All I Ever Wanted/Historical and cultural interest

I’ll Get Me Coat

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As my story All I Ever Wanted is about a lifelong and unrequited love affair, I thought I’d hop on the ‘marketing thinly disguised as insightful and self-deprecating list type blog’ bandwagon and write a little piece about the agony of unrequited love. For this piece, the spotlight – or disco ball – shines on what people of my age call ‘the disco’. The disco usually didn’t end well for me. With one or two memorable exceptions, that moment when the slow songs came on at the end of the night meant only one thing – time to go home. Despite being hopelessly and helplessly in love with a succession of largely oblivious girls, I hardly ever got into that golden clinch. Poor me.

While I was getting the coat and heading home forlornly on my own, the then-current object of my teenage obsession would, no doubt, be wrapped in the febrile embrace of a love rival, creating a spectacle that I simply would not want to watch. Tough times, those formative years. Character building, and while the highs of occasionally getting that sweaty, fragrant dance were very high, the lows of knowing someone else was in her arms were very, very low.

Here then are those tunes – those end-of-disco vibes – that still send me sliding into a state of nostalgic melancholy. My inability to read people and my lack of confidence were entirely my own doing back then and I was self-aware enough to know it. It still hurt. If I knew back then what I know now … Oh well, on to the songs.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now

July 1976. The earliest song that I can remember having any romantic resonance. At the more uncomfortably fast end of the shuffling speed range, a firm favourite of school and home party DJs. Here’s the song.

10cc – The Things We Do For Love

December 1976. One of two 10cc songs in this list. Not so much of a smoocher because it’s another one that’s a bit too fast but definitely a lights-up, time for everyone go home-type of love song. Go home on your own, in my case. Here’s the song.

Bee Gees – How Deep Is Your Love?

September 1977. Well, what can you say about this absolute classic? From the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and a disco fave. Smoochtastically popmungous and, I suspect, still a firm favourite of wedding DJs. Here’s the song.

Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On

June 1973. Entered the public psyche before I was old enough to appreciate it but, again, an enduring and popular end-of-disco track with a hot, simmering sexy-time vibe that was just another slap in the face for those of us leaving the venue alone again. Here’s the song.

Eric Clapton – Wonderful Tonight

May 1977. Despite Slowhand’s, erm, ‘old-fashioned’ views on race relations, you have to give him this one. No pyrotechnics and beautifully understated, it’s a song for mumbling along to into your beloved’s ear. Not that I’d know. Here’s the song.

The Moody Blues – Nights In White Satin

October 1967. Released way before the rest of this list but a perennial favourite of the spinners of discs. This meaningful/less and mystical song must be the starting point for millions of teenage romances. Here’s the song.

The Commodores – Still

September 1979. The smooth tones of The Commodores and Lionel Richie’s genius at crafting soulful ballads mean that this song is a must for this list. It’s a song about lost love and regret, and that love persists even after hearts are broken. Damn him! Here’s the song.

Will You? – Hazel O’Connor

May 1981. Released from the Breaking Glass soundtrack at the tail end of my teenage obsession era, this is another one of those brilliantly introspective internal monologue songs that just goes right to the emotional core of the pivotal moment at which a relationship moves one way or the other. And a sinuously sexy sax solo too. Here’s the song.

The Commodores – Three Times A Lady

June 1978. Three and a half minutes of perfect reflection on enduring love but also the ideal song with which to woo the lady of your dreams. If you’re lucky enough to get within arms’ reach and mumbling distance of her, that is. Here’s the song.

10cc – I’m Not In Love

May 1975. The grandaddy of them all. Six minutes of dreamy yet emphatic denial of the obvious that will resonate with the lovelorn every fricking time. Recorded at a time when creativity meant creating massive vocal harmonies using actual loops of tape and not just pinching a few seconds of someone else’s work like it is these days. And remember – be quiet, big boys don’t cry. Here’s the song.

If you have been affected by the issues in this piece … consider revisiting your lovelorn days by reading me book.

