Interview with thriller author Glenn Dyer

Novelist Glenn Dyer is here today and we’re chatting about his new thriller, The Torch Betrayal.

Bio:

Long captivated by the events of World War II, Glenn Dyer couples this fascination with his passion for historical thrillers with the publication of The Torch Betrayal, the first in the Conor Thorn Series. He resides in Park City, Utah with his wife Chris. They have three children, all of whom live too far away.

Welcome, Glenn. Please tell us about your current release.

A disgraced agent. A missing battle plan. Will he find redemption or damage the Allies beyond repair? 

London, 1942. OSS Agent Conor Thorn is desperate for a second chance. After a botched mission in Tangier, Thorn knows failure is not an option. When confidential directives for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, go missing, the agent must recover the plans before the Nazis thwart the crucial mission.

Thorn teams up with MI6 agent Emily Bright to seek out the traitor in their midst. Untangling the web of suspects leads them to Nazi sympathizers, double-crossing Soviet spies, and Vatican clergymen with motives of their own. As their mission grows more and more dangerous, Thorn and Bright have one chance to retrieve the document before it falls into enemy hands, leaving countless Allied troops in danger. 

The Torch Betrayal is a high-stakes World War II thriller inspired by true events.

What inspired you to write this book?

The Torch Betrayal, is inspired by an actual event that I uncovered while doing research for a World War II set novel that I wanted to write. In Harry C. Butcher’s book, My Three Years with Eisenhower (1946), he revealed that a top-secret document that contained key directives of the invasion f North Africa, Operation Torch, had gone missing. Nowhere in his fascinating book does he mention that the page was recovered. Given that the invasion did, in fact, occur, I had to assume that the page must have been recovered because to have launched the invasion as it was originally scheduled with the knowledge that the missing document might have fallen into the hands of the Nazis would have been potentially disastrous. The Torch Betrayal is my story as to what happened to that top-secret document.

Excerpt from The Torch Betrayal:

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

1040 Hours, Thursday, October 15, 1942

No. 28 Queen Anne’s Gate, London

Thorn and Bright parked several doors down from No. 28. They were twenty minutes early, giving them some time to coordinate with the backup team. He was nervously looking out his side and rearview mirrors for that very team. Bright peeked at her watch

for the second time.

“Well, well, would you look at that?” Thorn was the first to spot Toulouse heading down Queen Anne’s Gate toward them and No. 28. Dressed in dark-colored civilian clothes, he was walking at a brisk pace. Two steps behind him and to the side was the Asian

woman from the Spanish embassy.

“Not who I expected to see,” Bright said, sliding down farther into her seat. “What’s your guess as to why he’s in the vicinity?”

“Could only be two reasons. Our drug-dealing murder suspect is here to collect from Montgomery, assuming he’s inside with Longworth, or to make a delivery. Maybe both. But, even from this distance, he doesn’t look too happy.”

Toulouse stopped suddenly and turned around as the Asian woman caught up to him. He flicked a cigarette into the street. Thorn saw the woman’s mouth move rapidly. She reached out and shoved him backward. Toulouse responded with a backhanded

slap to her face. The force of it caused her to stumble.

“Good God,” Bright said. “He’s such a brute. Should we do—”

“Nothing. Not now.”

The woman regained her composure and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with the tips of her fingers. She examined her fingers, then, without looking at him, turned and walked away from

Toulouse and No. 28.

“There’s more to that lover’s spat than we know,” Thorn said.

An indifferent-looking Toulouse turned and headed toward No. 28. Reaching the front door, he ignored the brass doorknocker and banged on the door with a fist. The door opened slowly, creating a narrow opening of several inches. Toulouse shouldered the

door open and went in.

Thorn looked at his watch. “Eight minutes to the hour. That team should be here by now.” He pounded the steering wheel with his fist, which made Bright flinch. “Jesus, Bruce had one job—to get the backup team here early so we could brief them.” He pulled out his 1911A1. He pulled back the slide and released it, letting it click back into place. Seconds later, a single gunshot rang out.

“Son . . . of . . . a . . . bitch,” Thorn said. “Damn it! We can’t wait

any longer. We’ve got to get in there.”

“Conor, let’s leave. There’s no backup team in sight—this just doesn’t feel right.”

“No, we can’t. Not now. Listen, the task forces sail ten days from today. If I’m wrong and this Longworth lead points to nothing but a drug ring, then we’re back to square one. And if that happens, we need as much time as possible to regroup.” Thorn’s adrenaline was

pumping. He grabbed her forearm. “You OK?”

“I . . . Yes, I believe so.” Her voice trembled.

“Then let’s go.” Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.

Thorn released his hold on her arm.

