Throwback Thursday: Stories About the Bomb

This week I've been watching Dunkirk, a powerful retelling of the near loss of the British army which would have undoubtedly resulted in the fall of Britain. Had that event occurred it is quite possible Adolph Hitler could have successfully conquered the world, for there would have been no impediment to Rommel's conquest of the Middle East oil fields, the primary objective of his North Africa campaign. And was it not the Turing Machine, a Brit breakthrough, that broke German code thus enabling the Allies to intercept messages and destroy Rommel's re-supply efforts? 

That moment in time (Dunkirk) was recently highlighted in the 2017 Gary Oldman film Darkest Hour. It's good to be reminded of how much of history is determined by singular moments and "little things." I think of here of the Ben Franklin quote that begins, "For want of a nail..."

And so... for Throwback Thursday I share this story about a little thing... with big consequences.

Stories About the Bomb
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2013
I don't think there's a one of us in the Baby Boomer generation who lived unaware of the Cold War and that dark shadow of potential nuclear winter. It's one of those things that was always out there, though each of us reacted differently to this ominous reality. I remember reading On the Beach as a young teen, which had already become a film in 1959 starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner among others. A vividly written story about the end of the human race makes an impression on one, especially if you permit imagination to enter in to suggest all the things you may never experience before you die. Yes, even then we had fledgling versions of a bucket list.

Many of us also read Hiroshima by the Pulitzer Prize-winning John Hersey, a story about six survivors of the bomb that shook the world, with images so vivid it will straighten your hair.

So it is that many of us write in order to process our life experiences. I once wrote a poem on this theme called Bad Break which attempted to capture a measure of this Cold War anxiety.

In part, this is where my story "Two Acts That Changed the World" came from, which is currently the opening short story in my short collection of stories called Unremembered Histories.

The second inspiration for the story comes from having been enthralled by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, whom I consider a primary influence on all of the stories in this particular volume. Borges is the master of reality-bending hyper-real story-telling.

For what it's worth, consider this intro something like a movie trailer, designed to entice you to fork over a few bucks to see the flick. It's a buck-ninety-nine if you have a Kindle. For iPad owners you can also download a free app. It's also now available in print.

TWO ACTS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Of the dozen or so German physicists who had been assigned the task of building a super-bomb for Germany, Wilhelm Kurtweil more than any knew the consequences for humanity should the Nazis succeed in being the first to achieve this ultimate quest. Kurtweil had been a leading voice in German physics before the war, was now a respected scientist in the twilight years of a fabulous career.

For him personally, Nazism was an odious blight on the German peoples, but he had remained silent, hoping against hope that the dark season would pass and German character would rise above its brutal cancer. By 1942 he’d lost this hope.

The super-bomb project was in full swing. The Nazis already dominated Europe. England was about to fall.

His worst fear of all: that the project would succeed and his name be forever associated with its success in bringing the world to its knees at Hitler's feet.

In November he began praying for divine intervention. He did not believe in God, but not knowing where else to turn and hoping that he was wrong, he prayed that God would give him wisdom. The following week he conceived in a dream, visualized with perfect clarity, the formulation for the Atomic Bomb. It was so perfect, so brilliantly conceived, and remarkably clever. He woke in a sweat. With an over-stimulated mind he spent the rest of that night hastily scratching notes on scraps of paper. For three successive nights he worked out the details, occasionally catching fitful moments of sleep to sustain his strength.

On the fourth night, he saw clearly the two actions he must take. First, he must find a way to undermine -- without drawing suspicion -- the efforts of his fellow scientists. And second, he must find a way to communicate his findings to the American scientists whom he believed were actively pursuing the same designs.

The first task was easy enough. He saw that the labyrinthian formula was built on a series of equations which flowed with a counter-intuitive divergence from logic at several critical points. How he had seen this so plainly baffled him. In presenting his discoveries to the group, he merely had to re-arrange the equation at two points and the system would forever fail to detonate. Once these two re-arrangements were made, no amount of re-evaluation would point to this particular detail as being faulty. All corrections of the misfire would focus on other areas of the formulation, with over one hundred million permutations. If all went well, it would be ten years before the mistake was discovered.

Though he intended to delay as long as possible the presentation of his formulation, he knew he must be the first to present, lest the correct thesis be presented in regards to the critical path. By early spring of 1943 he saw that two of his young proteges were uncovering significant portions of the path and he was forced to the first task. On April seventh, he presented his findings with cool reserve and astounding humility. The team was ecstatic at the breakthrough.

