Vire Press / Pathway Productions

LETTERS HOME

2010-08-26T08:15:00.001-07:00

Soldiers have written home to comfort and console their loved ones since Plutarch wrote to Timoxena during the wars of Alexander the Great. Their letters tell us of their lives, their thoughts, their fears and hopes -- a window into who they are. And we are losing them, to email, Facebook, and cell phones, aides that have become replacements.

This letter is a V-mail written by Lieutenant Jordan to his mother from his foxhole in Belgium in World War II. A V-mail was a letter that was written, microfilmed, and sent with thousands of others on a thin strip of film to save space and weight on the boats crossing between the United States and the war zones. Sharing these letters opens up this window for all of us.

If you have a letter from your parents or your family written while they were in our service, any time from the Civil War to Afghanistan, and are willing to share it, please send me a note at jlondon@texas.net. And, whether you do or don't have one to share, please see what others have already contributed at The Letters Project, a new website we have created for you to share, browse, and enjoy at http://jwlbooks.com.

See you soon.

jack

D-Day, 2010: How Good It Is To Have Been Born On Third Base

2010-06-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

This is a hard photograph to look at, but please do. It's about us.

One of the most blistering comments made about a recent president was that he was born on third base and grew up thinking he had hit a triple. I'm not sure it was a fair comment for him, but today it seems fair, even generous, to say it about us as a whole.

Today is June 6, 2010. This day in 1944 was D-Day in Europe. The men in this photograph were among 2,499 Americans killed that one day. They were ordinary Americans in a hurricane of extraordinary events. They, and many others to follow, died as heroes they never sought to be. But do we remember them? Most do not: the only memorial to them in today's newspaper was an old Peanuts cartoon in the Sunday funnies, a reproduction of a photograph of General Eisenhower chatting with 101st Airborne paratroopers shortly before they crawled into the planes, a drawing of Snoopy in World War II battle uniform superimposed on the lower corner. If you want to remember D-Day by reading the paper, Snoopy is your only choice.

We were born on third base. We don't have to walk to work in the cotton fields because of a want of gas ration coupons, or die in childbirth for want of a wonder drug like penicillin. We have credit that didn't exist in the 1930's or 1940's, activated not only by plastic cards that did not exist and computers that exceeded last century's imagination, enabling us to buy plasma televisions and iPods and X-box war games and clothes at the Gap, cars for high school students and summer vacations in purpose-built destinations, whether we have jobs or not. And we don't even have to register for national service, much less be a part of it. We are so far beyond second base.

What is second base, anyway? It's that beach where these men sacrificed themselves so that their mates, and we, could continue.

I was asked to discuss my French Letters novels with a literary agent not too long ago, a woman from a well-known agency whose print resume said that she specialized in historical fiction with a 'strong stable' of such titles in her portfolio. I was interested, not at first surprised, however, when a mid-20ish woman of impeccable finishing school clothes and hair sat down with me and asked me to describe Virginia's War. I was not prepared for what followed: at my mention of 'homefront,' 'soldier,' and '1944' within a single sentence, she stood up, said 'World War Two's been done -- I don't see how I can make any money on it,' and was gone before I could register what she had just said. She was born on third base, perhaps with a tiara, and plainly not interested in what had happened on second base to get her there. There was no obvious money in it for her.

Life on third base is good. It has been better, and worse, and will be so again. But if we don't learn from history, if we don't look at what happened on second base to get us here, sooner or later history will be repeated.

So, please, spend a difficult moment looking at this tragic picture. These men were someone's sons, their husbands and brothers, no different from us except for their extraordinary times. There was no money in it for them. But we need to hank those men and all the other men and women who hit sacrifice flies for us, and not forget D-Day. Not today. Not ever.

Jack Woodville London

A three day weekend

2010-05-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John McCrae shared this lament for the friend he watched die in battle the day before. Like him, we honored our citizen sacrifices on May 30 every year, those men who gave everything at Antietam and Gettysburg, at San Juan and Chateau-Thierry, on Peleliu and Inchon. We took poppies to the graves of those we lost in New York and Washington and in a lonely field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, those who died in Fallujah and in al Nasariyah. We mourn at the tombs of women from Avenger Field who died delivering our warplanes in 1944 and of graves of those who nursed us at DaNang and in Bosnia.

But it seems, somehow, that something has changed.

