EWein2412

WAI2025, Women in Aviation International Conference in Denver, Colorado

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:34:27 GMT

I’ve been a Women in Aviation International member for fifteen years, and for the first time this year I attended a WAI Annual Conference. I confess: I did it in my Author Hat and not in my Pilot Hat.

In our recent non-fiction book American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky, my co-author Sherri L. Smith and I told the story of Willa Brown Chappell and Janet Harmon Waterford Bragg, who learned to fly in the 1930s. These two amazing Black women ran integrated flight schools, pushed for the integration of civil and military aviation in the United States, and helped train the pilots who eventually became the Tuskegee Airmen, the only Black Americans who flew in combat in World War II.

Urged by Liz Booker, retired U.S. Coast Guard helicopter pilot and a writer herself – Liz runs the “Literary Aviatrix” book club and writers’ group (https://literaryaviatrix.com/) – Sherri and I nominated Willa Brown and Janet Bragg to the WAI Pioneer Hall of Fame, hoping that the honors would be awarded at this year’s annual conference.

Liz Booker, "The Literary Aviatrix," at the Authors Connect bookstore at the WAI conference

Our nominations were accepted, and Liz organized an education session at the conference designed to highlight the nominations, in a panel event entitled “The Race for Equality in the Sky.” The session showcased Janet Bragg and Willa Brown, as well as Bessie Coleman, who in 1921 became the first Black American woman to earn an international pilot’s license.

Liz with a carload of authors and pilots!

It was hands-down the most electrifying and well-received panel event I’ve ever had the good fortune to participate in. Sherri and I spoke to an absolutely packed audience of 250 attendees - standing room only, the most diverse and enthusiastic group I’ve ever addressed. Joining us on the panel were Bessie Coleman’s great-niece Gigi Coleman and Beth Powell, a 737 captain who grew up in Jamaica and who is Gigi’s co-author on Queen of the Skies, a fictional biography of Bessie Coleman.

The panel was moderated by WAI’s third Pioneer Hall of Fame inductee for 2025, Theresa Claiborne, the first Black woman to fly in the US Air Force. Theresa is founder of Sisters of the Skies (https://sistersoftheskies.org/), a program dedicated to diversifying aviation, and she’s a powerhouse of aviation advocacy. She’s also an eloquent and captivating speaker in her own right, and it was humbling and invigorating to participate in this hugely popular panel discussion.

In the Q&A that followed the event, an audience member asked anxiously for advice on how to remain hopeful and inspired when battling rampant and insidious institutional injustice.

Beth Powell’s answer was worth remembering: “If you feel like quitting some days, don’t quit. Rest.”

Apart from this panel discussion, the International Reception on the first full day of the conference, and the Pioneer Hall of Fame Banquet on the last evening, I didn’t manage to get to a single organized event. I was so busy talking to people and signing books with Sherri!

Authors Connect authors, pilots and volunteers

Liz Booker’s “Authors Connect” bookstore acted as a hub and meeting point, and I was astonished at how many people I ran into with whom I’d crossed paths before, many of them pilots-turned-writers: Janna Greenhalgh, a long-time fan of my books who’s currently cloud-seeding and firefighting in the air; Cady Coleman, my astronaut friend who lived for six months on the International Space Station (!); Erin Miller, who fought for years for the right to inter her grandmother, one of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilot’s, in Arlington Cemetery; Sue Tuddenham, whom I’d last encountered at the Sywell Air Show in England when she was towing gliders out of West Wycombe to build hours, and who is now flying business jets; Melinda Viteri, who worked with me fifteen years ago on a joint Ninety-Nines and WAI “Concorde” chapter newsletter (encompassing Britain and France); Lola Reid Allin, the Canadian pilot author of Highway to the Sky; Maaike Lustenhouwer, a Dutch aviation lawyer who’s an avid reader in the Literary Aviatrix book group; Janet Patton, a 777 captain for American Airlines, whose Piper Warrior G-EVIE my husband and I have become involved with in Scotland; and Suzy Morgan, a 777 captain for British Airways who’s also a Literary Aviatrix book club fan.

It felt like one of the coolest achievements of my life to be able to introduce two women who are Boeing 777 captains to each other – it hadn’t ever occurred to me that I KNOW two women who are 777 captains!

