documentaries, etc. Pouring through so much twisting of the truth and outright evil was exhausting, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. My conclusion was that I never wanted to read another thing about Nazi Germany ever again.


But within 6 or 8 weeks, something happened. I'd be driving down the road and a character I'd relegated to the 'deleted scenes' folder would pop into my mind. Something a neighbor said would remind me of a dialogue exchange I'd cut. Pretty soon those characters and exchanges were forming new scenes and it became clear - the characters in my deleted scenes folder wanted their story told too. It's my job to give them their opportunity.

What is taking shape is a sequel, although told through another character's POV. No, I don't have a title or a time frame for release. That's actually not even on my radar yet.
I've been researching events which took place in Munich during July 1938 until very early 1939, about 6 months after Risking Exposure ends. I have what I believe to be a framework on which to hang my story. In my over-ambitious mind, I have set a goal of getting a first draft written by the end of 2014. (I may kick myself for making that public.)

The most frequent questions, Pt. 2

Why would a nice person like you write about Nazi Germany?

  I've written (and published) fiction and non-fiction short pieces for all ages, preschool through adult. Risking Exposure is the only one set in Nazi Germany. The others aren't even remotely similar in time or place or even in tone - Chicken Soup for the Soul for audiences seeking inspiration, Highlights High Five for preschoolers, Advance for Physical Therapists for PTs and PTAs, Discovery Years and Thriving Family for parents, Hopscotch for kids, plus a few currently on Wattpad. I think across genres, I read across genres, so I write across genres too.

I love stories, real or fictional, in which an unlikely hero must pull himself up by his bootstraps and become more than he was, in which an ordinary person is forced to rise above her circumstances in order to stand up for what is right.
That means the hero would have to be in a time and place in which doing what's right comes at great personal risk. Nazi Germany was just such a place.

All four of my grandparents emigrated to the US from Germany in the 1920s. One grandmother lived in our apartment building when I was a kid, and the other one moved in with us when I was a teen. So we got a good dose of the language, food, music, and culture of the homeland they loved. When I learned of the Nazi years in school, I asked the same questions many have asked - How could that happen? How could the country which produced my own family, plus geniuses like Bach and Goethe allow such horrors to occur right under their noses?

The answers are complex of course, spanning decades of Germany history and the culture of everyday life in a police state and dictatorship. But in exploring the answers, I found some simple themes which resonated with me -
it was a time and place of blind allegiance to an ideal;
in which some people held more value than others;

in which people were brainwashed by a flood of government-controlled information;
in which the voices of those who spoke against the regime were silenced through threats, violence, or detention.

It was and still is a perfect storm to use as a backdrop for a hero story. That's probably why so many of us writers choose to set our stories there.

The most frequent questions

I've had the good fortune to take part in a number of book signings, and I've presented my historical research in front of more than 100 people now. Audiences have varied in age and size, but I find I'm being asked three questions at almost every event. I'll try to answer them here in installments.

1. Did you always want to be a writer/ write a book?
As a young girl, I did want to write stories. Even then, I was fascinated by the way stories and characters stayed with me, and I wanted to be able to have my ideas impact other people that way. Experiencing a story for me has always been close to experiencing it first-hand - I feel emotions, learn lessons, cheer for heroic actions, and weep over sad endings. Through reading historical fiction and stories set in distant lands, I've come to understand that people through history and around the world are pretty much the same.
So yes, I did want to write when I was a kid. But I also wanted to be a ballerina and to travel the world in a hot air balloon. Turns out I'm a klutz and not fond of heights, so those things didn't happen. And even though I loved creative writing class in high school, I never pursued it in my college or career  plans. I went to college to learn a skill to get a job, not to pursue an interest which would I thought would never earn me a living.

Once my own kids were grown and I had time for personal interests, I found that I still liked to write. In fact, the more I did it, the more I liked it. No, I loved it. Now, a perfect day for me involves some coffee, a good dose of sunshine, and a couple hours of writing.



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Why would a nice person like you write about Nazi Germany?