The second task proved more daunting... 

Read the reviews here, and check it out: Unremembered Histories

A Medium-Sized Update on Medium

Medium Update

Photo courtesy John Heino Photography

Earlier this summer I began blogging on a platform called Medium. Medium was founded by Ev Williams, the same geek/entrepreneur who created Blogger and later co-founded Twitter. As a writer I have found both of Williams' creations exceedingly valuable, so it seemed only natural to explore what he was trying to achieve with the third iteration of social engagement. Since I learn best by doing, I have been going through my Ennyman's Territory blog posts (near every day since Spring 2007) and building an archive of the "evergreen content." (Evergreen as in "not seasonal." Much of my blog content features events and happenings that are here today and gone tomorrow... or important for the season.) In other words, I have been taking an inventory of my 4000 blog posts to determine what has enough value to be recycled and what should be left on the vine. 

It's been an eye opening experience, and I will share more of what I've learned about blogging in a separate post. 

Right now I am trying to learn what I can about Medium. This Hubspot blog post offers a Beginners Guide, but it's two years out-of-date so that some features have changed, because like the Internet itself, things keep getting upgraded, revised for the purpose of improving the "user experience."

For what it's worth, I am liking many features that Medium offers. The platform has been clearly designed to make it easy for writers to create elegant pages. One of my favorite features is that you can re-post (import) other things you have created online by pasting the URL into a box and hitting a button. Boom! Your whole article with images is right there. You may need to edit a couple things or make adjustments on photo placement, but dagnabbit that's a really nice feature. 

More importantly, though, for all you SEO buffs... Medium automatically writes code into your blog post that tells Google where the origin of this article or story came from. Google accepts this and does not penalize you for duplicate content. (As someone familiar with the ways of Google Search and SEO, this was a huge HUGE relief... 

I Still Have Questions

The whole point of writing and sharing your work is to have it read. I haven't yet found the best path to find readers yet on Medium. Currently I average more readers in a day (1000) here at Ennyman's Territory than I do in a month on Medium. Granted, I only just started there in June, and that first month I did better by three-fold than my first month here in 2007. By way of contrast I am averaging 5000 readers a week on Quora. I never did any promotion of the Quora writings. I simply found it an intriguing diversion at first, and kept answering questions trying to help people, occasionally linking to blog posts here when the post addressed issues people were inquiring about. 

SO, BOTTOM LINE, if you participate in Medium and have had success finding readers, I'd be interested in connecting with you. Send me a note via my ennyman3 Gmail account or Message me on Twitter @ennyman3.

FWIW DEPT.
Some of my Medium results:

MY BEST ARTICLES so far (Number of Readers)
Why Print Still Matters For Marketers
Future Hype: The Myths of Technological Change
Five Significant Qualities Shared By Balzac, Picasso and Dylan

My FAVORITE ARTICLES So Far (Non-Fiction)
Ten Art Quotes That Will Surprise You
What Is A Writer?
Why Print Still Matters for Marketers
11 Sterling Quotes Reflecting the Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain

Though my fiction has significantly fewer readers, here are my three best performers:

MY BEST STORIES So Far (Fiction)
Two Acts That Changed the World
Duel of the Poets
The Gladiator


I LEARNED SOMETHING NEW ABOUT MEDIUM THIS WEEK

Medium has an unusual method of rewarding its writers (who pay $5 a month for the privilege of earning income for their words.) You earn revenue based on readers showing their appreciation by clapping. WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW is that you can actually Clap UP TO 50 TIMES if you really like a story.

Thank you to all those who have given encouragement through the years. It means a lot and is part of what keeps me going. My aim, always, is to provide something of value for those who return from time to time. You are much appreciated.

Related Links
The Medium Model in Ev's Own Words
12 Types of Writers on Medium

Meantime, life goes on all around us. Get into it.

Claudia Oltean Talks About Writing, Crime Fiction and Prohibition-Era Detroit

This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog post about the crime thriller Another Chance to Die. Claudia N. Oltean is a lifelong reader and writer. She's co-author of the LexisNexis-published book, Media Skills: The Lawyer As Spokesperson, and former columnist of Vines By The Glass, a wine column. The catalyst for this new direction as a writer was this: both of Ms. Oltean's grandfathers were newspapermen in Detroit, Michigan. Her paternal grandfather, Allen J. Nieber is the inspiration for her first novel, Another Chance to Die, historical crime fiction set in Detroit during the tumultuous, danger-filled Prohibition years.