Pilots and authors: Melinda Viteri, Sue Tuddenham, Janet Patton, E Wein, and Tracey Curtis-Taylor

Erin Miller and E Wein

Boeing 777 captains Janet Patton (American Airlines) and Suzy Morgan (British Airways)

But equally thrilling was meeting and being able to talk to David Brown and Shanel Brown Jones, Willa Brown’s nephew and great-niece, and the Clarence Harpers – III and IV – Janet Bragg’s nephew and great-nephew.

WAI Pioneer Hall of Fame family members Clarence Harper III and Clarence Harper IV (nephew and great-nephew of Janet Harmon Waterford Bragg), and Shanel Brown Jones and David Brown, great-niece and nephew of Willa Brown Chappell

It was amazing to speak to people who had personal memories of our Pioneer Hall of Fame nominees, and the highlight of the entire conference was hearing their acceptance speeches – and then hearing Theresa Claiborne’s, as she acknowledged the legacy that these groundbreaking women from the Golden Age of Flight had passed down to her.

“These women didn’t just dream of aviation,” Theresa said; “they built runways to help us take off.”

Theresa Claiborne accepts her WAI Pioneer Hall of Fame nomination

She also exhorted us to continue to support and insist on diversity in aviation. Her message was forceful: “Representation isn’t just about being seen, it’s about ensuring that no dream is forced to wait.”

It was an honor and yet so humbling for Sherri and I to feel that now, by our own involvement, we’d become part of the story we told in American Wings – that we’d helped to raise awareness of the amazing people who inspired us, particularly at a time when it feels urgently important to keep their memory and legacy alive.

But it takes a village! So many people came together to make this event happen, and to share this legacy. We’d never have thought to put forward that nomination if Liz Booker hadn’t suggested it, and organized the education session. Having Theresa Claiborne as our panel moderator no doubt was a huge draw and major contributor to our session’s success. And of course – we wouldn’t be here without the pioneering efforts of Willa Brown and Janet Bragg themselves.

Sherri L. Smith and E. Wein in our Pioneer Hall of Fame banquet duds!

With Janet Bragg's relatives...

... and with Willa Brown's!

Not to mention Bessie Coleman, the woman who first tore down the barriers of race and gender to open the sky to all.

E. Wein and Sherri L. Smith posing with Courtney Wilson, student pilot and Bessie Coleman lookalike

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Aviation Heritage with American Wings!

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 16:10:43 GMT

Sherri L. Smith and I were royally hosted by the Warren County Public Library at the Aviation Heritage Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky on Sunday, 7 July 2024. We did our American Wings double act beneath the wings of a Coffey School of Aeronautics Piper Cub once owned by Willa Brown, now the centerpiece of Bowling Green’s Aviation Heritage Park display. We got choked up when we saw this plane!

(Pause to apologize for the consistent 2-week lag in my event reporting.)

Courtney Stevens, the Director of the Warren County Public Library (and YA author in her own right: http://www.courtneycstevens.com/novels/ ), was responsible for pulling this together, and she, Sherri, and I spent about six months plotting the complexities of bringing Sherri from Los Angeles and me from Scotland so that we’d arrive at the same time. But we did, the day before the event – touching down in Nashville within an hour of each other, and Sherri was there to meet me at the gate when I stepped off my flight – a pleasure that is very rare in these times of advanced airport security! The first thing we did was to buy a bottle of “Altitude” chardonnay to take to Diane and Hosanna Banks, my friend Amanda’s mother and sister, who welcomed us to Nashville with a delicious meal of grilled salmon in Diane’s beautiful house (which narrowly missed being destroyed by a tornado in May 2020 – her garage and trees did not survive).

It was a lovely welcome to the area, but only the first of a series of joyful encounters. On our way to Bowling Green the next morning, in the rental car generously provided by Courtney, we stopped at Nashville’s Parnassus Books to look around and sign any author copies they might have on hand. There were indeed a few, and we just happened to drop in when Ann Patchett, the owner, was visiting! We had a fantastic conversation with Ann and one of the supersmart and multitalented sales assistants – talking about writing and teaching and publishing for about twenty minutes before we had to rush off. Ann was extremely gracious and friendly. I MIGHT HAVE FANGIRLED HER A BIT. (The Dutch House is one of my favorite books of recent years, and Tom Lake put me on to Thornton Wilder.)

