Author Archives: Admin

Johann Konrad Dippel – Frankenstein Castle and Dippel’s Oil

Johann Konrad DippelWas “mad scientist” and alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel the inspiration and original model of Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein? Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley never mentioned Dippel or a castle in Germany in any of her previously known writings, but the ties and contacts are rife with connections.

Johann Konrad Dippel was born in 1673 and died in 1734. He wrote over seventy works and treatises on mathematics, chemistry and philosophy, most written under the pseudonym of Christianus Democritus, with his texts now buried in various academic collections. He went to University in Giessen, Germany and lectured at a number of universities, ultimately at Strasbourg University in France, where Johann Goethe also studied in the city where Gutenberg first printed before establishing his press in Mainz, and just down the Rhine River from Darmstadt University in Germany, with many students travelling between them.

A contemporary professor who complained bitterly about Dippel’s ideas of theology also praised him with a bit of ironic shade, “Dippelius was an excellent chemist and a good physician; and this procured him many friends and admirers, as all men are fond of riches.”

This perhaps alludes to Dippel’s more commercial ventures and reputation as bit of the charlatan, though perhaps not intentially. He was an alchemist, trying to turn base metals to gold, and searching especially for the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixer Vitae, the secret to extended, if not eternal life.

Dippel was an early chemical manufacturer. He created a concoction called “Dippel’s Oil” or “Dippel’s Animal Oil” used primarily as an agent in the tanning of animal hides, from where it most likely gets its name, and in cloth colouring. but also having some animal based in ingredients. It was also said locally around to be useful in calming the pangs and distempers of pregnancy. Whether it was to be used topically, digested, or as an aromatic, is unclear. Its chemical composition with ingredients like Butyronitrile Methylamine and Dimethylpyrrole Valeramide would suggest that ingesting any significant amount would not be very healthy. It was reputed to be a foul smelling business and this form of use may have also been a local joke around Darmstadt.

alchemy labDippel’s connection to Frankenstein comes from his days at the castle on the hilltop near Darmstadt above the Rhine River Valley below Mainz. Johann Dippel was resident there for a time when the castle had fallen vacant of its lordly Franckenstein family owners after the Reformation  and the War of European Succession. Dippel tried unsuccessfully to induce the Landgrave of Hesse to deed him the castle in exchange for Dippel’s providing the duke with the secret of everlasting life, the infamous elixir.

He never did come up with a successful Elixir of Eternal Life while at Darmstadt and eventually moved on, with the locals rather chasing him away like those pitchfork wielding villagers in the Universal Frankenstein movies. His permanent acquisition of the castle was opposed and the legends of his making his oil and formulas from the body parts of human corpses was likely an early form of conspiracy theory, born from his boiling animal bones to get ingredients, mixed with the castle’s time as a prison where prisoners were buried in pauper’s graves, and it was hinted that he dug them up to make his concoction, and therefore an easy connection to digging up the dead to bring eternal life.

Curiously, there is another connection between Dipple and the world of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein story, though indirect. John Polidori, Lord Byron’s companion that summer of ghost stories on the shores of Lake Geneva, is reported to have committed suicide by drinking Prussic Acid, more commonly known as Hydrogen Cyanide, which Sherlock Holmes always managed to deduce from its smell of bitter almonds. Prussic Acid gets its name and is derived from the painting pigment called Prussian Blue, which is now sometimes used as an anti-radiation medicine.

Prussian Blue was created by a Berlin paint-maker named Johan Diesbach, who reportedly made it from potash, from which potassium chloride is derived, that he got from Johann Konrad Dippel, one of the chemical ingredients at the core of Dippel’s work and a common chemical manufacturing compound today.

Dippel moved on from the castle at Darmstadt, still ever seeking his life sustaining elixir, but in the end it may have had the opposite effect. He died of complications of chemical poisoning, either from his close work with some very toxic substances over time, or perhaps sampling his own elixir formula, which may have had the opposite effect than the one intended.