Since 2003, Ms. Oltean has been a partner and co-founder of LegalPR, a public relations firm representing lawyers, their clients and other professionals in their interactions with the court of public opinion. She works closely with local, state and national media. I'm guessing that this proximity to legal processes has also been an informative influence on her new project.

Ms. Oltean is also a prolific business writer, particularly related to news stories and public relations, business development and organizational development. She's written and published national surveys on customer satisfaction and has acted as corporate spokesperson on marketing and customer satisfaction. She has extensive experience with video scriptwriting and production. 

Having crossed paths on Twitter, I quickly found myself drawn in by the work she was doing.

EN: You inherited your grandfather's reporter notes and physical articles. Were you already a writer yourself, or did this inspire you to develop the craft?

Claudia N. Oltean: I have been a lover of words and books since I was about four. My grandmother was English and a great lover of literature. She read to me from many genres and encouraged me to read widely. In school I found English and Lit to be among my favorite courses and I started writing poems, short stories and even a detective novel I’m certain was dreadful. I did a column for my high school newspaper and later wrote and published some magazine articles. My life and career took me into the corporate world, where I wrote many business pieces, including corporate video scripts. Several years ago I did a wine column for my local newspaper (great fun) and then co-wrote the nonfiction “Media Skills: The Lawyer as Spokesperson,” published by Lexis-Nexis. I have always wanted to return to my roots in fiction and inheriting an amazing archive in words and pictures of my larger than life grandfather’s life and times, especially during Prohibition, was the catalyst to starting this project – a labor of love on several levels.

EN: It's an ambitious project to write a novel, and more so a series of novels. When did you take a serious interest in writing how did it happen?

CNO: As described above, I got serious when presented with a wealth of information about a fascinating man in a time so crazy it’s hard to believe. You’re right, it is an ambitious project. I have written in whole the first book, “Another Chance to Die” and worked with a professional editor. I am now in the process of doing some reconstruction based on learnings I’ve accumulated during this process. Novels are a very exacting and complex form of writing, as I’m sure you know, and I keep learning and honing my skill by inches every day. I still hope to write the Man in the Middle series of three books, but realize it’s quite a task I’ve set for myself!

EN: Based on your opening chapter, I get the impression that your grandfather was a pretty tough cookie. Did you know him while growing up and what did you see in his notes that cast him in a different light from the man you knew?

Grandfather's badge.

CNO: My grandfather was one of the strongest willed, most formidable and yet charismatic men I’ve ever known. I was fortunate to be very close to him and my grandmother during my formative years. He made a big impression on me. And yes, he was a tough cookie. As a crime reporter he walked and worked in danger on a daily basis. He investigated, instead of just reporting obvious facts. He was deputized by Detroit’s Wayne County Sheriff’s Office and The Michigan State Police, so he carried a badge and a gun, along with a notebook – not something reporters are generally known for. Reading his notes brought him back to life for me and gave me new details about some of his escapades, but they very much reflected the man I had known.

EN: Detroit is one of those cities with a history... Henry Ford, unions, Heartbeat of America. Your book will unearth an underside that people are quite unfamiliar with. Can you tick off a few of the insights that will be revealed through Another Chance to Die?

CNO: Many people don’t realize that Detroit and SE Michigan were a major hub for Prohibition activity. Here are some interesting facts:

With its immediate proximity to Canada (in some places less than a mile across the Detroit River), this area is credited with bringing in 75% of all booze smuggled into the U.S. during Prohibition.

Michigan went dry almost two years before the Volstead Act was brought into law nationally. Michigan criminals had a tremendous head start in organizing ways to break and monetize the ban on alcohol. The most successful and notorious Detroit-based gang was the Purple Gang. They brutalized, intimidated and murdered their way to great wealth and a fearsome reputation. Al Capone made a move on their territory, but they scared him so much, he backed off and made a deal to split up the state, east to west. He also used them as distributors of his private label whiskey. The Purples are credited with 500 kills, more than Capone and his outfit could have claimed. It is believed that a few of the Purple Gang were among the shooters in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Working on another scoop.

Before Prohibition took effect, there were something like 2500 places to get a drink in Detroit. During the ban that number mushroomed to 25,000 places to drink – from little dives to swanky clubs complete with music, dancing and gambling.