We had to have lunch in the parking lot of a Wendy’s because we’d lingered so long at Parnassus Books, but we made it to the Aviation Heritage Park in Bowling Green right on time, where we were greeted by Courtney’s deputy, Laura Beth Fox-Ezell (the library’s Executive Program Manager), or LB for short. Courtney was recovering from a medical procedure and couldn’t be there, but LB had everything ready for the event – our slide show was already loaded and she’d even set up a “green room” stocked with coffee and cakes from a local café.

But instead of eating we got caught up in the excitement of meeting Bob Bubnis, the Executive Director of the Aviation Heritage Park, and Dan Cherry (aka Brigadier General E. Daniel Cherry) – a career fighter pilot and the author of My Enemy, My Friend: A Story of Reconciliation from the Vietnam War. Dan is an air force veteran and public servant with an awe-inspiring list of credentials and decorations to his name, and also the former commander of the Thunderbirds air demonstration team. [STARS IN OUR EYES.] This formidable man was as excited about meeting us as we were about meeting him, because he’d been sent by his friend General Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton to get a picture with us. Fig, another highly decorated fighter pilot and Vietnam vet, was the first African-American pilot in the Thunderbirds, and he’d read and loved American Wings and recommended it to Dan! Sherri and I were both awed. And so very, very delighted.

With the "Fig" Newton exhibit!

Honestly, our event itself was just icing on the cake after that. It lasted about two hours by the time the Q&A was wrapped up. Sherri and I secretly confessed to each other afterward that we felt our teamwork was ever so slightly off our game after a six month absence, but I don’t think anyone noticed (whereas at the Octavia Butler School in January an audience member asked us if we were “best friends,” this time an audience member told us that we interacted “like sisters”)!

Here are the Warren County Library’s photos of the event: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/EFUTSg2GjuBkpZA3/?

After the event we signed stacks of books and the very last person in the signing queue was Kim Green, another friend of mine – and a pilot, a public radio broadcaster, and author who recently published Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes, an amazing memoir that she’s been working with in collaboration with its author Chantha Nguon. (More here: https://aviatrixkim.com/kims-bio/ ) Kim took us for a quick driving tour of Nashville’s Broadway honky tonk strip, then treated us to a meal at a restaurant called City House where we talked about, you guessed it, writing, the publishing industry, and the fascinating history behind Slow Noodles.

It was an amazing weekend all around. And we are hoping to return in 2025 for the opening of an exhibit dedicated to Willa Brown at the Aviation Heritage Park. Watch this space!

Sherri and I got interviewed by the local ABC TV station, WBKO, so you can experience a wee taste of our sister act here:
https://www.wbko.com/2024/07/08/american-wings-authors-highlight-black-aviators-wcpl-author-series/

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Lancashire Book of the Year Awards 2024

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 20:57:57 GMT

It’s nearly two weeks since this wonderful couple of days, but better late than never to tell about it and say thank you, right? My novel Stateless was on the shortlist for this award, along with eleven other books by fabulous authors.

https://prism.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/lancashire/lists/defac38c-668d-419d-9d9e-75ae68277fbf

The un-put-downable thriller, The Midnight Game, was a shoo-in for the prize in my opinion, and it came as no surprise to me that its author Cynthia Murphy was the winner of this brilliant locally sponsored award for the third year in a row. Unfortunately, Cynthia came down with COVID at the last minute and wasn’t able to be there to accept the prize or to enjoy the festivities.

BUT I WAS! All of it run by the Lancashire County Council and sponsored by the University of Central Lancashire, the ceremony takes place in Preston, England, and is attended by some 300 student readers representing some 25 schools (the numbers vary year to year). The shortlist and winners are chosen entirely by the young readers who read and weed through submissions from publishers throughout the year. Frankly, as an author who leans literary, I am incredibly flattered and honoured that my target audience chose this for their shortlist!

Yet another photo of me talking! (photo credit Lancashire Libraries)

I was part of a small core group of five authors who met in Preston the night before the event and were treated to a generous welcome meal by Tom Brown and Robin Crawshaw of Lancaster County Council Cultural Services. We were Bea Fitzgerald, Sarah Underwood, Sue Wallman, Kate Weston, and me, a good turnout for the women writers. It was brilliant to be able to have some time to discuss publishing, writing, and politics (we met on the day of the UK’s general election and our event was held on the day of the results), but the real thrill came when we got to line up on a panel in front of the 300-strong readers. After talking about ourselves and our books, we got to field questions for nearly an hour. When we were told “We only have time for one or two more questions,” we cranked up our efficiency into a sort of rapid-fire round and answered at least a dozen more before everybody had to adjourn for lunch.