Mary Shelley encounters Dippel’s Oil and the story behind it on the Rhine Trip in 1814 as told in the “Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley” when she was feeling the sensations of her first pregnancy.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trial at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

, , , ,
, ,
Posted on

Mary Shelley Reincarnated for Disney as Shelley Marie

Shelley Marie Disneyland Holloween Light ShowMary Shelley continues to make her mark since being rediscovered a couple of years ago now. She has made it as the lead in a movie, a book about her life, an audiobook, a comic book character alongside Elvira, as the star of an off-broadway musical, a teenage PBS science detective and now reincarnated under a slightly flipped name of Shelley Marie, as a showhost character for Disneyland.

As the majorette domo for a new holiday themed show at the Disney California Adventure park, Shelley Marie stars in “Villainous!” a new light and water “World of Color” show for this Halloween season.

Disney has long been known for the “princess” in various forms, but the powergirl phenomenon continues with the rise of the Disney “anti-princess” a character with a shade of the dark side, and the idea that no one is ever all good and that evil doesn’t have to be “bad”. The young character of Shelley Marie, acknowledged as a play on the name of the author of Frankenstein, is described as a celebration of the individual and that normal doesn’t mean one size fits all.

As the star of the theme park show, Shelley Marie is a regular kid, a preteen who admires some of the fantasy land’s other larger than life characters, the form-shifting of Maleficent, the spellbinding prowess of the Evil Queen from “Snow White”, and the charismatic drama of the Shadow Man from “The Princess and the Frog.”

Shelley Marie’s fashion style is rather a mash of Lydia from “Beetlejuice” meets Wednesday from “The Addams Family”, but less Goth and more vivid colors, created by Disney animator Eric Goldberg, who is best known for his work on the Genie of Disney’s “Aladdin” and “Moana”.

The 20 minute long light show premieres at the Anaheim based park on Sept. 17 leading up to Halloween. Though, unlike her most verbally expressive namesake, Shelley Marie doesn’t speak, yet. Disney might add some vocal tones to her exaggerated facial expressions of rolling her eyes when confronted by a spooky villain, but no deliberations on life and death.

The question remains if this is a one-off appearance for the dark-toned preteen, or will she find her way into a show or movie of her own. Time will tell.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trial at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

, ,
,
Posted on

Mary Shelley’s Invisible Girl meets the Invisible Man

Engraving of Rosina by Boxall of Mary Shelley's Invisible GirlA recent auction notice appeared for a sale at Bonham’s auction house in London. One of the items was listed fairly simply as “The newly discovered handwritten manuscript of part of The Invisible Girl, a semi-autobiographical short story by Mary Shelley (1797-1851)” with an auction sale price estimate between 2,000-4,000 pounds. It was being offered with items of other female authors, including a first edition of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone that had been in the possession of Rowling’s literary agent, estimated at 40-60,000 pounds at auction and letters from Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, a collection of what could be argued as the three most commercially successful women writers, or writers of any gender if you count movie box office.

The Mary Shelley manuscript offered consisted of a few pages of writing, densely packed on letter paper. There was no date of the writing on the documents but the appearance of the story in Keepsake was 1833 and said to be written in 1832. And even though Shelley’s Frankenstein shares shelf space and movie marquee history from Universal Pictures with H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, first serialized in Pearson’s Weekly in 1897, they had little in common, but would be make for perhaps an intriguing pairing.

The Invisible Girl is one of a hand full of Gothic tales that Mary Shelley published in The Keepsake. Magazine in from 1829 to 1834, capitalizing on her notoriety following the re-publishing of Frankenstein under her name. Her writing credit for the story in the Keepsake was not her name, but “By the Author of Frankenstein”. Others stories she wrote around the same period include “Ferdinando Eboli” (1829), “The Evil Eye” (1830), “Transformation” (1831), “The Dream” (1833), and “The Mortal Immortal” (1834).

The story includes several common motifs of the Gothic Terror Tale like those read during that summer by Lake Geneva, featuring an unhappy heroine, overbearing tyrant guardian, and a ghost figure wandering the landscape, like the story originally thought of by John Polidori. And like several other works by Shelley, “The Invisible Girl” employs a framed narrative often referred to in Gothic literature as a “Fragment”, like the Walton letters of Frankenstein, a device rather akin to the “found footage” horror film style of today. It wouldn’t be referred to as a “short story” until sometime later. The frame involved surrounds a portrait of a girl, and the telling of the tale to a visitor.

