Tear Me into Little Pieces

Please!

Here’s the deal. Last year, like the middle of last year, I had published three erotic stories on Kindle. Medium length pieces, about 10 000 words or so, and I had a lot of fun writing them.

I was casting about for a fourth, and on the news, I heard stories of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. There was a ceremony held at the American Cemetery at Colleville sur Mer in Normandy, which overlooks Omaha Beach. Heads of state, a few surviving veterans, and so on.

Now, as it happens, I’ve been to Omaha Beach and the cemetery three times over the years. Alone, with a lover, with a group. I like those sorts of poignant, historical, evocative places. And the Norman food and drink.

Mont St Michel and the Intramuros of St Malo are nearby, not to mention the Bayeux Tapestry, closer still.

So I blocked out a story, of love amongst the battles. It went fine for a while, and then I ran into a mountain of research. Turns out that the D-Day invasion was a finely-detailed (though not finely-tuned) operation, and there were so many details that I had to look up and try to understand.

Tobruks, and Bangalore Torpedoes, and LCVPs and stick grenades. Oh my!

I got bogged down as I tried to get my guy through the battle to the girl, and the project was increasingly pushed to the back burner.

There was one saucy story

There was one chapter, introducing my farmgirl love interest, which I enjoyed. I put it up on my blog, and then on Medium when I began writing here. It has a bit of sex in it, though not quite anything you’ve met before, I’m sure.

People said nice things about it, and recently, a year after beginning the piece, I bit the bullet (so to speak) and buckled down to finish the whole story. I’m up to seventeen chapters, with five more to come over the next week or so.

It’s not terribly polished, but it has a tonne of material about a bunch of very different characters, what they do with weapons, and travel, and celebrities, and each other, and I kind of like it.

Yes, there’s a few jokes in it.

All this and World War Two…

If any of my regular readers want to run their eyes over the story so far, and absolutely rip it into shreds, that would be fine. Anybody with any knowledge of the military, for example. I might read something about a German machinegun and imagine how it looks and sounds and is used, but I really have no idea. I’m faking it.

Or the snippets of French and German I’ve chucked in for flavour. I know a bit of both, but not a lot, and Google Translate has helped. Probably nothing like what they actually spoke 75 years ago, and my translations are very wobbly.

Or the religion. Just how do a German conscript and a French village priest relate to each other? I’m no Catholic or even a Christian, and I’m just tap-dancing in the dark on what they might do and say.

Or the story. The way it’s told, the pacing, the characters…

Anything at all, really. I think it’s fun to read, and a great story, and I hope they make it into a movie. Saving Sergeant Pepper, maybe.

Here’s the story

I’ve been publishing the thing in serial parts, with my own notes, in a different publication. Seventeen chapters, with more coming every day or so, and I’m nearing the end.

My writer’s nose is pressed too hard against the page to see it clearly, but other eyes with more clarity and perception would help enormously.

Even a few words on some detail I’ve gotten spectacularly wrong — every little bit helps!

Please, if you love me even a little bit!

Britni