The author panel (photo credit Lancashire Libraries)

Lunch was with the sponsors and Lancashire County Councillor Alf Clempson, who regaled the table with the story of a 105-year-old veteran who’d fought in Italy in World War II and learned to fly in later life. Apparently he’d done quite a bit of running away in Italy, not from the enemy, but from angry farmers’ wives whose daughters he’d been consorting with!

The final part of the event was a huge book signing, which was also brilliant. At least five girls came up to me afterwards to tell me they were in the Air Cadets. One kid said that Stateless was her favourite book and that she’d read it three times. One kid asked me to write about Polish pilots, “because my country doesn’t get enough representation,” and it was a pleasure to be able to point her to White Eagles and say, “AS A MATTER OF FACT, I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK ABOUT A POLISH PILOT.” She was so excited and grateful and it made me so happy!

But the absolute highlight of the entire event for me was the boy who asked, in the signing queue, “Who is the most fascinating person you ever met?” And I thought for a minute and came up with my high school French teacher and Holocaust survivor, Annette Berman. I started to tell him about Madame, and all the other kids standing in the signing queue started gathering round to listen, and one of their teachers came over to find out what the attraction was, and she started listening, too. Later, Robin told me he’d wondered what was going on!

(Here is Madame’s obituary: https://obits.pennlive.com/us/obituaries/pennlive/name/annette-berman-obituary?id=15076393 – and here is her oral history in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510777 )

Annette Berman with my kids in 2006

I’m so glad Stateless was on the shortlist – I told them I’d do it again even if I didn’t have a book to promote! It’s a fabulous initiative and it’s been running for 38 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Book_of_the_Year

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There and Back Again

Thu, 30 May 2024 03:40:44 GMT

I write this sitting on the Mt. Gretna porch in Pennsylvania.

It was so weird flying back to the east coast on United 2213, from Orange County airport to Newark, in less than five hours, yesterday.

On Friday, however, it took us close to that same amount of time to fly from Deming, New Mexico, to Yuma, Arizona – with a stop at Gila Bend to refuel. YES, THAT GILA BEND! This is the first place we landed on our trip east three weeks earlier, the place with the spider and the disintegrating fire engine and no transport. They do, however, have fuel, and it was the perfect stop to fill up and do some flight planning for a few hours before continuing on to Yuma. Lunch in Gila Bend was what we had with us: four peanut butter crackers, a couple of cookies, some peanut brittle and a breakfast bar.

And Yuma was wonderful. We stayed in an ancient motor hotel, the Coronado, stucco roofs and poolside palms and bougainvillea.

Coronado Motor Hotel, Yuma, AZ

The hotel had a deal with the restaurant next door, the Yuma Landing, named for Robert G. Fowler – who in 1911 landed a plane in Arizona for the first time RIGHT THERE. He, too, was on a cross country trip – the first flyer to cross the continent from west to east.

Shaking hands with fellow trans-continental flyer Robert G. Fowler

And it turns out that Yuma was also the second stop on the 1929 Women’s Air Derby, and Amelia Earhart pranged her propeller here and the entire race got held up while it was being fixed.

We also got held up here, because the wind was too strong for us after our El Paso to Deming experience. We were now pretty wary of crossing the desert in heat and high wind. So we rented a car and saw some tourist sights instead. Chief among them were the Imperial Sand Dunes, California, which looked like Tatooine, mainly because it *IS* Tatooine – Return of the Jedi was filmed here, as was Lawrence of Arabia.

Imperial Sand Dunes

We then drove in the opposite direction to Fishers Landing, Arizona (Yuma is on the California border, or rather, on the Colorado River – we walked there from our hotel – and only seven miles from the Mexican border).

Fishers Landing is a marina on the Colorado River. We realized, as we drove closer, that the huge plumes of smoke we’d seen from sixty miles away in California were probably not connected to the nearby army training center, but were something else and very close to where we were headed.

Apocalyptic landscape in Arizona

It felt apocalyptic. No one in Fishers Landing gave a heck. I asked a server in the Rio Loco bar and grill, “What’s going on?” and she just shrugged and said, “We have no idea.” Someone else suggested in was a fire caused by a motorboat running aground in “the toolies,” apparently a local term for “the boonies” or “the sticks.” After we’d eaten our lunch, the plume of smoke was even bigger, so we decided to get as far away from it as we could before everyone started to panic.