The Invisible Girl is a pure Gothic Tale that involves a ghost, but is not supernatural, more a mood piece of lost love and longing. It takes place on the coast of Wales, and the title refers to an apparition of a ghost-like figure, than turns out to be a young woman wandering the coast.

It is the story of Rosina, who lives with her guardian, Sir Peter Vernon. She is secretly engaged to his son, Henry. While Henry has traveled away from the estate, Sir Peter discovers the relationship and sends Rosina from the house. He later regrets his harshness and searches for Rosina, but cannot find her. He tells his son that she is dead when he returns home. Henry joins a search to recover her body, but is told by villagers of a ghostly figure of a young woman seen wandering the woods at night, they call the Invisible Girl. Henry ultimate discovers Rosina hiding in the ruin of a castle tower in the woods and realizes she is the roaming apparition. Sir Peter forgives his son for the secret engagement, and the two young lovers are at last married and together.

The story is said to be semi-autobiographical, but perhaps only draws on some of Mary’s life experiences, with rejection by the noble father of a lover, as she had been by Shelley’s father. And the Wales setting may just be a device of a remote romantic setting, or perhaps echo the location of her half-sister’s Fanny’s familiar ground. The ghost of the young woman lost in the landscape may connect to Fanny’s suicide, and Fanny’s confession to Mary that she felt she was the invisible daughter in her family. The story features scenes in a boat tossed on the sea trying to reach shore and nearly lost, which echoes both Shelley’s death in Italy and the near drowning of Mary, Percy and Claire in crossing the channel in 1814 described in the journals and the Secret Memoirs. Unlike the tragedies she might draw on for the story, it ends happily with lovers reunited and reconciled with the father, a happy ending Mary could not quite manage in her own life.

The publishing of the story included a portrait of a girl said to be the subject in the story, Rosina, seen winsomely reading in a parlor with an Italian musical instrument and a parrot. The image was a painting by William Boxall, engraved by J.C. Edwards. Boxhall, who later became director of Britain’s National Galley, early in his career focused on portraiture. He had returned from art study travels in Italy, so the painting may be from that trip and not an original for the story. William Boxall was a friend of William Wordsworth and had painted his portrait in 1831. Wordsworth and Mary Shelley knew one another through her father, so Mary may have called upon Boxall to provide a portrait for her story to be published. Mary may also have a connection to the engraver. J.C. Edwards in the 1820s was noted to be an illustrator of Shakespeare and Mary’s early friends though her father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb, both made their reputations on the bard’s revival. Who the model in the image of Rosina is, provides some mystery all its own.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trial at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

,
, ,
Posted on

Actor Clement Von Franckenstein Dies

Clement von Franckenstein Actor HeadshotA sad headline. Clement von Franckenstein was a British character actor who appeared in a number of movies in smaller roles, and guest spots in television. His most notable recent appearance was as the French President in The American President with Michael Douglas and Annette Benning. He also had parts in Lionheart with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Death Becomes Her with Meryl Streep, and in Hail Caesar! with George Clooney, playing Sestimus Amydias. He played George R.R. Martin the author of the Game of Thrones source books in the Bizardvaark TV series, and noted himself his connection to Frankenstein lore for his role as an extra in Young Frankenstein in his early days as “Villager Screaming through Bars”. For most of his acting days he went by the name Clement St George. He was listed in People Magazine in 2001 as one of “America’s Top 50 Bachelors” and he remained so.

I’m not writing this as an obituary, but because I had met him only just recently at a social event and we had a discussion about his name and its connection to Mary Shelley. In his family legend he liked to say that she borrowed the name for her book and had to change the spelling for legal reasons, or perhaps he had just heard that from somewhere. The name connection appears as a note in most of the bios being written about him. He was a charming fellow and often played urbane diplomatic types in later films.

His full name was Clement George Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein, and he was the son of Sir George Franckenstein, an Austrian diplomat who served as Ambassador to the Court of St James until the Nazi Anschluss of Austria in 1938, when he moved permanently to Britain. He apparently did not know his family all that well. His father and mother died in plane crash near Frankfurt, Germany in 1953 when he was nine years old and he was raised by family friends. He attended Eton College and served as a lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys in the Middle East and Germany. He was a singer with a baritone voice and studied opera before focusing on acting.