Instead of memorializing May 30, the day of reunification at the end of our civil war, Memorial Day now is the last Monday in May. That way we can enjoy a three day weekend. A bonus time off from work that makes it easier to enjoy the movies. Memorial Day Sales for tires and sofas and flat screen televisions. Low interest rates for every car on the lot. Take the family to a restaurant. I have seen a lot of Memorial Day sales advertised.

The only thing that I haven't seen yet, one week out, is a sale on poppies.

Perhaps they are so expensive that few are willing, now, to pay their price. Perhaps I just don't know where to look anymore.

In any event, next weekend, when there are three days to it, in addition to telling your boss 'thank you' for the extra day, take some time to say thank you for all those who made your weekend possible. They won't get three days off.

Jack Woodville London

Armed Forces Day

2010-05-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

Fist. Club. Rock. Sword. Spear. Arrow. Gun. Cannon. Tank. Bomb. Mushroom cloud.

Mushroom. Glade. Hollow. Grave. Tomb. Tombstone. Cemetery. Arlington. Colleville.

Army. Navy. Marines. Air Force. Reserve. Mothers. Fathers. Wives. Daughters. Sons.

Gone to flowers, every one.

God bless those who, knowing that the leaders say war is the public's business, take up their duties with the heavy knowledge that the losses are personal.

Armed Forces Day.
Jack Woodville London

The first American in St Lo, France

2010-05-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

Major Thomas Howie used a field telephone to tell his commanding officer that his battalion of the 116th regiment would not quit until Howie would "See you in St. Lo," the critical French crossroads market town defended by Germany and attacked by the United States beyond the point of destruction. Howie then led his men to attack uphill to seize the high ground at Martinville, a hamlet that blocked the attack. He was killed by mortar fire but his men honored their leader: Major Howie was the first American in St. Lo after his unit broke through. His body was draped in a battle flag and put on the hood of a jeep, then driven to the rubble of the abbey church of Ste. Croix. Every soldier in the 29th and 35th divisions who entered St. Lo in the next 24 hours marched past and saluted the first man American to enter the city. The attack succeeded, the war moved on to the next critical battle, and Major Howie and thousands of other dead and wounded remained behind with the French in the Capital of the Ruins.

Sanctuary

2010-04-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

Flee, yes. But... where?
When the sanctuary is no longer a sanctuary. St. Lo, France, July 18,1944

2010-04-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

Flee, yes, but where?
After more than two thousand years of doing laundry in their quiet streams, a thousand years after William the Conqueror left Normandy for England, after four years of being conquered by German occupation, and a few days after leaflets dropped from the sky to flee the bombardment for a few days, the women came back to their town, or up from their cellars, or out of their caves, and found their city and every other town and village and hamlet, to look like this.
The war had come to them and, like their river, it had flowed beyond them.
Their homes were in ruins, all of them.

2010-04-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

Flee, yes, but ... where?
The laundry women may first have heard the sound of war twenty or thirty miles away at the landing beaches, but they would not have known that the war coming to them until this notice fluttered out of the sky, telling them that their town was a likely military target. "Bear in mind that the bombing is not aimed at you but at the Germans who have set up in your town."

The leaflet tells them to flee and take with them enough food, water, and clothing 'for several days.' If they cannot leave, they should go into a cave, a cellar, or 'lay on the ground.' "And, stay away from Germans."
Few could leave -- they had nowhere to go. Every bridge was a separate battle and rivers were no longer for trade and gossip. Life under German occupation meant you could use the roads only with a travel pass. Life under the allied invasion meant that the Germans were the only ones on the roads, and the roads were under constant assault.
The 'few days' of bombing lasted from D-Day, June 6, until the last Germans were forced out in late August, 1944.

2010-04-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

Rivers not only brought boat loads of wine, grain, fruit, and construction materials (and Norsemen), they also brought people together. Every village in France had a place along the river for women to gather. In a European equivalent of the red tent, they brought their clothes, their gossip, their stories, their wisdom and myths, all to share far from the prying eyes of men and, they thought, far from the intrusions of conflict and war. This image from John Singer Sargent captures the sturdy tranquility of rural women who can not imagine that their lives are about to change forever.

Engaged in War

2010-04-14T08:02:00.001-07:00

Rivers were the roads of France since before Caesar led the Romans into Gaul. Towns were built on rivers for trade but, as the French learned, the rivers also brought disaster: the Vikings drove deep into France on the Seine and the Vire, then stayed and took over in the region named for the Norsemen, now 'Normandy.' William the Conqueror (a Viking descendant) used the Vire to launch his fleet against England. Almost one thousand years later, the Vire was to become the dividing line in another invasion: in 1944 it separated Omaha Beach from Utah Beach in the Allied landings in German-occupied France. Before then, and more recently, Normandy was peaceful, a picturesque countryside of farms that produced exceptional cheeses and more exceptional white-lightning brandy known as Calvados. The town in this photograph was destroyed in the war.