Pernkopf's Atlas/Unrelated nonsense

She’s already in her bra and panties …

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We have all done it. Ego surfing. Looking for ourselves on the internet. My misfortune is that I share a name with an established author who writes about UFOs and stuff, so most of ‘my’ results are about him. This is also why I have reinstated my full given name – Carl Peter Hough – to try to put some clear blue water between us in the digital marketplace. So, yeah, ego surfing. I was intrigued to see what kind of reach I had obtained organically, just by the internet doing its thing. My first surprise was not how invisible I remain. I expected that. No, the first surprise was to find an alleged used copy of my novel Pernkopf’s Atlas on sale on a German book website for €128,99. This is either some kind of scam or hoax, or through a quirk of either algorithm fail or poor human due diligence, they think my novel is actually a copy of Professor Eduard Pernkopf‘s Topographische Anatomie des Menschen, the medical textbook at the heart of my story. Whatever it is, it has my cover on it.

All that, however, is a diversion. My real aim was to check how books in a similar sort of vein were doing in terms of sales and reviews. I wish I hadn’t bothered. Using Pernkopf’s Atlas as a base, I checked out some recommendations based on a similar historical context (because my book is partly set in the immediate aftermath of WW2). My first observation is phrased as a rhetorical question: how many more books titled [The Something] of Auschwitz does the world need? I would never joke about nor diminish the horror of the death camps. I have been to Auschwitz. It is a bleak and crushingly depressing place that can only leave you questioning how humanity was lost to such an extent that such places were possible. Why then the glut of novels? Is our fascination with this horror never going to abate? I have read none of them, only a few blurbs and I can tell you this: they’re mostly uplifting tales of triumph against adversity. What a kick in the teeth for the actual survivors, or the surviving families of the millions who never triumphed against adversity: their horror is now handy literary set dressing. It’s not just me that has noticed either. Here is an article from The Jewish Chronicle on this very subject.

The spoiler is that my next project has a working title of The Panzer Commander and the Milkmaid.

Me

Worse than all of this is what can only be described as a niche sub-genre where persecuted young women triumph against adversity by taking their clothes off. I sampled one such text on Amazon. I won’t name the book. I struggled through the heavy-handed scene-setting (Paris, an impossibly lame-sounding and completely made up German military hierarchy) to find that even within the small allowance Amazon gives you to sample the text, our heroine found herself standing before a German officer and she’s already in her bra and panties.

And here’s the worst part. The number of 4 and 5 star reviews this abomination had garnered was shocking. Who the fuck are these people? And what are their ‘good book’ criteria? OK, I could take a guess that the heroine standing in front of the German officer in her bra and panties is probably one of them.

I’ll leave this with a recommendation and a spoiler: the recommendation is that if you like meticulously researched novels about this era, try The Dressmaker’s Gift or other books by Fiona Valpy. The spoiler is that my next project has a working title of The Panzer Commander and the Milkmaid*. You heard it here first.

[*already done, I know. Bonus point if you can remember the reference. Oh sod it, here it is.

Historical and cultural interest

Did me Ma meet Oskar Schindler? Part 2

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To recap, Part 1 of this extended post found the newly-qualified Ingelore Hartmann, fresh out of Vocational College, stationed (for want of a more accurate term) in Kraków in the latter part of the war and engaged in servicing the secretarial needs of her Direktor. His role, as far as is known, concerned the redeployment of manufacturing capacity to the production of war materials. Enter Oskar Schindler, whose enamelware factory in Kraków was repurposed to the manufacturing of, you guessed it, war materials.

At this point, we need to flashforward 40-odd years. I am 25 years old and working in a print factory, terminally bored and quickly realising that my employment – and indeed life – options are now being hampered by my lack of qualifications. I enrol in night school to study English Language and Literature at A level. It’s a subject I feel comfortable about being able to manage without too much mental exertion. Among the set texts is Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark, the 1982 Booker Prize winner and later to be made into the film of almost the same name. I read the book. It’s familiar territory for me. I have always been ‘the Germans’ in childhood play. My first language was, arguably, German. I feel a bit German. I feel uncomfortable about what some Germans have done. The story has restorative power and resonance. Whatever Schindler’s motives, he created a small light in the darkest of times and places.