#

What exciting story are you working on next?

The next novel in the Conor Thorn Series will center around the Allied effort to crack the German cypher codes – Ultra. It is also inspired on information uncovered in a excellent book written by Anthony Cave Brown titled Bodyguard of Lies. Brown writes about a Polish engineer that was smuggled out of Poland to Paris where he built a replica of the German Enigma machine that was critical in the British efforts to break German codes. When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, the engineer and his wife were brought to England for safety. Shortly after his arrival, he went missing and was never found.

This engineer had a great secret – the British had broken German codes. If this information ever reached the Germans, they would have changed their codes, which, many believe, would have added two to four years to the war.

The Enigma Betrayal (working title) is my story as to what happened to that Polish engineer.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

After I completed my first draft of The Torch Betrayal.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

After retiring from a thirty-five plus year career in commercial television, my wife and I moved back to Park City, Utah and I began writing full time. Prior to that, I was an incredibly undisciplined writer who would write consistently for a few months than take a long vacation from writing that might last six months! Not good.

I put in anywhere from two to five hours a day working on book marketing, engaging readers on social media, researching and writing.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I can’t help sometimes stopping the writing process to do a little more research. The habit torpedoes any momentum but it often adds some credibility to the story. Thank god for Google and Wikipedia!

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A professional football player.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

If you’re thinking of writing a book, don’t wait until your sixty years old like I did. Life is too short.

Links:

Website | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Draft2Digital | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Thanks for joining me today!

Interview with novelist Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey

Author Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey is with me today and we’re talking about her new WWII historical, The Fortress.

During her virtual book tour, Madeleine will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too.

Bio:

Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey was born in the French Alps, moved to the United States twenty-five years later, and currently lives in the mountains of Virginia with her husband, two daughters, and Mikko.

Welcome, Madeleine. Please share a little bit about your current release.

It is a fiction take on the Resistance in the Vercors, a World War Two story told from the perspective of common people, whose characters and emotions create the sense of time and space that brings history to life. One of them, Alix, is thrust into the world of La Résistance after her father’s death, and learns that there are no choices ahead of her that don’t mean life or death. As her country braces for the seismic shock of D-day, Alix faces unrelenting violence, unforeseen possibilities, and a dangerous leader named Marc. Marc is a complicated man fighting many inner demons, who doesn’t not like to share control, and especially not with an eighteen year-old girl. The story feeds on biographical elements and the political swamp that is France right before D-Day, an environment I know inside-out, and which I think contributes to make the tale a true Historical.

What inspired you to write this book?

My own family history. Three of my uncles were condemned to death for collaborating with the Vichy government, a puppet of the Nazis. Their sentences were eventually commuted to national disgrace, and ten years of forced labor—thanks to my father, who had fought with honor during the war and was able to litigate a lighter sentence with the subsequent political swamp of the liberation. My uncles had to leave the area to avoid being murdered, but we stayed. It would be too long to explain the kind of resentment and mistrust that centuries of hardship and war can breed in a small community, but to summarize the situation, we were the children of traitors to the nation, born on the wrong side of glory. I grew up a collaborator’s daughter, a hard legacy to overcome in a community mauled by four years of occupation and violence, and seventy years later, my last name remains associated with the destruction of the C2 Maquis in Malleval. Yet the whole experience had a strangely strengthening effect on me. It gave me roots, a documented past, an inheritance of sorts, that made me want to understand what tears a nation apart, what makes people turn against their country, their neighbors, and themselves sometimes.

Here is the part where Alix and Marc, the two protagonists who drive the tension in the story, decide that a fight is better than the relationship they cannot have.

“Is that mint?” Marc asked. “At home, we mix it up with heather and those little blue flowers. I think they were called…”

“I only like mint.”

“Nothing wrong with mint.” He waited for her to say something else, something that would ease the tension he felt in the room, but she remained silent. She must be a little shaken, he thought. That’s understandable. “Were you able to get rid of the body?” he asked gently.

“Yes. Why are you here?”

He went up to the little window and lit a cigarette before answering. There was no mistaking the animosity in her tone. I have to fix her fuck-up, and she’s angry? At me? He sucked the smoke deeply into his lungs. “You know exactly why I’m here. What you did today will impact—and possibly kill—many people. It will help if we don’t argue about it.”

“You’re the one who’s mad. I can see it.”

“I’m not very happy, but that’s not the point.”

 “Don’t you ever sleep at night?”

 “Not much. It’s easier to hike in the dark. You can’t see the incline, you can always pretend that it’s flat. What about you? Having nightmares?”

 “Not at all,” she lied. “I would do it again.”