The question of Mary Shelley’s taking the name for her book and main character from knowledge of a German/Austrian noble family and having to change the spelling is probably unlikely, but there is a connection. In her lifetime Mary Shelley never told where the name of Frankenstein came from. It is most likely to have come from the castle along the Rhine River from her elopement trip with Percy and Claire in 1814 as told in the Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley.

Frankenstein Castle Tower in Darmstadt

The Franckenstein (Frankenstein) family began as von Breuberg in 1200 when Konrad I built Breuberg Castle in the Odenwald forest between Darmstadt and Aschaffenburg, when they were called Breubergs. His son Konrad II, built another castle on the other side of Darmstadt around 1245, the one which still stands as a ruin, called Frankenstein. There likely was an earlier medieval fortification there with the name, as it means “stone fort of the Franks” and quite literally, any stone redoubt in the region along the Rhine from the dark ages where the Franks held sway may have been called a “frankenstein”, but the family took the name from it as Freiherr Von and Zu Frankenstein.

The Free Lordship of Frankenstein was a designation in Germany meaning it was an independent land only under the jurisdiction of the German Holy Roman Emperor. The family had land holdings in Nieder-Beerbach, Darmstadt, Ockstadt, Wetterau and Hesse. German Emperor Frederick II died in 1250 and the German kingdom fell into division. Two hundred years later, during the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther in the 16th Century, the Frankenstein family sided with the Catholic Habsburg emperors and fought with the Protestant Landgrave of Hesse in the wars of the Schmalkaldic League.

The family sold their land holdings in Hesse to the Landgrave in 1662 and abandoned the castle. The title of Freiherr (Baron of the Empire) was formally granted to the family in 1670 by the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I. The family retired to lands in Franconia, distant from Hesse, and bought the Austrian Lordship of Thalheim Bei Wels just across the current German border in the 1800s. Family lines continue in Germany, Austria and England and those that came to America, including Clement.

Could the family have complained about the connection of the name to the horrific events in Mary Shelley’s novel? Is that why Mary never said the name came from a castle on the Rhine? The libel laws in England relating to a foreign family in 1818 would be limited and the changing of one letter would not be much of a disguise. Variation in spelling of names, especially German ones was very common.

See Castles of Germany

The Von and Zu Franckensteins of Austria did not make an appearance in England until 1920, so only the European branch of the family could have heard of it, once it gained international notoriety. In the novel the family is Swiss and Italian in origin, so no formal connection to Germany or Austria. Was this a deliberate shift, or just that the main story details came from her visits to Switzerland.

Could she have known the family origin of the castle name? She might have been told of it on a visit, but more likely interested in another Konrad, its later owner, who dabbled in alchemy, Konrad Dippel, who manufactured a product called Dippel’s Oil, made from boiled animal bones and who promised the Landrave of Hesse he could find the Elixir of Eternal Life and ultimately died from apparently trying it out on himself.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trial at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

, , ,
, , , ,
Posted on

All is True. I’m not so sure.

All is True Poster ImageKenneth Branagh stars in and directs an English movie about the later days in the life of William Shakespeare, from a screenplay by Ben Elton. The title is taken from an alternate title, or perhaps more an advertising slogan, for a production of the Life of Henry VIII offered at the Globe Theater, during which, according to the pre-titles a prop canon set the Thames bankside theatre ablaze, burning it to the ground, and with it the creative life of Shakespeare. The film begins with him galloping home to Stratford-Upon-Avon, to settle back into a quiet country life, haunted by the memory of his son, Hamnet, who reportedly died of plague in 1596 at the age of eleven.

The title of “all is true” seems to suggest that the film is making the argument against the controversies surrounding the authorship of the plays and poetry William Shakespeare. The film presents an engaging enough but fairly dramatically limited picture of the domestic home life of the renowned author, taking some sparse public records of his activities in Stratford and drawing a picture of life at home, with a Puritan son-in-law hoping for his fortune and wife long abandoned for his busy days in the London.