Prohibition in Detroit spawned the mixing of the sexes and races in public, out drinking together and thumbing their noses at a law they thought was a joke. My grandfather’s notes indicate he felt that women were out in an unprecedented way and, in his experience, were open to sexual encounters. I don’t know if this was generally true, but I do know my grandfather was a player.

There was plenty of police and public official corruption during Prohibition. A number of them chose to participate in rather than prosecute illegal activities. In one year, 1925 I think it was, both the Detroit Mayor and Sheriff were arrested at a speakeasy.

EN: What made your grandfather tick? That is, what was it that drove him to put himself in such risky situations?

CNO: My theory on that is based on what happened to his mother and what kind of person his father was. When my grandfather was about 6 his mother was killed before his eyes. They were on the streets of Detroit and a runaway motorcycle trying to avoid collision with a trolley slammed dead on into her and grazed my grandfather. She died instantly, and he received a wound in the hip, which caused him a slight lifelong limp. I believe he felt responsible for not having saved her and did not like the sense of losing control. Control was a central element of his character and in his relationships. His father was Detroit’s top commercial photographer and owner of Colonial Studios. By all accounts he was a very exacting Dutchman and may have been emotionally distant. He was the son of a hard core Dutch Reform guy (my great-great grandfather) who emigrated to Michigan in the 1800s and was a founder of Detroit’s first church of that faith. Looking at my GG grandfather’s photo is enough to scare you, he appears so stern and unmoving. One interesting thing, my great grandfather was very dapper, and he passed that proclivity along to my grandfather – he was a tremendous clothes horse.

EN: What is your main character's quest in this series of stories in The Man in the Middle Series?

The Rum Runners were operating with impunity
while Federal agents looked the other way.

CNO: In the first book his drive is all about being the top guy on his paper and against the competing newspapers to uncover and report the big stories. As crime reporter there was an abundance of those during and after Prohibition. He goes through a big change however when his actions result in the death of his colleague and best friend. Then he is interested in working in cooperation with law enforcement to stick a wicket in the operations of the gangs, while being seen as the same old hale fellow well met reporter. It’s a dangerous path he has chosen to pursue, as it is for all double agents.

EN: Will there be some inside dirt on the auto industry? What other historical figures will show up in your pages?

CNO: My grandfather knew everyone who was anyone. He had a close relationship with the Kelley family – my father’s contemporary was Frank Kelley who was Michigan’s Attorney General for 38 years. His uncle Tom was chief of detectives for the Wayne County Sheriff’s office and a close associate of my grandfathers. He knew and interacted with various mayors and governors and yes, he had association with some of the famous automakers, especially the Dodge brothers. There is a kidnapping episode related to the Dodges that could show up in book 2. Al Capone is an active character in book 1 and will probably show up in book 2 as both he and my grandfather had a connection to the alcohol production industry in Montreal, Canada.

* * * *

Ms. Oltean is a member of the Historical Novel Society, The Florida Writer's Association and the National and Florida Sister's In Crime Organizations. She is active on social media, particularly Twitter. You can follow her on Twitter: @claudia_oltean

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RELATED LINKS
Last of the Capones Talks About Uncle Al

Author Marie Zhuikov Talks About Her Life as a Writer

Marie Zhuikov self-describes as a novelist, science writer, poet and editor. Her lifelong fascination with science and writing has taken he across a variety of career terrains. In her day job, Marie is an award-winning science writer and communications project manager, specializing in environmental and medical topics. She has published hundreds of articles, publications, videos and radio programs, as well as coordinated production of many web sites. But like many of us with writing in our DNA there are nights and weekends where the streams of self-expression must find an outlet.

This interview was triggered by the recent panel discussion about writing for money.

EN: As a teen you took an interest in poetry. Who were you favorite poets at that time and did you have other friends who shared this passion?

Marie Zhuikov: Back then, I only knew the poets that I could find in my school library or the local library. I used to type out the poems I liked on my parent's Underwood typewriter so that I could have copies. I still have those copies, even over 35 years later. The poets include Dorothy Parker, William Stafford, Sara Teasdale, and William Carlos Williams.

I don't recall any of my friends having the same interest, so it was a solitary exercise for me.

EN: You say that you have been sitting in front of a typewriter you whole life. At what point did you realize this to be your life calling? 

MZ: I realized I really liked sitting in front of a typewriter when I was about 16 and I was in my room, copying poems. The time just seemed to flow, and I remember thinking, "I want to do this for the rest of my life!" Before that point, I had written a few stories and my own poems. But there was something about studying the poems and immersing myself in recreating them that appealed to me. Later, as a student journalist in college, I still sat in front of a typewriter, but that quickly changed to a computer keyboard once I got a "real" job. And I've been doing it ever since. In my 50s now, I am surprised I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome, knock on wood!