2010

2010-01-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

January 1, 2010, was the first New Years Day that I woke up without calling my friend Marty. Marty was my Army pilot, my Spurs buddy, and one of the Best Men at my and Alice's wedding. Marty made me laugh, taught table manners to my boys, and I once watched him call the police and a wrecker when a wise guy in a sports car shot him the finger as he parked and walked away from a disabled parking space (the car was towed by the time wise guy got back). I guess I should mention that Marty lived his last twenty-five years in a wheelchair after a helicopter accident made him a paraplegic, a fact that he never mentioned to anyone in all the years I knew him. Marty left us in November, a hard final few weeks and sad end for a most loving and generous man. New Year's Day was cold this year.

It was also cold for my friend Beth Ozmun because her husband, my friend Scott, died unexpectedly early in the year. And for my friend Jane Hudson Burroughs; her brother, my high school friend Carl, died within days of Marty, in November.

But Alice reminds me that for every cold day there are two that are warm. In early Spring our friends Lee and Leslie gave birth to Annabel a/k/a June Bug. In September our friends Ben and Christin married on a mountain top in Colorado. We spent almost two weeks last summer with our nephews and we know that there are babies percolating and weddings planned for 2010.

Birth, marriage, and passing. So, goodbye to last year, hello to this year. Life is good.

The Books of Others

2009-10-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

Alice called me during a book festival signing last Saturday and asked a rather pointed question -- "Are you bringing home more books than you took to sell?" Her concern, driven by the need for more bookshelves, neither began nor ended two weeks ago but that is a good point in time to start.
Two weeks ago Andrew Finkelstein invited me home to dinner with his wife (renewed acquaintance) and daughters (brand new for me). To not talk about law we talked about travels, ideas, interests, languages, a perfect salon in a lovely home with a gracious family. The conversation turned to Amsterdam, to the Anne Frank house and, finally, to the Resistance Museum, a museum that was life-changing for me and for Alice. At the moment, Finkelstein fille slipped away from the table and returned with the loan of The Book Thief, by Zusak, an incredible novel of a German girl whose adoptive family resists... well, I hope you will read it. I will send it back to Andrew and family any day now, I promise. As I said, it was a loan.
Denys Finch Hatton reportedly said of his books (according to Berkely Cole, telling Karen Blixen), he would not lose a friend over a borrowed book, but one of his borrowers had lost one. I say bad form. I have both a borrower and a lender been. Thus, to my friends who have lent these, I promise to finish and return them:
Marc, The Power of One, Body and Soul, and The Children's Book by Byatt (signed and unread!). To Kathie, So Great A Heritage (a swap, actually). To Patrick, Taulus, A French Autobiography. To Stewart, Inside the Sky (a swap loan, for The Book Shop). To Dan, No Better Place to Die. To Russell, Running Across Countries. To Tom, The War of Art. And to Keith, Cellini, Autobiography. And that is just over the last few weeks.
To my friends from whom a few of those were gifts, I say again, thank you. And to my friends who have my copies of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, A Dance to the Music of Time (Volume 2), The Remains of the Day, A Farewell to Arms, twelve various volumes of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Matarin novels, and The Discovery of Heaven, I say to you "Fear not -- I have no idea who you are, hope honestly that you enjoy them, and tell you frankly that I have no idea what else is missing."
So, thank you for the books, but thank you more for the friendship. The books on loan will make their way back, but the friendship I want to keep.
Jack

PS: French Letters -- the sequel: Bart Sullivan was last seen in the back seat of the green sedan. Are you wondering what became of him? Of Sheriff Hoskins? Whether Shirley will become worthy of Hoyt?
Time will tell. Soon. -- J