If this was the intent, I am unconvinced. The film does make a very clever argument for the oddity of bequeathing his “second best bed” in his will to his wife Anne Hathaway, but not all that much else. The film furthers an authorship controversy theme by postulating that Shakespeare doted on some poetry verses he believed written by his dead son, when his daughter eventually claims that she came up with them and her brother only wrote then down, because boys were taught to write.

This curiously intersects with some of the controversy or at least mystery, surrounding the anonymous publishing of Frankenstein, leading to questions of its authorship over the centuries, and thematically at the center of the recent biopic version of “Mary Shelley”. Kenneth Branagh directed “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” the movie that intended to hear closer to the novel than previous film versions, so that Branagh will be forever connected in search algorithms to Mary Shelley. Perhaps even how you found this article.

The arguments against the man from Stratford, son of a middle-class glove maker, who left a limited education to write of kings and foreign lands with such convincing authenticity, to return to life of middle-class modesty, has always been about where does writing inspiration come from. Some have argued that it was about class, but I have always held it is about experience. The writer of “All is True” was born in Australia, but he writes about Shakespeare because he went to a college in Stratford, and so was steeped in the lore of the town.

If you visit Stratford-Upon-Avon, signs in the famed tourist town will warn you that only seven sites in town are officially connected to an historic William Shakespeare. What it doesn’t say is that none of them point to a creator of a library of plays and poems that have defined the English speaking world. The film posits that after the Globe burned down, Shakespeare decided he would never write again and spent his days in solitude digging a garden to honor is dead son, named Hamnet, so close to Hamlet it seems a misspelling by a grave marker mason. In seeming to attempt to answer where the inspiration and knowledge to produce his body of work came from, in the form a question asked by a young writer hopeful, like many a Comicon convention attendee might ask at an autograph signing, “how he did it”, Branagh as Shakespeare, answers dismissively of the earnest seeker of wisdom, that it was all from his imagination.

Mark Twain, who notoriously offered his opinion on many things, especially authorship, a subject he felt close to, was a non-believer in the man from Stratford. Twain complained of his friend and companion author, Bret Harte, that the dialogue of his pioneer west characters had the ring of an author who wrote of people he observed, rather than a life he lived, though the writing did come from his travels in the worlds of his stories. Twain traveled and wrote of his travels, but his most genius books came from his earliest days of personal experience and drawn on people he knew well.

In the present worlds of film and television, aspiring writers are told to “write what you know”. An entire system of hiring writers to work in writers rooms, based not on the alien worlds they can imagine but the authenticity of the lives they’ve experienced are what counts. Writing a courtroom show, hire a former lawyer, a spy show, a former spy. Maybe add some imagination.

Does this relate to the teeming theatre world of the Elizabethan Age of the late 16th Century? Could a young man of 19 from a small provincial town, seeking a stage acting career, sit down in some inexpensive hovel in London and invent entirely from his own imagination the accurate lives of royal households, details of foreign lands and indeed what was important to foreigners, setting his stories in Italy as mere convention, and produce accurate descriptions of the landscapes of Burgundy, France, cited from Lear by the Shelleys in their travels in the very landscape in the Secret Memoirs on Mary Shelley?

The puzzling question of Shakespeare has always redounded to idea that one man of ultimate genius created that incredible oeuvre of work of vast understanding of the wider world and laser grasp of the human heart and behavior. Whether candidate for authorship be the man from Stratford, DeVere or others, to dismiss the fact of the breadth of Shakespeare’s work as “I imagined it all”, seems at best a hopeful, yet hopelessly hollow, belief in miracles. And then to set it all aside in later life to retire with never a look back, beyond a casual visit with an old theater pal, entirely unsatisfying.

Mary Shelley didn’t just imagine a monster from a waking dream. She took the sum of experiences from her youthful life, her many travels and the complex people she knew and lived with and formed them with some research into one rich and imaginative enduring work. Mark Twain wrote often and the best from his experiences growing up on the Mississippi River in frontier Missouri.