“Ah. The Ice Fairy. I remember.” He could feel a headache coming. “Next time I have a hit job, I’ll make sure to ask you first. At least you’re not wasting bullets.” He had gone to the hidden phone and was checking its functioning as he spoke. “What’s your next project? Anyone in mind?”

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Do you want to know who it is?”

No, not really, he thought. He couldn’t ease the suspicion that he might be on her revenge list. She had once said that she didn’t hate him, but who could trust her? Maybe she had planned something terrible, like cooking him in the sawmill kiln. He almost made a joke of it, and thought better. She never understood his jokes, anyway. “You owe me an explanation,” he said instead. “I don’t remember asking you to murder a Nazi officer. You want to tell me why you didn’t discuss it with me?”

“It happened too fast. And it couldn’t be helped anyway. Even Rieder knew that, I saw it on his face, then, when it happened.” She lowered her forehead like a stubborn child ready to take a beating. “I didn’t go looking for him. He came after me, and as you know, Nazis don’t give you a lot of room to negotiate.”

What exciting story are you working on next?

My agent said I should do a sequel, but I think I’ve said everything I had to say on the subject, so I am working on the contemporary tale of a young school teacher who is entrapped in a scheme to cast her as a terrorist. There are strong political and religious themes, as well as a romantic element. I guess you could call it a tale of modern resistance.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I don’t identify as a writer. I am a wife, a mother, a teacher. I am Christian, I am a woman—but not a feminist. In fact, I am nothing that ends in ist, unless it’s individualist. Yet I have to admit that writing this book was an amazing experience. I discovered more about myself and the world than all my years spent in college.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I am an English and French teacher, but my call is special education. My students are non-verbal, a real challenge for someone who lives to share ideas. The positive side is that I won’t get in trouble with my school district for jumping on my soap box and voicing politically incorrect ideas. I like to work, it provides a wealth of details and ideas I can adapt to my stories, particularly the MS I’m working on now. I am also busy with four acres of forest to clear, two daughters, two dogs, and a lot of reading. I write here and there, sometimes just a few lines, sometimes a whole chapter, and never stress about it. It must always remain a pleasure.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I’m sure it’s visual, although I can’t take any credit for that. The Vercors mountains are so breathtaking a backdrop, that they would give an absolute dimension to any story. I see the cliffs first, and they turn into some sort of secret well in the desert, the fount of all beauty, the Aristotelian Final Cause of all human experience.

For me, oui?

And that’s what I had to share by the way, a place so unbelievably beautiful that people from all over Europe decided it was where they would make their last stand and die to save France from the Nazis.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I had no idea! Growing up in France was not professionally motivating, given the chronic unemployment rate and the pervasive de-culturation atmosphere, and all I wanted was to travel anyway. A good thing since it took me to the United States, a place that happens to be personally and professionally motivating, and where I found the inspiration to work hard, study, and write a book, even though I am not a writer, or even a native English speaker. America is the place where anything is possible, because when things don’t work out one way, the options are endless.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I put my heart and soul into this book, and I hope you enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Links:

Website | Facebook

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Interview with novelist Courtney Williamson Milford

Novelist Courtney Williamson Milford joins me today to chat about her new historical WWII fantasy, Graced 1943. The history is meant to be accurate, but the characters have special powers called “Graces.”

Bio:

Courtney Williamson Milford lives in Windermere, Florida with her husband and three children. She writes two series: The Grace Family Chronicles for adults, and Tales of Bark Story Land for children, and she currently has four free-standing books. She graduated from the University of Florida, and has owned and operated a wholesale automotive fleet leasing business called Courtney Leasing, Inc. since 1991.

Welcome, Courtney. Please tell us about your current release.

Based out of WWII-era Miami, Graced 1943 begins the story of the Grace family members and their friends. Most of them are Graced in at least one way, meaning they have special abilities that help them meet challenges. While WWII figures into the multiple plotlines, the story is mostly about the characters. It is the first book in a series, and has a cliffhanger ending.

What inspired you to write this book?

Initially, I meant for this to be a children’s story featuring the young mother we meet in the first chapter, Annelisa, her twin boys, and their dog. After I got to know Annelisa, I realized her story, and those of her family members and friends, were for adults. I based the story in Miami because I like to write about my home state of Florida, and Miami was a prominent base for training and manufacturing during WWII, largely because of its location. I chose the 1940’s because it turned out that Annelisa’s husband, Humboldt, is an astrophysicist, and I knew he had to work on the Manhattan Project.

Excerpt from Graced 1943:

I chose this short passage because it demonstrates the characters using their Graces. Annelisa is a Locator, and can find people by listening for their heartbeats. Mia is a Navigator, meaning she never needs a map, and never gets lost. Humboldt is a Knower, and can Focus on any topic and, immediately, Know all there is to know about it. The story is meant to be like an old-fashioned radio soap opera. For example, you’ll see that Annelisa can’t remember giving birth to one of her children.