In Memory of Characters

2009-09-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

My friend Mitchell, in charge of machine guns for Colt Firearms, was the first civilian flown to Pearl Harbor, arriving late on December 8, 1941. Hours before the President announced to the country that the Japanese had attacked, the Army had hustled him under cover from Connecticut to Hawaii and straight to a smoking hangar where there was laid out an array of machine guns, their barrels disfigured from overheating. Mitchell’s job was to figure out how to keep them from melting, a problem he ultimately solved with a secret blend of ceramics added to the barrel metallurgy. I met him over forty years later. Our friendship lasted until he died.
Mitchell’s stories were rarely true and never dull, beginning with the claim that at age 14 he crawled down a drain pipe to run away from boarding school and made it all the way to El Paso, where he enlisted in the army and became a skinner for General Pershing's cavalry riding all over northern Mexico in a vain search for Pancho Villa. Mitchell also told me that he lived for years as an exporter in Venezuela, drilled for oil in the Gulf, and that his only wish was to die in the bed of another man’s wife. When I knew him he had retired from Colt’s and, along with Captain Robert Hunt of the Naval Academy, started Trident Engineering in Annapolis. I do know that their first project of consequence was an engagement by the Warren Commission to reconstruct the shooting in Dallas of President Kennedy.
Mitchell called me one day and, through a terrible connection, asked if I would come get him out of jail. He and his grandson had made it as far as Tierra del Fuego on a merchant ship before his grandson gave up and flew home. Mitchell’s wife had passed away four years earlier. He was 83 or 84 years old and alone in one of the loneliest places on Earth. "Jack, the situation is this --they say I have a choice. I can stay in jail here, or I can marry this girl. She’s pregnant. Oh, and she's 17." Mitchell always told enough of the truth that I called the embassy in Santiago. They called back to say that Mitchell was not in jail. When he called again, he just asked if I would fly on down and come back on the boat with him. We laughed about 'the girl.'
Several years later I left my son in college in Philadelphia and drove to Annapolis. We sat in Mitchell's pristine retirement apartment and talked about machine guns and the grasping attitude for profits that had made him redundant at Trident. We spoke of his grandson and of President Kennedy. His mind was very sharp as he laid before me a sheet of calculations he had prepared more than ten years earlier for powder charges to be applied Fort McHenry’s cast iron cannons that would shoot flames toward the SS Constellation, anchored across Baltimore Harbor, for the show we had attended together on July 4, 1986. He was too tired to go for lunch, and when I drove away I knew that I would not see him again.
He died two weeks later. In the photographs of his grave side service I recognize Captain Hunt and friends and colleagues from Trident Engineering. I see his daughter and grandson. There is a contingent of people whom I am told are retired faculty from the Naval Academy. And, peeking out from between them, is the unmistakably South American face of a sad, round-eyed, dark haired girl, whom I estimate to be about nineteen or twenty years old. It made me smile then, and now, to have known someone who gave so much to so many of us.
I have lost two classmates, from a very small school, in the last two weeks. It makes me smile to think of them as well, not because they fixed machine gun barrels in wartime or took tramp steamers around the tip of South America but because they and others populate my memories with things I remember them doing, small, private, kind things, giggling on a school bus, singing at church, nothing daring or risque. They were, are, special people and, like most of us, just people who became characters only because they let you get to know them privately.

They may be gone, now, but their characters are not. I'll try to keep them going.

-- Jack

If Superman's costume was indestructable.....

2009-08-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

...how did Clarke Kent's mother make his costume?

It took me over four years to write French Letters: Virginia's War. Why? It's not that long and compared to, say, War and Peace or Harry Potter, not all that complicated. Answer: Because almost every night for four years, I woke up worry about the equivalent of what to say when asked the equivalent of how someone could sew up Superman's costume from an indestructible baby blanket. It didn't matter that no one but me might read Virginia's War and question whether I had the right kind of airplanes flying from the Clovis Army Air Field (B-24's), what kind of engine would run the cotton gin (Bessemer), and how Poppy Sullivan could counterfeit red or blue ration stamps if the Tierra Times was printed only in black and white. The fear of being wrong caused author's agony, and four years of research to not make those kinds of mistakes.

Oh -- Superman's costume. The answers on my Facebook posting and emails: A secret kryptonite laser. Kryptonite needles. A Super Sewing machine. An author's license. 'Mothers are magic like that.' And, drum roll, best answer: "She unraveled the threads and rewove it."

None of those is correct, of course -- Superman is a comic book. It's crazy to think that a baby could survive a blastoff from Kryton, land on earth, become a super farmboy who tosses tractors around, ages appropriately for a while before becoming -- get this -- a reporter and man of steel, and no one catches on. But, if you accept that the whole thing is crazy and buy into the storyline, all you have to do to explain the costume is come up with something that, while not correct (since it never happened....) is nevertheless believable. The comics appear to have never told the story of how Mrs. Kent made the costume (or had the foresight to put a big 'S' on his chest years before anyone ever called him Superman) but a reader poll also said that she re-wove it from the baby blanket threads, occasionally tricking little Clarke to use his X-ray vision to burn a few in two in lieu of wasting time with scissors.

