ABOUT THE BLOG
Thank you so much for dropping by. Now, let me tell you why you can read what you can read on the blog.
You can read what is on this website and blog thanks to an editor who uttered this spine-chilling statement years ago:
You need a social media presence!
That phrase can send shivers down the spine of someone who misses analog photography, still has a CD player, and reads books off-screen! However, years ago, an editor told me just that.
So against my nature I decided to self-promote. I set up a Facebook account and started blogging in 2012. I blogged about my life, Paris, my yorkie; all of it became blogging subjects.
It was long ago when you could, without much ado, get people to read a blog about you because you had a Yorkie and lived in central Paris and lived a life some would define as good. Sadly, I left that life behind in Paris in 2014.
But I realized the editor was right - social media presence is a must nowadays for any professional. However, it is up to you to find out how you want to do it. And sometimes, you need to fail miserably to find out what you should do.
When I was rewriting a novel that editors asked me to rewrite again and again - now a project on standby - I began blogging again to have a social media presence. With a touch of arrogance and a pinch of indifference, I threw myself into a world of lifestyle blogging, as it is called.
A waste of time and colossal failure would be an excellent way of describing my performance. The fact was, I had absolutely nothing to say about 10 Steps to Happiness, How To Whiten Your Teeth At Home, or Positive Affirmations That Will Change Your Life. So, I dumped the project and decided to be myself.
What is this blog about, then?
Well, I wanted to expose myself in a way that did not generate the same level of self-loathing as lifestyle blogging had done from time to time. If I had to have a social media presence, I wanted to write about things I cared about and knew something about, such as:
The Lost Generation
Relations, operations, and people of the SOE and OSS
The literary universe of Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers, other literary universes, and narratology (Yes, I know, huge nerd-alert!)
And my favorite places, stories, and people I hope to write about someday.
My specific World War 2 interest is Kai Winkelhorn (my grandmother’s cousin), the London crowd (including some very interesting French people), his activities, and heroism during World War 2 when too many stood by and did nothing or willingly joined the dehumanizing, murderous, sadistic and true evil Nazism was and is, and got away with it!
(Kai Winkelhorn (on the left) & Flemming Juncker (on the right) Frihedsmuseets fotoarkiv (link on photo)
The atrocities committed by the Nazi death-machine were crimes against European civilians and the suppression and destruction of a continent. And very few were held accountable for their crimes or collaboration in the end. And this is important to remember also because Nazism was never truly annihilated on this continent.
Nazism persecuted and savagely murdered millions of civilians in Europe – the Jewish communities, the Roma communities, Slavic civilians, POWs, homosexuals, communists, intellectuals, resistance fighters and their families, journalists, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, various religious and political minorities, etc.
And yet today, you can meet people who believe the nazis weren’t so bad (!) and some who share their beliefs in a, let’s call it a 2.0 version. And in some European countries, it’s a legal political ideology – e.g., Denmark.
I believe this problem deserves much more attention than it is getting, which is next to no attention!
What caught attention?
However, when it turned out that my sad tale of gang-stalking was what got online attention, my other interests took a back seat. The Lost Generation, the SOE and OSS, narratology, places, and people will all have to wait until I leave Denmark and this nightmare behind for good.
“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will be able to tell.”
— The Secret History by Donna Tartt.