Shakespearian scholars point to historic events which they site to attempt to place the date of his 37 or so credited plays. They count on public notices at the time which seem to indicate an upstart playwright, but relating as much to an actor, but almost no identifiable element that can point to an author’s inspiration or interest from the life of a provincial glove maker’s son who found his way to London, while swaths of elements in the plays and characters can be tied to the lives and experiences lived by others. Maybe Shakespeare was a really good listener and someone offered him visiting privileges to their private library, but to accept that all the Shakespearian canonical lore is true, requires an even broader imagination.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trial at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

, , ,
, ,
Posted on

Mary Shelley Memoirs Author Interview at Witch Haunt

Frankenstein Castle Karloff Halloween HauntThe Horror Authors Witch Haunt blog recently featured an interview guest post with “Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Diaries” co-author Michael January on the release of the audiobook narrated by Heidi Gregory on Audible, and just in time for Halloween, discussing how the book defies genre.

While the Secret Memoirs is not a horror book, Mary Shelley is the reputed “mother” of horror and with the founding of the origins of Frankenstein, suitably timely. The Frankenstein castle has in modern times become a major spot in the world for celebrating Halloween. While the spectral figures of witches and ghouls have been haunting the thick woods for millennia, making their appearances in Grimm’s Tales and Gothic legends and Romantic Tales of Terror, the tradition of parties with costumes on All Hallows eve didn’t really take hold in Germany until the arrival of American soldiers stationed there after the Second World War, who brought some of the home customs with them.

Defining the genre of the Secret Memoirs has been a bit of a challenge, as it takes a unique approach to the Mary Shelley biography, at the same time a novel and a look at history through the eyes of a real life participant in it. It is to quote, “a romantic adventure in the Regency Period of contemporary Jane Austin, a young adult coming of age story, a history of post–Revolution Napoleonic France and the London publishing world, a family drama of personal tragedy, and an exploration of the heart and mind of a young woman seeking a connection to the mother who died in giving her birth, and the creative formation of a young writer of genius accomplishment.” The audio format with the voice of Mary Shelley telling her own story is an especially intimate way to experience the young lives of Mary, Clair and Shelley as they lived them.

With the 200th anniversary of the first publishing of Frankenstein, the book world has filled with myriad biographies about Mary Shelley, and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, examining the girl who wrote Frankenstein and academic examinations, even a biopic movie, but none as intimate and personal, told in her own words and experiences as she lived them.

How much is fact or fiction in the Secret Memoirs is outlined elsewhere here on Frankenstein Diaries. The book itself, ebook, paperback or audio book can be found here.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook
Audible https://adbl.co/2Ji6h4X
Amazon https://amzn.to/2LcopPe

Ebook and Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W6R8V0G

Review Quote from the Historical Novel Society: “An entertaining ‘collaboration’, exhaustively researched, skillfully adapted…long on memorable characters that will make readers see the seminal classic Frankenstein in a new light.” Historical Novel Society

,
, , ,
Posted on

Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 – Aces to Show at Combined Book Exhibit

Aces Pilots in WW2 Battle of Britain Book CoverSo I have my first book going to be launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair with a full page ad of reviews in the display catalogue. The Frankfurter Buchmesse is the oldest and largest of book trade fairs in the world. It is so iconic, I included the Frankfurt Book Fair in a screenplay I wrote. It isn’t a movie, yet, but still might be. I had a German countess who moonlighted as a murder mystery novelist writing under a pseudonym, and the story begins with her at a book fair. I thought Frankfurt for the tradition. There is a draft where it’s the London Book Fair for location incentives, but that’s another story.

Now, I’m going to be at the Frankfurt Book Fair, or at least my book, my second novel. an epic story of love and war and American pilots who volunteer for the RAF and fight in the Battle of Britain, Aces. It begins in the pre-war years where two students at Princeton, an America and German who fly as competitive racers in the Thompson Trophy air races of aviation innovation are both vying for the love of the same girl. She marries the German and they end up duking it out in the skies over the English Channel. Aces: Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain, being published by Winged Lion Publications.

I get promotional emails from time to time from the Jenkins Group, a self-publishing service company, offering a variety of services for indie authors. One thing they do, along with other marketers of author services, from Publishers Weekly to Lulu, is offer placement of indie author books at book fairs. They are basically resellers for the Combined Book Exhibit which has been displaying books at markets and trade fairs since 1933. The Combined Book Exhibit can display upwards of 1200 books per show, from a variety of publishers from major imprints like Random House to specialized niche publishers, micro-publishers, down to indie self-published authors.