On our way back to Yuma we discovered what might be my FAVORITE MUSEUM EVER, the “Cloud Museum” in Bard, California. It is a collection of about a gazillion rusting Model T and Model A Fords, along with maybe 50 beautifully restored vehicles of the same era, all belonging to local resident Johnny Cloud and sitting on his property, along with the former Bard post office which is incorporated wholesale into the museum.

Model Ts at the Cloud Museum, Bard, California

The displays also include a bunch of ancient baby buggies, bicycles, a 1930s school bus and fire engine, a full service gas station, a 1930 Ford Motor Home, and hundreds of ancient glass bottles and electrical insulators.

1920s gas station at the Cloud Museum

I absolutely loved it. In trying to describe it to my niece, later, I realized that the guy is a hoarder – but what he hoards is MODEL T FORDS. My mind, it was blown.

---------------

The next day, we headed out of Yuma, but not before I overheard in the local airport office someone mentioning that fire in “the toolies.” So I ended up finding out from the horse’s mouth, a helicopter pilot named Rick, that it had been a wildfire and that he’d actually been battling it all afternoon the day before in his S61 helicopter, siphoning water from Martinez Lake and dumping it in 700 gallon drops. He was waiting for his next assignment.

Rick's S61 firefighting helicopter

The fire was still burning as we took off, 24 hours later. Rick was wonderful. I said, “Please let me shake your hand and say thank you.” He accepted hugs, too.

We could still see the smoke, spread about the Colorado River valley, as we flew away from Yuma. Guys like Rick are heroes.

Arizona desert wildfire THE NEXT DAY, from the air

We flew to Thermal, California (near Palm Springs), which is below sea level. Completely by coincidence – AGAIN – it turned out that this airfield is named for Jackie Cochran; she lived in the next town, Coachella, for many years, founding the Coachella Chapter of the 99s (the International Organization of Women Pilots, of which I am a member). She was, of course, also one of the founding members of the WASP (Women’s Air Force Service Pilots). What are the chances!

We had lunch there, waited two hours for the mist to burn off the California coast, and then flew on to Santa Monica. And that was the nearest airport to the Pacific Ocean that we could get to.

Approach to Santa Monica Airport, California

We landed, refueled, borrowed the airport courtesy car, and drove to the beach.

The Pacific Ocean!

We’d made it – from the west coast to the east, and back!

It took us 48 hours of flight time.

Our final flight of the evening was back to Corona. We landed with the setting sun in our eyes.

California sunset

Doug the engineer was waiting to greet us and to make sure we hadn’t damaged his plane. The Flying Academy folks had all been watching us on flight radar, and spotted us flying overhead earlier in the afternoon without landing, wondering where we were headed.

Only in hindsight do I realize that entirely by accident we almost exactly retraced the 1929 Women’s Air Derby in reverse on our way back from Texas, landing in Abilene, Pecos, El Paso, Yuma, and Santa Monica. And of course we also landed in Phoenix, another 1929 race stop, on our way out. So much of this wonderful trip retraced the airways of famous aviators entirely by accident. And yet it doesn’t feel like accident at all. We are following in their footsteps.

N991BJ, One Bravo Juliet, our Julie, was in the air again the next morning, training the next generation of aviators.

Farewell Julie <3

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Turbulence

Sun, 26 May 2024 02:39:20 GMT

1942 airport beacon at Deming, New Mexico

We landed in El Paso on Wednesday and suddenly couldn’t steer the plane down the runway.

“Exit the runway at Uniform 2 and taxi via Hotel,” came the call, or something similar, and we were like, “Um, can we exit here at Yankee and shut down to inspect the nose wheel?"

The ground controllers and crew could not have been more helpful. They gave us permission to block the taxiway, directed aircraft around us, and I hopped out and discovered we had a flat nose-wheel tire.

There wasn’t anything to do but get the plane towed to an engineering workshop – and so we sat out on the runway while equipment and assistance were summoned to help us It took a long time – those runways are about a mile long. We got to ride in the escort vehicle with Erica, the airport operations supervisor, who drove about five miles an hour while poor Julie got towed by the cart behind us.

