Rogue's Angels Present: Sudetenland by George T. Chronis

Please welcome George T. Chronis author of Sudetentland.

George will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host.

Please use the rafflecopter code below for a chance to win.

Sudetenland

by George T. Chronis

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INTERVIEW:

GTC: Thanks so much for having me.

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

GTC: Back in the day I was in a masters film program. Initially I put myself in the production track but soon discovered I could not afford both tuition and film costs. Switching to the screenplay emphasis was much more affordable. To my good fortune our thesis advisor was a crusty old Hollywood pro who really took an interest in me. His passion and enthusiasm were infectious and he helped ignite the storytelling bug in me. Although one of my scripts got some traction with a producer at a studio for a time, I ended up putting all of that on hold when I got working on magazines full time. Years later I felt drawn back to storytelling and gravitated to the historical crisis between Czechoslovakia and Germany that became the basis for Sudetenland. It was too large a story for a screenplay, however, so I had to fashion it as a novel.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

GTC: Good historical fiction can mean different things to different people. For me there has to be fidelity to the facts as well as the social and personal context of the era you are working in. The 1930s is an era that I adore and feel very close to so giving life to characters based in that decade was a natural fit. An element I enjoy a great deal during the writing is to add a lot of factual details and observations to bring the era alive. Thankfully, the 1930s was a great age for news wire services and newspapers, so there is a lot of great material to find if you go looking for it.

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

GTC: When I was a kid you could always find me spending my allowance on history books and magazines. The Sudeten Crisis of 1938 was a focal point in history that had intrigued me for a very long time. There were all of these competing personalities and variables in a very evenly matched situation. A few different decisions and our world would look very different today. This was an exciting backdrop for characters to grow within and experience first hand. Most of all, there was a great story to be told with a lot of history people do not come in contact with often. 

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

GTC: From my screenplay days came a good sense of pacing and narrative structure that well complements the fast-paced circumstances of an international crisis. Twenty odd years of magazine reporting and editing was also pivotal experience for the research and day-to-day writing.

5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

GTC: Once upon a time I had planned on becoming a career diplomat until the Tehran hostage crisis of 1979 changed my mind for me.

6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

GTC: A sequel to Sudetenland, for one. I am right in the middle of the primary research, but as the sequel is going to take a while to complete, I am working up something a little different at the same time. One of those old screenplays is a great little story and I am in the middle of beefing up the characters and the narrative while converting it into a novel that will be out this year.

7. Can you give us a sneak peak into this book?

Sure, it is a film noir set in Los Angeles right after World War II. There are some historical hooks based on some secret German technology that all of a sudden becomes important enough to kill for. This is a much less ambitious story than Sudetenland, but a lot of fun with some great late 1940s Los Angeles atmosphere.

8. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

GTC: Charles Endicott would be a lot of fun since he is so completely old school as a reporter and he so doesn't care what anyone else thinks. Of the real people in the book... Jan Masaryk who was the Czechoslovak ambassador to the United Kingdom. He is another colorful personality who is both a realist and doggedly patriotic at the same time.

9. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

GTC: No, I have not participated in one of those yet. I do have beta readers who assist me a great deal though. Each of them is a little different regarding what they respond well to, or not at all. They all give me reasons why they make a notation, which is perfect for my needs. On balance they are a great help. If I have looked at some pages too many times it becomes easy to get inured to what's on the page where fresh eyes will point out something that could be done better.

10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

GTC: When I started writing Sudetenland I always knew that the goal was to see the novel published. Having worked in magazines for so many years there was no perceived threshold to hold me back – I had already been published and had been an editor. The hard part about making submissions was knowing Sudetenland was too long with too many characters for a debut novelist. But the book needed to be that length with those characters to tell the story I wanted to tell. After a year and a half of not getting picked up I decided to self-publish and have been very pleased with the reception to Sudetenland so far. 

11. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

GTC: The best advice is that there is no singular way to write a novel, or skill set to get there. People can argue about whether internal threat or external threat is more compelling, of whether more dialogue or less dialogue is appropriate, or whether prose is written for the sake of grammatical flourish or driving the narrative – these are all personal tastes. Yet everyone appreciates reading a good story. So if you have a good story to tell, write it, the rest will attend to itself.

12. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

GTC: Some people like these very strict outlines where everything is set down ahead of time but that doesn't work for me. I will fall in love with a supporting character like Ros in Sudetenland and decide to give her much more to do, or I will see a different plot direction that works better than what I started with and go with it – all of which will shred a detailed outline to hell. What works for me is to set up a major guidepost outline where I know where I start, where I end up, and the major narrative points in-between. That way I can veer all over the place and still end up where I wanted to be.

13. How do you maintain your creativity?

GTC: Telling stories is a lot of fun, which makes the process more of a release than a chore. Mostly you will always find me reading about the world or watching the world around me. If you pay attention you will be introduced to a ton of great narratives. Over the years that well gets rather full and one feels much incentive to get around to writing those stories up. Once you get the plot down, the characters tend to take on lives of their own in your head. Those are very vibrant moments that are exciting and tend feed your creativity.

14. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?