Back at the marina, Humboldt, Mia, and Annelisa piled into Aunt Sam’s old car. Annelisa opened her mouth to tell Humboldt that her aunt was gone, but then she stopped. She could tell him later, if he did not already Know. It was much more important for Annelisa to focus on her son’s and sister’s heartbeats.

“Can you hear them? Can you give me any direction at all?” This was from Mia, who was in the driver’s seat.

Annelisa nodded. “I can hear them, and I know they are together south of here. They are not moving.” She meant they were no longer traveling by car, not that they were not moving at all. Neither of the others asked for clarification. They both knew there was no question of the pair being dead, or Annelisa could not have heard their hearts beating.

“I know where they are,” Humboldt announced. Annelisa sighed with relief. Sometimes she got annoyed because her skill as a Locator was often overshadowed by her husband’s ability to pick up knowledge by Focusing on an issue or situation but, in this case, she just wanted to hold her little boy as quickly as possible.

“Tell me.” Mia swung left into light traffic.

“Big Cypress.”

“On the Indian reservation?“

“Just outside. Eleanor can’t get in. Irene used a charm that keeps her off the tribe’s property.” Humboldt glanced at his watch. “The cab driver must have hustled to get there so quickly.” He Knew Eleanor had probably Multiplied the distance the car traveled per wheel rotation, but he did not feel like explaining this to Mia. Although she seemed pleasant and helpful, he felt that she was hiding something important, and he did not fully trust her.

“She’s not meeting Irene there?” Annelisa narrowed her eyes. “Why would Irene want to keep Eleanor away?” Irene, Eleanor’s mother-in-law, was three-quarters Seminole Indian.

“Irene has Eleanor’s daughter.” Mia did not turn her head. She did not know how Annelisa would react to what she was going to hear, but Irene did not want to be distracted. Like any Navigator, Mia prided herself on being a safe driver.

Annelisa just stared ahead, pressing her lips together.

“Annelisa, you don’t remember Tatum?” This was from Humboldt. He had been deployed when Tatum was born, about a month before Annelisa gave birth. “You must have been awfully sick.”

“No, I do not remember any Tatum.” Annelisa was embarrassed that she, during her extended illness, had forgotten not only her own son, Michelangelo, but also Eleanor’s daughter, Tatum. It frightened her that she could not remember having given birth to a second baby. These feelings, and her concern about Xavier, combined, prompting her to lash out at Humboldt. “Why don’t you enlighten me, since you Know everything?”

Humboldt opened his mouth to respond, but Mia broke in. “Eleanor told me about this. Tatum disappeared from her crib at Gracestone, not long after Xavier was taken. Eleanor blames your father because he was so focused on protecting Michelangelo.”

Annelisa began to cry. Their father, Henri, was one of the most caring, responsible people that Annelisa could imagine. She was sure that whatever had happened to Tatum, it had not been because Henri had allowed his granddaughter to be neglected.

           

What exciting story are you working on next?

Aside from revising the third book in The Grace Family Chronicles, which is called The Train of Thought, I am finishing a stand-alone adult fiction novel called Shackledown. It tells the story of a 15-year-old girl who died in 1917, and haunts the third floor of her old home, a former citrus and cotton plantation known as “Shackledown.” I wrote it from the points of view of the ghost girl’s mother, and the woman who currently lives in the house, who has her own 15-year old daughter. The chapters rotate between the present and the early 1900’s.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I started writing in January of 2016 and considered myself a writer as soon as I had finished my first three books: Graced 1943, Fluffy and Dot (Book 1 in Tales of Bark Story Land), and Shell’s Amazing App, a middle grade novel.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

Technically, I run Courtney Leasing, Inc., a wholesale automotive leasing company that I sacrificed my 20’s, 30’s, and part of my 40’s to build, but now I don’t have many duties, although I go into the office daily. Usually, I spend a good four hours a day writing or working on writing-related tasks. I usually do about two hours of cardio, and use my laptop when I’m on the stationary bike (I read on the elliptical and the treadmill). I also try to wake up for a couple of hours at night when it’s peaceful to write, market my books, etc.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I don’t write straight fiction. I always have to include an element of fantasy, or the supernatural.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

An “authoress” (I got that term from Jo March in Little Women).

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I want my books to be accessible to everyone, which is why I put them on Kindle Unlimited. I also send the e-books to the local library system. If anyone ever wants to read one of my books, I’ll send it to them.

Thanks so much for being here today, Courtney.