N991BJ under tow

We were the second small aircraft to come in to El Paso with a flat tire in the last half an hour! And when I admired the shining old DC-3 parked out in front of one of the hangars, Erica said, “Oh, they had a flat tire too!”

No doubt the DC-3 tire wasn’t as easily replaced as ours. We were able to take off again the next morning, but found ourselves battling to hold our altitude – it was the most turbulent flight we’d experienced during the whole trip. We’d been aiming for Tucson, but after traveling across the desert in stifling heat and being lifted 700 feet in 30 seconds, and finding little relief as high as 10,500 feet, we decided we’d be better off on the ground.

Dust devils on the way into Deming, New Mexico

We diverted to Deming, New Mexico – as with Mississippi, we’d flown over New Mexico but hadn’t intended to stop there! But we were very happy to be on the ground in this surprising green desert oasis full of pecan groves.

There was an airport beacon here which I believe dates to 1942 and which I thought was extremely cool. The airport office had pet cats and rattlesnakes.

Identity unknown

Mumma

Pecan groves in Deming, New Mexico

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This Land Is Your Land

Fri, 24 May 2024 03:45:04 GMT

Bringing you the latest from Deming, New Mexico, where we landed this afternoon after an epic visit to El Paso, Texas. More about that in the next instalment – I need to catch up with the beginning of the week!

One Bravo Juliet got her fifty-hour check (essentially a tune-up) on Monday with the excellent Steve McCleod of McCleod Engineering at the Texas State Technical College airport in Waco (TSTC), so we had time to do a bit more sightseeing in Waco (where we have spent a total of three nights on this trip – indeed, we’ve spent an entire week in Texas overall!). The first stop on the morning’s tour was the Texas Ranger Museum and Hall of Fame and I think I learned more there and gained more of an understanding about American history than I’ve learned since high school. That is, Rangers as in The Lone Ranger (I GET IT NOW) – Texas’s own militia, as it were, from 1823 – they just celebrated their 200th anniversary. The museum also gave me much-needed insight as to how and why the thing we call “gun culture” became so ingrained in this country. The gangster bank robbers of the 1930s, with their sawed-off shotguns and submachine guns, were around within living memory. Just barely, but still! There was a fascinating display here on Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, aka the gangsters Bonnie & Clyde; and I was also intrigued by Miriam aka Ma Ferguson, Texas’s first woman governor, elected in 1924, and by Cynthia Ann Parker (no relation to Bonnie), captured by Comanches in 1836 at the age of nine in and who later married the chief Peta Nocona and whose son, Quanah Parker, was the Comanches’ last war chief. Tons of varied and intriguing history here.

Downtown Waco, Texas

We arrived back at TSTC just in time to watch a B-29 bomber landing to refuel during a training flight. The B-29 is a warbird dating to 1944; it flew the bombing missions over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and there are only two still flying in the whole world, and this was one of them. We fueled up at the same time (it took a bit more fuel than we did; we can carry 40 gallons max – they took on a thousand!), and then they flew several take-off and landings, so that we ended up taxiing at the same time. The pictures are not great but they are COOL.

One Bravo Juliet sharing the airfield at TSTC Waco with a B-29

It was taxiing with us as we took off!

We flew to Abilene that night, where we stayed in a highway hotel, and the next day we made a quick hop to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, where the WASPs – the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots – did their training in 1943 and 1944.

Landing at Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas. The WASP Museum is the two hangars to the right of the runway.

Ok, it was extremely cool to land at Avenger Field. We did not realize that the local airport and the WASP Museum do not really have access to each other, and we had to walk about a mile around the airport perimeter to get to the museum. https://www.waspmuseum.org/ It was worth the effort, though, to see so much commemorative memorabilia and information in their two hangars; among other things all their aircraft still fly, performing in airshows, and they have a “Link trainer,” the 1940s version of FlightSim. Allison Marlett, the gift shop manager, could not have been more helpful, and in addition to enthusing over aviation literature, she drove us back to the Fixed Base Operator where we’d left the plane.

One Bravo Juliet at Avenger Field, in Sweetwater, Texas

We then spent a few hours planning and waiting for the wind to change. There we ran into a couple of Jamaican pilots ferrying a plane to its new owner in the Caribbean. They’d landed at Avenger Field to check some issues with the plane. We recommended Steve McCleod!

I loved the light below and above this layer of haze as we crossed Texas.