“Oh yes, he saved people,” Mum says, looking a bit shifty.

A year or two later, but still significantly before the release and publicity surrounding the film, I’m having a conversation with Mum. It’s a tetchy one, as they sometimes are. The conversations usually hinge on me saying ‘you don’t know me very well at all, really’ and her responding with ‘well, you never tell me anything.’ I’m at university at this point, my A level success being the last piece of the jigsaw I needed to make the jump back into full-time education. We’re discussing the texts I studied for the A level and I mention Schindler’s Ark. It’s the first time we have talked about it. I’m not sure I knew about her time in Kraków at thispoint. When I mention Schindler, the temperature drops. “Oh yes, he saved people,” Mum says, looking a bit shifty.

It’s only years later, after the film has won everything going that I make the connection. Did she come into contact with Oskar Schindler? We will now never know.

If you like fiction about this era, and how events in the past ripple through to the present, try my novel Pernkopf’s Atlas. You can find all the purchase links here.

Historical and cultural interest/Pernkopf's Atlas

This one’s about typewriter 216761

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Rheinmetall AG is a German automotive and arms manufacturer. In 1933, it acquired A. Borsig GmbH, which manufactured locomotives. The new company, oddly, also made typewriters, such as portable 216761 which was manufactured in 1938. Yes, there is a German typewriter serial number archive. I wasn’t surprised to discover this. 216761 was my mother’s typewriter. It has been a fixture of our household all of my life and now lives in my study at home.

Mum started vocational college in Berlin on 1st April 1939 and graduated on the 17th January 1941, certificated as competent in all aspects of a commercial secretary’s life. It’s not much of a stretch to surmise that 216761 was bought for her to take with her to college as part of her required equipment, the same way we send our kids off today with calculators, gel pens and highlighters.

216761, with its hard case and satisfying hard ‘clack’ as the hammers hit the paper when the keys are struck has a bit of mystery to it. On the upper row, the 3 key has an additional layer, a half-key glued on with the £ symbol on it. My admittedly shallow internet research into the inclusion of the £ symbol has yielded ambiguous results. We can say with some certainty that some wartime German typewriters had the £ as standard and some did not. What some wartime German typewriters had as standard was a special key/hammer combination that planted the typographic equivalent of Walter Heck’s double lighting bolt SS symbol. Where was this dreadful symbol? It was often on the 3 key. This discovery led me to have a look at the corresponding hammer on 216761 and, lo and behold, there has been a carefully applied metal overlay.

What lies beneath will never be revealed, but it seems vaguely possible that 216761 left the Rheinmetall-Borsig factory in 1938 fully specced with the 3/SS key in place. It might also have been some different, harmlessGermanic symbol not necessary in the world of British business. Who re-engineered the key and hammer, and when, we will now never know.

If you like fiction about this era, and how events in the past ripple through to the present, try my novel Pernkopf’s Atlas. You can find all the purchase links here.

Historical and cultural interest/Pernkopf's Atlas

Did me Ma meet Oskar Schindler? Part 1

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Packed away in a plastic tub in an attic, there are two small wooden boxes, the kind you might keep rings or trinkets in. Both are exquisitely crafted, both were purchased from artisans in the Cloth Hall in Rynek Główny, the main square of Kraków’s Old Town. One was bought by my mother, Ingelore Hartmann, in the mid-1940s. One was bought by me in 2007. That’s a lovely little family story isn’t it? A nice thread connecting mother and son through time and travel. Except it wasn’t tourism that brought the young Berliner to Kraków.

Mum had plenty to say about her life in Germany before and during the War, usually as asides during unrelated conversations. One particularly intriguing story, repeated often, was that she used to watch Ernst Udet (right), who went on to become a Generaloberst (Colonel General) in the Luftwaffe, and was a former WW1 fighter ace and friend of the Red Baron, von Richthofen, performing aerial stunts over Tempelhof Aerodrome in what she called a ‘little silver aeroplane’. Given that Udet had been a stunt pilot between the wars and that the Hartmanns lived within 100m of the end of the Tempelhof runway, this detail was too rich for Mum to have acquired elsewhere or made up. I have no cause to doubt the truth of it. In fact, this might have been the plane in question (note the Berlin Olympics livery – Mum was there too, but that’s another story).