Aces Pilots Novel Review Quotes Frankfurt Book Fair

Since my second novel was coming out at the time I got the latest “deadline approaching” notice for the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the timing seemed fortuitous. The book has been getting some very positive reviews and quotes, from the Book Life Prize, Kirkus Reviews and Reader’s Favorite. The assorted costs that arise in marketing a new release indie book seem to come like arrows in a Robin Hood archery contest, with book review upgrades, and assorted listings and applications. The idea of spending $200 to send a book to sit on a shelf at a book show with 7,000 exhibiters seemed of uncertain value at best. But with the great review quotes to put into a full page ad, for an extra $150, seemed like a reason to take the chance. The book has German content and seems suited to an international audience, so Frankfurt seemed a natural place to launch it for the world market.

In searching about for advice or blog posts about participating with the Combined book Exhibit, to see whether it was worth the money, a scam to squeeze a few dollars out of unwashed hopefuls, or a fool’s dream, I was surprised to find very precious few authors or indie publishers who had actually tried it and had anything to say about the result, whether it was worth it or not. I found a few posts on Alli and some other independent book author sites cautioning that it was not worth it for an individual book to sit on a shelf among thousands of others, with no one to actually promote it, and that the Combined Book Exhibit booth tenders wouldn’t really know anything about it, or direct visitors to it.

As of this writing (in September) the book fair appearance is yet to come, so the outcome is unknown. A factor in my choosing to go ahead was that I thought my cover might visually stand out on a shelf, and I could direct visitors to it by advertising it in the catalogue. The $150 for the full-page ad for Frankfurt goes in the booth catalogue, and not any show-wide guide, but at least in the booth is a close “captive” targeted audience, presumably with an interest in indie books with the review quotes in the ad the selling point, and more value than the book on the shelf. And visitor can take the catalogue home or back to the office for a lingering presence beyond the show shelf.

My dealings with the Jenkins Group, through Andrew Parvel, and with Combined Book Exhibit, where I called to get some clarification about deadlines and requirements, and where I apparently was directed to the head of the company have been direct and uncomplicated so far. I did get the feeling that dealing with individual authors/micro-publishers is not an everyday focus, as some of the processes and answers to questions seemed a little standardized.

Combined Book Exhibit and Publisher’s Weekly have joined in combined online world rights sales interface service which offers the possibility for listing books for international rights and provides a standard contract, and means of collecting royalty payments, through Global Rights Network on Pubmatch. It was launched about three years ago, but I don’t know how much it is used by rights holders.

I will follow up this post after the show to update on the results, if any. Though, having a book introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair brings some bragging rights on its own and alone may be worth the price of entry.

Aces: A Novel of Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain Amazon US

Aces: A Novel of Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain Amazon UK

Aces 5 Star Review Readers Favorite

Aces Review Online Book Club

Aces – Rights queries on Pubmatch

, , , ,
, , ,
Posted on

Paris to Geneva in Three Hours On TGV-Lyria

TGV Lyria200 years ago during that famous summer of 1816 when Mary and Percy Shelley left England for the second time to travel to Switzerland, where they would meet up with Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva for the oft-told ghost story competition and the beginning of Frankenstein, it required about four days to travel from Paris to Geneva, by hired coach, with room for Clare and a few servants to carry all the luggage. Today, traveling from Paris to Geneva with a small group of friends or family takes 3 hours by train, on the High-Speed TGV-Lyria, the “bullet train’ of the SCNF French Railway.

And from now up through Christmas of 2018 and a little beyond, if you’ve a hankering to follow the trail of the Shelley’s with a family or small group of friends for an anniversary year exploration of the sights that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to visit the Bodmer Library where some of the Shelley documents reside or to see the Villa Diodati and walk through the garden, or just for a romantic adventure, Rail-Europe is offering TGV-LYRIA ticketing as a special discount for small groups.