Our final stop for the day was in Pecos, Texas. I confess that this really felt like the middle of nowhere. When we discovered that the airport courtesy car was leaking oil, we returned it and walked to the nearest hotel. We have walked a LOT in Texas, mostly along highway access roads and sometimes carrying our luggage and getting very dusty. This feels to me a little bit like living the Woody Guthrie dream.

Typical Texas transport: the white pick-up. I have driven a couple of these myself when provided as airport courtesy cars! (We didn't stay here; there was No Room at the Inn.)

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Hot Hot Hot

Mon, 20 May 2024 04:03:35 GMT

We spent Friday in Clinton, Mississippi, avoiding Weather, and continued our trip west on Saturday, This time we ended up in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The Mighty Mississippi, at the Mississippi/Louisiana state line

You guessed it: lunch included more catfish. Shreveport is on the Red River, where the “Great Raft,” a 600-year-old log jam eight miles wide, was dismantled by the US Army Corps of Engineers led by Henry Miller Shreve between 1833 and 1838 (don’t quote me on these facts, I am not an expert). We walked over the steel truss bridge built in 1933 and gaped at the casinos.

Train over the Red River, Shreveport, Louisiana. This train was 153 cars long.

The live music that night was a phenomenal R&B band in the Noble Savage, who deserved a much bigger audience, but I was really blown away by their performance of Duke Ellington’s “Diga Diga Doo” and the youthful couple who leaped out of their seats and spontaneously began to dance the Lindy Hop like it was 1928.

On Sunday morning we joined fellow change ringers Candace and Edwin Higginbotham to ring the bells at St. Mark’s Cathedral for their Sunday church service! It was such a thrill to be able to help them out (their band is a little on the thin side at the moment), and so wonderful how welcoming bell ringers are. We’d never met before, but we had so much and so many friends in common. Candace and Edwin took us out to lunch – turns out their hospitality is legendary. It was such an unexpected treat and we’re hoping they make it to Scotland some day.

Ringing down at St. Mark's Cathedral, Shreveport

After ringing and lunch, we flew on during the hottest part of the day back to Waco, Texas. We are hoping to make our way back west in a leisurely manner over the next week.

With Shreveport ringers Candace and Edwin Higginbotham

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"Tuskegee, Here We Come!"

Sat, 18 May 2024 00:22:02 GMT

That's the Atlantic Ocean!

After being stuck in the Golden Isles for three days to avoid bad weather, which was really like being on a three-day beach vacation, we are now on our way back west. We set out on Wednesday with the intention of getting some miles between us and the Atlantic, but first we did a little scenic tour of the Georgia coast. We turned west over Savannah, and landed in Cochran, Georgia, for lunch. Another airport courtesy car took us to Scott’s BBQ – we didn’t want to miss a local delicacy!

Alabama woodland. I am fascinated by the way you can see a river's ancient meanders from the air by the different vegetation growing in the soil laid down there.

We had to wait around a few hours for the wind to die down a bit before we headed out again. Choosing the next stop, Tim pointed to an airport in Alabama on the aviation map marked “Moton Field.” He said, “What about this place?”

I said – “Moton Field – that’s Tuskegee!”

“Oh yes,” says he, “That’s the nearest town.”

“No – I mean, Moton Field is where the Tuskegee Airmen all learned to fly!”

So of course we HAD to go there.

Now, if you’ve read American Wings, the non-fiction book that Sherri L. Smith and I collaborated on, you may recall that one of our heroes, John C. Robinson, was a graduate of Tuskegee Institute. In fact, he graduated exactly 100 years ago, in May 1924. With fellow aviators Cornelius Coffey and Grover Nash, in two planes, Johnny set out to travel by air to his tenth college reunion in May of 1934 (Robert Russa Moton, whom the airfield is now named for, was president of Tuskegee at the time). There was one major mishap on the way, caused by Johnny’s own cavalier airmanship, which wrecked the plane he was flying. He continued on to Tuskegee in Nash’s plane, becoming probably the first flyer ever to land there, touching down in an oat field connected to Tuskegee’s School of Agriculture on May 22, 1934.

Moton Field at Tuskegee in 1942, and in 2024. One Juliet Bravo is peeking out at right behind the sand pile!

On May 15, 2024, Tim and I landed at Moton Field almost exactly ninety years later. Fortunately our trip has been less eventful than Johnny Robinson’s, all those years ago! We were able to visit the wonderful museum there, dedicated to the Tuskegee Airmen and managed by the National Park Service. I wish I could say I planned this all along. But I didn’t, because in our initial plans last winter, we never intended to fly so far south. Kismet!