EN: Your writing blended with an interest in science journalism and you ended up becoming an environmental reporter for the Minnesota Daily as well as doing some freelance writing. What were some of the things you learned about writing at that time?

MZ: I learned the hard way about the politics behind some stories and how it can play out when someone in power (like a professor) doesn't like the published piece. That taught me to always keep my interview records (notes, recordings) for a long time afterward, in case I need to prove that my sources said what I reported. In this instance, I did keep the records, but thankfully did not need to use them to justify my story's content. However, it was sure nice to know I had them. I could have been fired if it had turned into a "he said, she said" situation.

I learned a lot about editing, too. When I first started with the paper, I was a night typist. I took the reporters' stories, which were typed on paper, glued together to form a long scroll and marked up by an editor, and typed them into the newspaper's computer system after the 5 p.m. news deadline. Even before I wrote my own newspaper stories, that experience taught me many of the common grammar mistakes reporters make, and ways I could cut extra words to make the story's meaning clearer. Some reporters habitually had way more red pencil editor's marks on their stories than black type. Perfectionist that I was/am, I vowed that when I was a reporter, I would turn in stories edited to the best of my ability so that the typists would have an easier job. I like to think they didn't wince as much when a story with my byline came their way, plus it helped me hone my writing and editing skills at an early stage in my career.

EN: Can you briefly outline your long and winding road to the Northland?

MZ: Well, I was born here, so I started out here. My family lived in the Piedmont neighborhood and I graduated from Denfeld High School. I left for college in Minneapolis, where I lived for five years, but I worked for several summers near Lake Superior. After college, I entered a graduate school program called the Audubon Expedition Institute to earn a degree in environmental education. (It's now called the Expedition Education Institute.) We travelled around the U.S. and Canada in a yellow school bus, learning about environmental issues by talking to local resource people, living outdoors, and going for hikes, swims, and canoe trips. We went from the northern tip of Newfoundland down the east coast of Canada and the U.S. to Key Largo, Florida. From there we went out west to canyon country.

The expedition abruptly stopped in Canyonlands National Park when our bus blew its engine block. By that point, I knew I didn't want to pursue a second year of study on the bus. I wanted to settle down. All the land I had seen made Minnesota look pretty good, so I decided to come back here to find a job and work on natural resource issues and writing. I've stayed here ever since, except for one brief interlude to work in Rochester, Minnesota. Locally, I've worked as a writer and public relations person for the Superior National Forest, Minnesota Sea Grant, the St. Louis River Alliance, and Wisconsin Sea Grant. I've also done a fair amount of freelancing.

EN: When did you first get bit with a desire to write novels?

MZ: That happened during one of my college summer jobs. I worked as a waitress at the resort on Isle Royale National Park. It was the mid-1908s, and the wolf population was in trouble similar to the population issues they are facing now. I lugged a duffle bag full of books with me to the island and one of them was Anne Rice's "Interview with a Vampire." I loved how she gave the vampires their own society and deeper motivations than just bloodlust. I thought it would be fun to do the same thing for werewolves - to show them actually working as members of a pack, not just as singular bloodthirsty beasts. What better place for a setting than Isle Royale? So I combined all those things into my first novel, Eye of the Wolf.

Although I got bit with the idea in the mid-1980s, it took me 17 years to write the novel and to find a publisher, so a long lag ensued between the idea stage and the publishing stage. Part of the reason was that I had a lot of learning to do about fiction writing, part was because I got stuck on certain sections, and another part was that a lot of life happened during those years.

EN: Can you briefly share what your second novel is about?  

MZ: My publisher (North Star Press) calls them eco-mystic-romance novels. They combine ecology, native myths, and kissing! My second novel is a sequel set 11 years afterward. Plover Landing follows the protagonist (Melora St. James) and her love interest, Drew, off the island and into Duluth, where Melora is working to restore habitat on Park Point for an endangered shorebird called the piping plover. After they find a lost boy on the beach, the story begins to take a mystical turn. In helping the boy, Melora and Drew learn secrets about themselves and building community, and they come to terms with their past.

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RELATED LINKS

Visit the website of Marie Zhuikov
The Going Coastal reading at Zenith Bookstore.
Purchase Going Coastal here.

If you're a writer, write on!
Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.