From 1 September through 27 December the TGV-Lyria High Speed train which rockets through the Burgundy countryside to from France to Switzerland is offered at – for 3, 4, or 5 passengers traveling together. Rail Europe TGV-Lyria

*This is an affiliate link for FD gets a small commission from the supplier, but adds no cost.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trail at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

, , ,
, ,
Posted on

The Voice of Mary Shelley’s Memoirs

Heidi Gregory, the voice of Mary Shelley, hails from Hampshire on the South Coast of England where she enjoyed youthful days in the coastal countryside. With a Master’s Degree in History and a degree in Classics Literature, she was a natural choice for recording the speaking voice of Mary Shelley. Mary was born in London, but all her family were from the south and west of England and Heidi’s voice quality adds a natural, comfortable tone to the telling of her story. It was a love for the book of Frankenstein and fascination with its author which attracted Heidi to portraying her in “The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley”.

Hsidi Gregory Records the Voice of Mary Shelley Memoirs

A professional British voice artist consistently praised for excellent performances, Heidi records narration for television and radio commercials, webinars and corporate presentations as well as her work in audiobooks. She has recorded audiobooks of children’s classics including “Aesop’s Fables”, and “The Secret Garden” receiving high acclaim. Her recordings of Grimm’s Fairy Tales like “Little Red Riding Hood”, ”Rumpelstiltskin”, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and “Hansel & Gretel“ hold a special connection to the story of Mary Shelley, the daughter of London publishers of Children’s Literature in which she was steeped in her youth.

Heidi lives in Houston, Texas with her husband Darren and three young boys, but returns home to the South of England every summer with her family.

Audiofile Magazine Review

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trial at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Frankenstein Diaries: Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

, ,
Posted on

Aces: A Novel of Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain

Aces: A Novle of Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain by Michael JanuaryAn epic love story of war and friendship in the Battle of Britain of WWII.

It’s 1935. Lacy Dunbrough is nineteen and in love with two friends from Princeton, one American, one German who fly in the Thompson Trophy air races. Pressured by her parents she is forced to choose. As the former friends become enemies on opposite sides in the Battle of Britain she is faced with another choice.

Kirkus Review “In the 1930s, Aaron Miller and Michael “Miki” von Steuven are both students at Princeton University and the best of friends, despite hailing from radically disparate backgrounds. Aaron’s father is a Polish immigrant who moved to New York nearly penniless and built a wildly successful construction business. Miki grew up in Westphalia; his father is a German noble and the family’s prestige and wealth are tied to an ancient pedigree. But both students are talented pilots, and bond over the amateur races they enter and routinely dominate. These competitions are thrillingly portrayed…. The pilots’ friendship, though, is complicated by a shared passion for Lacy Dunbrough. While she loves Aaron, she’s perpetually frustrated by his unserious impetuosity, and her family unabashedly prefers Miki. Miki proposes to Lacy and she accepts. The two move to Germany but she is quickly dismayed by Hitler’s increasingly ominous rule and the malignant treatment of the nation’s Jewish population. Miki joins the Luftwaffe and is sent to Spain, and Lacy begins to worry that he has changed in some profound way she cannot countenance. Meanwhile, Aaron decides to decamp for Canada to join the Royal Air Force, eager to do his part as war finally breaks out in Europe. A grand showdown seems…inevitable, and the emotional stakes are effectively raised when Aaron believes Miki has shot down one of Aaron’s closest friends. In his propulsive tale, January vividly captures the fast-paced terror of combat in the air, and the peculiar mixture of precision and bravado displayed by the best pilots. An action-packed…war tale.”

Brooks Wachtel, Creator of History Channel’s “Dogfights” “ACES is an aviation-fueled rip-roaring read…filled with romance, suspense, wonder and danger…Well researched and enjoyable.”

Online Book Club Featured Review “It begins with a thrilling flying competition…a rivalry between two former friends…turned to enemies fighting on opposite sides. The author weaves themes of friendship, romance, love, war, and loyalty into a perfect story…made more intriguing by numerous twists and turns. Fascinating… Action-packed… Astonishing…” 4 out of 4 Stars!

For Kindle at Amazon ACES: A Novel of WWII Pilots

Paperback Aces: Novel of American pilots in WW2 Battle of Britain

Nook at Barnes & Noble

Michael January Historical Fiction Novels

 

,
, , ,
Posted on