Mum graduated from Secretarial College in Berlin and appears to have found gainful employment straight away. This is where the waters begin to get murky. She never actually let slip who her employers were, but she did say that the business she was involved in related to the redeployment of manufacturing capacity in the greater Reich to war production. That’s government business, isn’t it? This was the capacity in which she found herself posted to Kraków.

At this point, it’s pertinent to take a quick diversion through the ‘nature or nurture’ debate. In herself, Mum was a paradox. A German national who eventually married an Anglo-Indian (my stepfather) and embraced multiculturalism, she also harboured some grossly unacceptable racist views. Based on her time in Kraków, she would assert lifelong that ‘the Poles are all thieves’. She was not able to accept that the particular Poles she came into contact with there, all those years ago, might have had a specific reason for helping themselves to the occupiers’ toiletries. She could also not accept that Germany could field black football players (Antonio Rüdiger, specifically). ‘They’re not German,’ she would snort indignantly. To the end of her life, she called plastic carrier bags ‘Türkenkoffer’ (a Turkish suitcase). You can, of course, link all of these ideas directly back to her upbringing. Born in 1925, most of her formative years were spent immersed in pervasive Nazi ideology, something her nature subsequently struggled – and often failed – to overcome.

We know that Mum was in Kraków but that she finished her war in the Harz Mountains. Her story was that on reporting for work one morning in Berlin’s Postdamer Platz, all she found was a smouldering pile of rubble where her office had stood. She was redeployed to Wernigerode, a town in the Harz district of central Germany where she lived in a castle. But that too is another story. So her sojourn in Poland must have been the previous year (1943). She would have been 18 years old.

To be continued …

If you like fiction about this era, and how events in the past ripple through to the present, try my novel Pernkopf’s Atlas. You can find all the purchase links here.

Pernkopf's Atlas

Everybody loves my book

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No, it’s true. It’s not mediocre or poorly written. The story and characters seem to be engaging and the narrative doesn’t play too fast and loose with historical accuracy. Every review has been a solid 5 stars. So thanks to my family and friends for that.

I know, I know – I need to get over my Imposter Syndrome. It’s a thing and I have it.

the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills

The Oxford Dictionary

This leads neatly into the observation that nobody goes to Amazon or any other proprietary online book retailer with the thought ‘I really must find a new book to read’. If your self-published book is any good, it’s going to need a buzz that carries it beyond the narrow circle of your family, friends and associates. It’s going to need a bit of special sauce. Celebrity books can be all-sauce, no substance, and some of the greatest stories ever written by self-published authors will never be read. Somewhere along that continuum live the huge mass of self-published authors. Some of them should be discouraged (see this arbitrary list of 14 jaw-droppingly terrible self-published books). So how do ‘not terrible’ books get in front of people?

Fucked if I know. But if I find out, I’ll spread the word.

Unrelated nonsense

One about Tinnitus – Part 2

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I’m not sure who was more nervous, me or the auditory healthcare professional who had tussled with the stubborn ear wax in round one. The prep had been assiduous. Oil had been dropped into both ears night and day for the full week leading up to the appointment. I was leaking extra virgin olive oil, my ears were bubbling and popping. I was optimistic of a positive outcome and – maybe – some mitigation of the tinnitus.

It was not to be. Not immediately anyway.

“This looks much softer,” she said and deployed the tiny hoover into orifice #1. After a few moments of suction, it was clear that nothing much had changed. The blockage was as resolute as it had been a week before. Out came the tiny spoon. And after some digging and scraping – some of it quite painful – the words I had been waiting to hear: “There you go.”

Put your finger next to it for scale

A healthcare professional

And there it was. An almost black stone-like meteorite of earwax from the dawn of time. It wasn’t long before the other ear was similarly liberated. I had to take a picture. Spoiler alert – it’s disgusting.