So.... it's fiction. Unless I wanted someone to point out the mistakes and the story went up in flames, I had to worry .... Was there really a State Line Bar near Clovis? Did it sell Pabst Blue Ribbon? Did people like Bart go to places like that to look for girls?

2009-08-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

In the mid 1600's, days of quill pens and before there was a single paved road in America, France built the Canal du Midi, connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean with a waterway that runs up and over mountain ranges and through craggy rocklands and dense forests. Canals became the fastest way to move anything anywhere until the development of railroads. They now are the fastest way to do one thing and one thing only -- recharge batteries.
Alice and I spent a week on the Canal before I flew off to Boston to begin a trial. We rented a houseboat in Castelnaudary, ate cassoulet and stocked up on cheese and plonk, then raced toward Carcassonne at 3 kilometers per hour (not counting delays to navigate the locks). A week later, after castles, street markets, boulangeries, and endless rounds of Boggle, we turned the boat in at Hompes.
The result: I slowed down enough to finish the last chapter of the sequel to Virginia's War. I am putting the last touches on Will right now, then will ask some technical readers to take a look before I send it to Vire's editor, Mindy Reed. Look for it; it's coming.
Thanks, and see you soon.
Jack

Scriptorium

2009-07-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

Where I write….
When I signed French Letters at Hastings Book Store in Amarillo a week or two ago one proud owner of a signed first edition looked at my illegible scrawl and said ‘Well, I hope you can type --you can’t write worth a damn.” I do admit that my typing is easier to decipher than my handwriting. In my defense, I say that writing should be more than typing and handwriting.
The scriptorium was the room in the monastery where monks copied text into manuscripts. By the tenth century some parts of Europe were sufficiently stable that some educated clerics sat in their scriptoriae and copied down ballads and legends. By the fourteenth century Chaucer composed fiction and did so in English rather than French or Latin.
My scriptorium is a bit different than a cold bench in a dark monastery. It is the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail in Austin. I don’t actually handwrite or type there --most of my composition takes place at my notebook computer overlooking the pink rose bush out the back window of our piano room. Most of my research takes place on airplanes when I read source records or saved internet sites while I fly to one city or another for a trial. But there is no doubt that whatever spiritual awakening and mental clarity I get that becomes my writing comes when I am alone, jogging along Town Lake in Austin.

I have run since the mid-1970’s. I am one of the lucky ones who, while not getting faster or fitter or better looking, get a runner’s high. My runner’s high is introspective thinking, such as it is. My characters often are born there and always are developed there. A gasping sprint across the Barton Springs footbridge inspired me to imagine Sandy and Butch and the boys slipping away from Sheriff Hoskins at the quarry. A car roaring away from one of the bars on Barton Springs Road became Bart’s Ford at the State Line near Clovis. I can see these things in my mind’s eye as I run, and they become stories or characters or revisions.
Our publisher, Jen Ohlson, is the author of Every Town Needs a Trail, a classic book of photos and stories of the Trail and the people on it. My runner’s high, or trail high, is shared by Austinites you know -- Willie Nelson, Matthew Mcconaughey, the ghost of Stevie Ray Vaughan -- and by ordinary mortals like me and stroller moms and middle aged people out with their dogs. For many of us the Trail is not why we live but why we live in Austin, the place where we can let our minds work in their own way and at their own pace.
It works for me. I write there. I hope it works for you and that, someday soon, I will see you there, in my scriptorium. -- Jack

Where there's a Will

2009-04-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

Colleville sur Mer, France

(Photograph taken by Ian and Wendy)

The American military cemetery at Colleville is humbling, a vast, quiet, immaculate resting place for thousands of young men. Alice and I went to Colleville, to Ste. Mere Eglise, and to the Cotentin Peninsula and it changed us. I served in the Army as a Quartermaster Officer during 1970 - 1973. Between the Army and work and a sense of duty we have been to Washington DC, to New York and the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, to the Golden Gate and post-Katrina New Orleans. Nothing, absolutely nothing, makes me feel more like an American than to be in Colleville sur Mer. The stories about 'the French hate us' are absolutely hogwash; stop to chat with anyone in Ste. Mere or St. Laurent, wander through the farms of Normandy, and you will quickly learn that, as an American, you are an honored visitor.