GTC: Probably Harry Lasky because he was so much fun to write. The character is a combination of a similar wire service goofball from a great old flick, Arise My Love, combined with an unforgettable former editor-in-chief of mine. Lasky just slays me.

15. Are your plotting bunnies angels or demons?

GTC: Aren't they all supposed to be different name variations for the same thing – a plot device to pull off the shelf when you are stuck, blocked or written yourself into a dead end? Honestly, I don't use them because they can lead to plot holes that are hard to justify down the road. I was trained that everything you write has to drive the narrative forward. That assumes a certain sense of continuity, whereas a plot bunny tends to be a firecracker to shake things up and get the plot out of the ditch, which may lack narrative continuity with what came before.

16. Anything else you might want to add?

GTC: Only that I really appreciate you having me over and I had a lot of fun.

Thanks the Angels

BLURB:

Sudetenland is the premiere novel by author George T. Chronis. The book delivers suspenseful and sweeping historical fiction set against Central European intrigue during the late 1930s leading up to 1938’s Munich Conference. Having swallowed up Austria, Adolph Hitler now covets Czechoslovakian territory. Only France has the power to stand beside the government in Prague against Germany… but will she? The characters are the smart and sometimes wise-cracking men and women of this era – the foreign correspondents, intelligence officers, diplomats and career military – who are on the front lines of that decade’s most dangerous political crisis. If Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš ignores the advice of French premier Édouard Daladier and refuses to give up Bohemian territory willingly, then Hitler orders that it be taken by force. The novel takes readers behind the scenes into the deliberations and high drama taking place within major European capitals such as Prague, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and London as the continent hurtles toward the crucible of a shooting war.

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EXCERPT:

So this was how it was to be. Abandoned like a faithful spouse to the vagaries of a cheating scoundrel. Despite all of the warning signs and the advice of good friends, the fleeting hope that the one who you had invested so much history with would not betray that which had taken so long to build, was dashed. What Masaryk had said on the phone was right: screw them!

Štefan Osušky could not remember when he had felt so embittered. The Franco-Czechoslovak Pact was dead. It had been dying for months through the long summer. For the last hour Bonnet had hammered the death certificate onto a public wall. Osušky had been summoned to the Quai d'Orsay to meet with the French foreign minister. Daladier and his cabinet ministers had been meeting since ten-thirty in the morning at the Élysée Palace to approve or reject the Anglo-French plan that Daladier had crawled back to Paris with from London. When they had finished, Osušky was to be waiting at Bonnet's office to hear the results. No audience with the premier was available.

Osušky held no illusions as to what Chamberlain had proposed to Daladier. The newspapers had been shockingly detailed in their presentation of the expected major points. So many leaks to such a plethora of reporters usually suggested a raison d'être behind the disclosures. Osušky calculated there was a chance those ministers in Daladier's cabinet that opposed ceding Czech territory to Hitler might be setting the stage for an uprising against Chamberlain's cravenly acquiescence to the dictator… but a very small chance.

When Bonnet arrived back from Élysée Palace he got right to the point. Daladier's cabinet had unanimously approved the Anglo-French plan. As Bonnet read off the terms it was just as the press reports had purported. The only difference was that Bonnet had the full list while most of the newspapers lacked one component or another. The next hour was a blistering back and forth between the two diplomats. Osušky reminded Bonnet of the last two years of French assurances, to which the Frenchman countered the break-up of Czechoslovakia was, the least unpleasant solution. Osušky went on to reiterate the fullness of France's treaty obligations only to be instructed they were mere words on paper. The British had said in no uncertain terms that if Prague refused the Anglo-French plan then Britain would disassociate itself from the dispute. Without British solidarity the assistance that France could offer Czechoslovakia was of no effectiveness. The Czechs would not be allowed to drag France into a war over three-and-a-ha

lf million Sudeten Germans. Osušky's further protests only fed Bonnet's burgeoning hostility. France demanded that Czechoslovakia accept the plan. That was the message Osušky was to take to President Beneš without further argument.

There was nothing more to say to such intransigence so Osušky made his leave. Heading down the hall to the main entrance, Osušky felt his own emotions exploding as he replayed Bonnet's words in his head. The ostiary opened the tall, narrow door Osušky had been through so many times in better days and the Czechoslovak envoy stepped out to overlook a courtyard full of anxious correspondents. He couldn't restrain himself.

"Do you want to see a man condemned without a hearing?" Osušky played to the crowd while descending the stairs. "Here I stand!"

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

After years as a journalist and magazine editor, George T. Chronis decided to return to his lifelong passion, storytelling. A lover of both 1930s cinema and world history, Chronis is now devoted to bringing life to the mid-20th Century fictional narratives that have been in his thoughts for years. Sudetenland is his first novel. Taking place during turbulent times in Central Europe during the 1930s, the book took eight years to research and write. The author is already hard at work on his second novel.

Chronis is married with two daughters, and lives with his wife in a Southern California mountain community.

Links

www.sudetenland.georgetchronis.com

www.georgetchronis.tumblr.com

www.georgetchronis.com

Buy Links

www.georgetchronis.com/book/381-2/

www.georgetchronis.com/book/112-2

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

George will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host.

Please use this rafflecopter code:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f998/