I know. You wish you could unsee that.

Regrettably, the tinnitus rages unabated, though I can hear background detail sound a lot more clearly now. I will be taking care of my ears properly from here on.

The quest for relief from the whistling in my head, however, continues.

Unrelated nonsense

One about Tinnitus – Part 1

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I must have been to hundreds of gigs since that my first exposure to Showaddywaddy in Oxford’s New Theatre in the mid-70s. Hundreds. And then there were the school discos. Ringing in my ears is something I had become accustomed to. However, about four years ago I went to see some bands in Belfast’s Limelight and afterwards, the ringing did not stop. I say ringing – this was not the dulled hearing, the vague sense of discomfort after a loud gig. This became – and has been since – the whine of a taxiing 737. And it’s not in my ears. It’s in my head. All the time. ALL THE TIME. This, gentle reader, is tinnitus.

Tinnitus is the name for hearing noises that do not come from an outside source. It’s not usually a sign of anything serious and may get better by itself.

NHS

Vaguely reassuring as this opening statement is, it’s not particularly accurate. There are only two things you should be told if you have reached the point of searching for information about tinnitus:

  • Seek professional help; and
  • it probably won’t get better by itself. If at all.

A digression. It’s not a man thing to be resistant to the idea of seeking medical attention. It’s a person thing. My wife has been at me to get checked out for years. Yes, there are the ghosts of those in the family who have dropped dead unexpectedly. And yes, tinnitus can be a result of hypertension.And no, I didn’t go to the doctor because, well, I didn’t want to. So when Sarah made an appointment for me (I didn’t think she’d actually do it), I had to go.

170/115. That’s Level 2 hypertension. I’m putting you on immediate medication and we’re going to make an appointment for you to carry the 24-hr monitoring.

The GP

And my ears are also full of years of compacted wax, to the point where the doctor could not even see my eardrums. More about that in Part 2.

In the meantime, I’m medicated and due for monitoring. I bought a cheap smart watch to have some sort of way of checking in a probably-not-medically-accurate fashion what my blood pressure is. I’m to avoid stress.

The ghosts of the suddenly dead were right to be hovering on the margins. This will be an ongoing trek. Stay tuned.

Pernkopf's Atlas

‘The End’ is only the end of the beginning

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Reviews = 5
Sales = 9

Kindle Store Best Sellers Rank: 117,938, 16,905 in Contemporary Romance (Kindle Store) and 24,137 in Contemporary Romance (Books)

Amazon Paperback Best Sellers Rank: 489,656 in Books, 10,190 in War Story Fiction, 12,449 in Military Romance, 29,712 in Travel & Tourism (?)

When you type The End at the end of your manuscript, there’s a profound feeling of ‘Phew, what’s next?‘ DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THIS. Writing your story, as I am finding out, is the first and probably easiest part. Once you start down the road of trying to bring a self-published book to market, you’ll be inundated with ads trying to sell you promotional services, many of them guaranteeing sales and other bounty. It can be disheartening. Did you really spend the best part of three years unburdening yourself of a story, only to have to spend another three years bringing it to people’s attention?

Well, no – you could get an agent, who could hook you up with a publisher who has people to do all that.

This is where we came in, no? No one has a God-given right to representation. Also, literary agents may love books and have a real passion for finding new authors, but they also need to eat. 10% or 20% of nothing remains nothing after all.

Pernkopf's Atlas

It’s all going swimmingly

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Reviews = 4
Sales = 8

Kindle Store Best Sellers Rank: 342,312, 26,499 in Historical Romance (Books),111,870 in Romance (Kindle Store) Amazon Paperback Best Sellers Rank: 212,220 in Books, 6,092 in War Story Fiction, 14,325 in Travel & Tourism (?)

It’s humbling to imagine that without any marketing effort at all, there are only 342,311 books outselling Pernkopf’s Atlas in the Kindle store. I say no marketing – I did dip my toe into Amazon advertising. Spent about 11p and, astonishingly, no sales resulting. Facebook next?