I don't know when Ian and Wendy took the cemetery photograph but it recalls the wind rustling through the trees on the edge of a cliff that had to be scaled by young Americans in their first day of battle. It reminds me of tears leaking down my face at the base of crosses and Stars of David for men whose family names were completely unknown to me.

It made me believe that French Letters had to be written before World War II becomes World War I, a jumble of generals and battle names soon forgotten after the last widow of the last soldier has died and no one personally remembers anyone who had any involvement in it.

French Letters: Will is the sequel to French Letters: Virginia's War, and it is coming along quite nicely. I was asked in an interview (Romance Reviews Today) "What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?" Answer: "I create maps of the scenes, then print them and use them for reference. Virginia's hometown is sitting in my manuscript, completely drawn out, as is the village and chateau in France where Will does his service."

Will is an Army doctor whose field hospital is right behind the lines as the battle moves toward St. Lo during the same weeks that things are unfolding in Tierra in Virginia's War. His story is a war story in the same way that Virginia's War is a war story, a battle within himself in the middle of something so large that he is blown about in it with no idea how to take his life back, just as happened to all the Wills and the Virginias who lived through it then, and are dying now.

It is one more story in the book of our parents and, eventually, of who we are.

Thanks for reading.

Jack

2009-03-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

"I do want to let you know that those planes were a welcome sight to us. We watched them on their way toward Germany and later, on their way back toward England, the stragglers which obviously had been hit and were trying desperately to reach England. I want you to know that I watched those wounded planes many times and my wishes and prayers followed them as they disappeared toward the horizon."
These words came from a note written by Marguerite Knisely to an American bomber pilot who some 63 years after his service received a Flying Cross Award. Marguerite watched the flights because she was trapped inside Belgium, where since 1940 the German army had occupied Gembloux, the town where she lived with her parents. In 1945, Marguerite met Bill Knisely, an American soldier in a railroad battalion who was in Gembloux for a short period of time. Marguerite and Bill became very close, and before he left her town they decided to become married. For three hours one recent evening she showed me the V-mail letters that Bill Knisely sent home, and she shared her photograph album from the war days and afterward. More than anything, she told me the stories of living in a war zone, fleeing the German invasion into France in 1940 and living under German occupation. When she later left Belgium to marry Bill, and when she got off the boat in New York in 1947, she thought at first that there was some kind of emergency, because she had never seen so many cars on the streets and people going everywhere in a hurry.

That was the United States in January of 1947.
On to New Orleans. Maple Street Bookshop, Wednesday, 5:00 PM on.
Jack

2009-03-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

My wife, Alice, is a graduate of Sophie Newcomb college, adjunct to Tulane University. We had plans to meet with her Newcomb and Tulane friends the Labor Day weekend of 2005 but, unfortunately, by Labor Day there was no Sophie Newcomb to go to, nor was there much else in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina had blown the city apart, then swamped it. New Orleans is recovering bit by bit but Sophie Newcomb is gone. The trustees decided to transfer all women students to the Tulane registry and close the finest women’s college in the South.
This morning Alice and I met with Bill White, mayor of Houston, who is running for the US Senate to succeed Senator Hutchins. I was reminded that when Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast, Mayor White put together a rescue plan both for New Orleans and for Houston, and rescued tens of thousands of refugee families. Many of them became permanent Texans and many took the helping hand and returned to help rebuild New Orleans. Out of the ashes of the FEMA shame there now is much to be proud of. Yes, we can.
We have been to New Orleans several times since Katrina, once for a belated reunion for Alice’s classmates. We have seen the Xs on doors, the mud lines at roof tops, and the thousands of trailers in yards and helped in any way we can to make it a little better place.. We are going again next week with Louis and Debbie Charalambous, British friends whom we met as classmates in St. Céré, France. We will eat at K-Pauls and Brigtsons and I will sign copies of French Letters: Virginia’s War, at Maple Street Book Shop at 5:00 on April 1. It would be nice to see you there. If you know someone in the New Orleans area, ask them to stop by and we’ll get acquainted.

Launched

2009-02-27T10:56:00.001-08:00

She floats!

Thank you for such a wonderful launch party! Book People ran out of space for people to stand and ran out of copies for me to sign. Mindy Reed slipped out during the signing and came up with a box that was destined for Maple Street in New Orleans. By the end of the evening, Virginia's War sold more than three times the number of copies Book People had planned for. Those people you see include all but two of the blurb writers (those puffed up things written on the jacket and inside the cover) and all but three of the early readers -- they live in Canada and Europe. And, for bragging rights, former President Clinton was a few blocks away giving a speech on global initiatives -- and three of the people who can be seen in this picture are elected officials who supported him when he was President.

