Iskander: Blog

Although some characters, places and events in Colette are real, Colette Roberts is complete fiction. She initially occurs as a brief mention in my first novel Through my Eyes. Again. and then again in the upcoming sequel Through different Eyes. It was that latter mention that led to this story. I needed to fix a scene which is retold by Mutti Frida – and so I wrote the opening scene of the novella. This allowed me to then write the retelling that occurs in Through different Eyes.

Then something strange happened: this character was standing at my shoulder, asking me to tell her full story. For about two weeks I ignored the request before returning to that first scene and starting to fill in the story. This required some considerable research – picking up from where Mrs Henderson’s Limp had taken me as I need much deeper knowledge for a story that spans nearly five years.

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was established by Winston Churchill with the express aim of setting occupied Europe ablaze through sabotage, assassination and resistance to occupation. There were several ‘sections’ (basically departments) and the section responsible for action in occupied France was known as Section F – and Maurice Buckmaster was its head.

For Colette I needed details of how agents were recruited and trained, the various training locations, how the codes worked (and changed) during the progress of the war, the special equipment used by agents – not just their radios, the way agents were delivered into Europe by parachute and light plane and on and on. There is a multitude of information on-line and several good books. For those interested in the codes used by the SOE, I strongly recommend Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks – it is a fascinating read and not just for cypher geeks. Radio operators were not all women – but the SOE preferred female radio operators as it was felt they were more focused.

The SOE also knew that the average time to capture of a radio operator in France was about six weeks. Apart from the constant risk of betrayal, the Nazi’s operated a sophisticated listening system, aimed at rapidly triangulating unauthorised radio transmissions. If they were fast enough, they could catch an operator before they had time to pack up an move: a deadly game of cat and mouse. Operators knew this and aimed to keep messages short – but that was not always possible.

I needed what I wrote to be as accurate as I could make it – and not just for the story’s sake.

Forty-one Section F women served in occupied France during World War II. Sixteen of them died in that service, almost all executed at one or other concentration camp, including Ravensbrück – the only all-female Nazi concentration camp. My story needed to represent the reality that these women experienced: from completion of a successful mission to capture – and what followed. To aim any lower would be a disservice to them.

In part, this story is my tribute to those courageous women who went willingly into the darkness of occupied Europe. Women who were prepared to purchase fascism’s defeat with their own lives.

I have visited Europe many times and on one such visit, after prevaricating for years, I finally summoned the courage to visit a concentration camp – Dachau, near Munich. Even in the bright sunshine of a summer’s day, it is a bleak reminder of humanity’s darkest abilities. In the crematorium a plaque commemorates four SOE girls, executed there on 12th September 1944. Amidst all the deaths that occurred there (an estimated 50,000) it was that plaque and those deaths (Yolande Beekman, Madelaine Damerment, Noor Inyat Khan and Elaine Plewman) that undammed my tears.

What started out as a few sentences for a scene took on a life of its own and stole time from my main writing task – both writing and research time.

I hadn't looked at Mrs Henderson's Limp for two years. The story dates from the very early days of my journey in writing.

I recently received some exceptional feedback on this story - and I took another look at it. Whilst the story itself was fine, the telling of it less than that. Accordingly, I've revised it extensively, sorting out some minor story elements and dealing with poor expression and wording.

It's still the same story - but I hope it is now a much better telling of that story.

Your feedback on this would be most welcome.

Chapter 4 has been posted and is now live (the complete book is available to everyone on Bookapy and to patrons on my Patreon).

I've been asked by email why I made Colette 'premiers only' and the answer is because much of my writing is available on other sites that require work not to be freely available on the Internet. You can find my work on many commercial eBook sites - and can even buy paperback versions of them.

Finally, news of the sequel (or whatever it's called) to Through my Eyes. Again.

Through different Eyes - what happened to Col and Mutti Frida when they disappeared - will be releasing here chapter by chapter (there are 21) in the first half of 2023 - again for premier readers.

I've submitted chapter 3 for posting early... season's greetings to you all.

Take care of you and yours across the holidays.

Iskander
(Robert Hart)

Many stories these days are part of a series and we all know what is meant by a prequel and a sequel - and a standalone. With both of these, there is an explicit placing of the story in the series timeline. But what do we call a story that takes place entirely within the time frame of another story? Or one that is contemporaneous with another related story, even if the stories don't touch until later in the series?

My new novella Colette, currently being posted, is a case in point. It is contemporaneous with Mrs Henderson's Limp and is also a prequel to Through my Eyes. Again. The main character, French/English Colette is referred to in Through my Eyes. Again. and also in the upcoming sequel Through different Eyes. That upcoming novel (watch out for it in 2023) takes place almost entirely within the time frame of Through my Eyes. Again. telling the story of Col and Mutti Frida from when they disappeared from Will Johnstone's life in late April 1964.

Colette is thus a parallel story to Mrs Henderson's Limp and a prequel to Through my Eyes. Again. The four stories are all related - and the epilogues of Colette and Through different Eyes describe the same event - but through different eyes.

I suppose the four stories populate and define a "universe" in some way - but one that has diverged into an alternate timeline sometime after 1945. Perhaps the defining moment for that split is when Will Johnstone's consciousness is transported into his twelve-year-old body (October 1962).

But placing them in a universe has left unsolved the problem of how to describe them. In a way, these stories mirror life. We are all the central character in our own story but a subsidiary character in the story of those people entwined, however loosely, in our story.

In that sense, prequel and sequel seem to lose their relevance.