What's in a name?, Redux: The first play on words in the title is the name 'Virginia.' It comes from Queen Elizabeth I of England, the virgin queen, of whom they said 'Latin word is Virginia, or 'virgin for short, but not for long.' The name seemed right to me, and Virginia Sullivan she is.

Signings: New Orleans: Maple Street Book Store, April 1, 2009, 5:00 p.m.

Lakeway / Lake Travis Texas: May 13, 2009, 8:00 a.m.

Tulsa: Steve's Sundry June 6, 2009, 10:00 a.m.

Oklahoma City: June 6, 2009, 3:00 p.m.

Reviews: I could ask no more than for you to see what the independent review houses are posting on Amazon: Here is one excerpt: "On first glance, it appeared to be nice story, suitable entertainment for whiling away a rainy afternoon with a pot of tea. In reality, this piece falls into what I would term literature rather than a piece of mind-candy. This is the sort of novel one does not come across very often. "

Thank you so much. -- Jack

Number 2: February 2009

2009-02-01T13:25:00.000-08:00

The launch : February 13, 2009, at Book People, in Austin, Texas.

What's in a name?

All my life I have been asked about my name: "Are you related to the author?" "Are you Jack London?" When Editor Mindy reed and I began the hard choices for the pubisher, we discussed whether to publish under the name 'Jack London', 'Jack W. London,' or 'Jack Woodville London.' (I wanted to publish under the name 'Alice London's husband.' Mindy said no.) Suffice it to say, names are something I've had to think about a lot.

So, where do character names come from? Book titles? Chapter titles?

Names can be chosen to imply a character's nature just by the sound of the name: J.K. Rowling conjured up 'Malfoy' from the latin root words for evil deeds. They might come from someone the author has on his/her mind: Evelyn Waugh hated one of his professors so much that every novel he wrote included a stupid, or lazy, or mean, or pedophilic character with the same last name.

Apart from my own name, there are two plays on words in the title of French Letters: Virginia's War, both of which are core to the story. During the pre-publication stage I received a call from Stephanie Barko, the publicist, who said 'Jack -- I just talked with Jane Manaster! Do you know what French Letters means?' I said I did; I can still hear Stephanie's note of uncertainty as she said okay and hung up the telephone. About five minutes later I received a call from Jane Manaster. I had not yet met Jane, a blurb endorser who had been asked by Stephanie to read and consider endorsing the novel for readers, and I admit I was a bit flustered. She got right to it: "Do you know what French Letters means?" I said "Of course-- that's why I chose it for the series title." We both burst out laughing, and Jane went on to say 'I just got off the phone with Stephanie and she had never heard of it.' Jane grew up in England and lived through the blitz and, more recently, is the past president of the Texas Historical Society. So, if you don't know, or if you just want to hear her lovely British voice, ask her at the launch; she'll tell you.

As for the other play on words in the title, well -- I'm waiting. Send me a post and tell me what you think it is. We'll blog on it next time.

Posts: French Letters is a novel. It is not a true story. It is not based on any person, living or dead, not on my family or yours. The background events and the historical details are as accurate as I could make them but Tierra, Texas, never existed, nor did Virginia, Poppy, Will, or anyone else. Now, having said that, the story is rooted in what actually happened. The daily life of Tierra in 1944 was the daily life of you, your parents, the people they knew, as best I could write it.

The blog is just as important: I would like for everyone to remember theirs or family or friends' stories, dances at the lake, saying good bye at the train station, sending and receiving 'V-mails.'

Please post your stories on the blog and share them. Don't let them be lost to time.

First Post-publication review: Jani Brooks of Romance Reviews Today: "The prologue of VIRGINIA’S WAR grabbed my attention, and once the story is laid out for readers, it’s difficult not to read to the end! Everything comes to a head in an exciting, and somewhat surprising, conclusion. I’m looking forward to the continuation of the French Letters Trilogy. This is Mr. London’s debut novel, and it’s an excellent beginning!"

See you February 13. Make someone happy on Valentine's Day with French Letters.

Jack

Last minute update: I have been asked to do a book signing at the Maple Street Bookstore in New Orleans, April 1, 2009. (No, it's not an April Fool's joke, a book signing by Jack London.....) Tell your Crescent City friends to meet me there. -- Jack

2009-01-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

Book Launch

February 13, 2009

Welcome to French Letters, The Novels. I hope you will enjoy reading about the books and the people who have helped to bring them to publication. This blog is for you to share those stories and to share your own, to chat about the plots and characters, and to follow along as Virginia, Will, and the people they know move through life in the last half of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first.

Book One of French Letters is entitled Virginia's War, and the subtitle is 'Tierra Texas, 1944.' It will be launched at seven in the evening on February 13, 2009, at Book People, in Austin, Texas, and we very cordially invite you to join us as we open the first box, toast the first copy, meet and greet the people who brought French Letters to publication, and maybe even have a bit of reading and signing of first editions.

A wee bit about the book:

Virginia's War is the first novel of the series. It isn't in Virginia, as in the state of, nor is it actually a war in the guns and bombs sense. Instead, it is the story of Virginia Sullivan, a young woman who in 1944, in her small town in Texas, learns from the family doctor that she is expecting a baby.

One of my lightly-cooked theories is that a war stops mattering once no one remembers anyone who was killed in it. It's hard to imagine that over one million men were killed in a space of only a couple of hundred miles over a four year period between 1914-1918, but what was then called the Great War is now all but forgotten. Until a few years ago you could still see pitiful women dressed in black who worked as concierges (more like door keepers than errand-runners) in every home in Paris, all widows of farm boys who were killed in the trenches.

One now reads of soldiers of World War II dying at the rate of one thousand per day, more than in the war itself, and realizes that it will not be long before all of the members of the Greatest Generation will be gone as well. It will not be too many years, I fear, that the war itself will be forgotten, replaced by new wars, new depressions, and new widows. The Second World War, it's separations, losses, humor, sacrifices and rationing, and uncertainty will be forgotten. French Letters will keep some of those memories alive. I think you will enjoy it.

The pitiful women dressed in black of World War II, our mothers and grandmothers, are the girls who at age 18 or 19 had to look at a boy she had known all her life, or maybe only for a few weeks, and make a decision: do I wait for him? Many couples married before he shipped off. Many waited until he got back. Some, a lot more than you'd think, didn't wait for anything.

The cover: The cover art is a World War II poster which the Library of Congress authorized for use as the cover of French Letters. The woman standing before a flag with a star is a sign that she had a husband overseas. She is reading a letter called a V-mail, a form that was used to write letters which were microfilmed, put with thousands of other letters, and sent home from the war. On arrival, the Army or Navy enlarged, printed, and sent the V-mail on to the person to whom the soldier had written to or, in reverse, sent them from the States to the soldier or sailor, thus saving the weight and space of millions of paper letters being sent across the ocean in boats that were better used to ship soldiers, sailors, guns, planes, tanks, and supplies.

Not all the V-mails that were sent back and forth were the loving cheery messages that would make everyone fight that much harder. Some of them, inevitably, contained a message that we now call the Dear John letter, an icy dagger of dismissal in which the loving girl who promised she would wait writes to say that she was no longer loving or waiting. Two facts came up during research for French Letters that should be mentioned here.

First, a lot of the soldiers who got a Dear John letter were killed or injured within a few days of getting the mail, presumably being so distraught that they turned to recklessness. It is safe to say, however, that a few of those soldiers were not all that unhappy about being turned loose; the number of babies born in England while American soldiers were stationed there was astonishing.

The second fact I kept bumping into during research for French Letters was that a lot of the mail boats were sunk on their way to the war. Suffice it to say, not all the Dear John letters headed to the front arrived and more than one or two soldiers got a surprise on his return.

The authors who have presented at Book People is an intimidating list -- from President Clinton to Sarah Vowell, from Rachel Ray to Karen Gore. Book People, Vire Press, and Pathway have put French Letters - Virginia's War, in very good company. So, join us in very good company -- please mark the date and plan to be there.

On the blog: In the future I'll talk about the novels, how characters were named, books and authors I enjoy and books and authoris you enjoy, and whatever, clean, respectful, intellectual discourse strikes my or your fancy. So, please write and share your thoughts and questions. There is a button at the bottom of the page to post your notes and subscribe and a menu on the right to let us know about you. I hope you'll do both.

Jack

Enjoy a romantic Valentine's Day this year with French Letters. Virginia's War will be waiting for you at the book launch on February 13, 2009. It will be available through bookstores, Amazon, and the Vire Press site on February 15, 2009.