Moton Field from the old Tuskegee control tower. One Bravo Juliet is the plane at the far right.

We spent the night in Auburn, Alabama, not far from Tuskegee, and our first stop on Thursday was Meridian, Mississippi. Here we had our most exciting landing, as we slotted in between the Navy “Eagles” Training Squadron 7’s T-45 jets – apparently the Meridian civilian airfield has discovered it can tempt Navy pilots to land there by offering them free food! It was offered to us, too, in quantity – hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, coffee, sweet tea, and fresh fruit. We hadn’t actually had a real meal since our pulled-pork BBQ at lunch time the day before, so we wolfed it down alongside the young Navy combat pilots who were debriefing there.

Julie among the fighter pilots - she is second from the right

Next we headed to Vicksburg, Mississippi, but we didn’t make it that far. Rain and storms were rolling in from the west, and we diverted to Clinton, Mississippi, which is where we are now. Apparently one of its claims to fame is that Charles Lindbergh landed in a field here in 1925 because he needed to refuel, buying gas at the local bike shop, so I guess we have that in common – landing in Clinton to avoid an aviation incident!

That's our shadow at bottom left, taking off from St. Simon's airport over the Retreat Golf Course

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The Golden Isles

Tue, 14 May 2024 14:16:40 GMT

We are on the East Coast!

We said we wanted to fly across America some day, and we did it!

Louisiana coast

We’d intended to do two legs on Saturday, meaning to take off from Hammond, Louisiana, and end up in Tallahassee, Florida, with a brief hop on Sunday to our revised destination of St. Simon’s Island. We planned to stop for lunch in Andalusia, Alabama.

The flight from Hammond to Andalusia was notable because we made a little detour so that we could overfly Gulfport, Mississippi, the hometown of John C. Robinson, one of the heroes of American Wings (which Sherri L. Smith and I co-authored and which was published earlier this year). Johnny was inspired to take to the air when he saw his first plane in about 1910, winging its way over the Mississippi Sound just as we were. It seemed so appropriate to do a flyover thinking of the man who performed the first flyover honoring Bessie Coleman!

Gulfport, Mississippi, where Johnny Robinson saw his first airplane in the same sky in 1910

In Andalusia we borrowed the airport’s courtesy car for a couple of hours to go have lunch. We’d been recommended a place in town, but on the highway I spotted a sign advertising “David’s Catfish House, All You Can Eat Catfish and Shrimp,” and I was like, TAKE ME THERE. It totally lived up to expectations, a barn-like shed decorated with memorabilia, and we had gumbo and fried green tomatoes and fried pickles and a catfish po’boy, and a very local type of beignet which is heavy on cinnamon, and this is probably the point at which we realized and accepted that this trip is as much about the food as it is about the flying!

The manager, Bill Spurlin, was interested in our story and our trip. He came over to our table twice to chat with us, taking a look at the FlightAware tracker on Tim’s tablet, and eventually mentioned that he ran an AirBnB which was currently available. We politely declined, still thinking of moving on; then, as we finished our lunch, we thought, why not?

So we stayed in Alabama that night, in the loveliest new-built old-style bungalow – “Quaint on Third” – with our own porch and garden. After a great chat with Bill’s wife Charlotte, who turned out to be a librarian at the local high school (!), we walked into town and listened to more live music – this time a local woman singing country songs and accompanying herself with gorgeous guitar playing. Andalusia’s claim to fame is that Hank and Audrey Williams got married there on Dec. 15, 1944.

Three Notch Road, Andalusia, Alabama

The next morning – Sunday – we flew a single long leg to St. Simon’s Island in Georgia’s Golden Isles. The air was like silk, utterly smooth – at one point I flew hands off for five minutes, laughing, perfectly in trim, perfectly holding our course with my feet on the rudder pedals. This is flying!

And here we are on the Atlantic.

We rented bicycles and rode them on the beach and swam and ate flounder and soft shelled crab at the Crab Trap, and drank champagne on the balcony of our very local hotel room.

Evening beach, St. Simon's Island, Georgia

Now we have to fly back to California to return the plane - but we are stuck here for two days because it is raining! It is a lovely place to be stuck – like being on holiday.

Which we are.

People keep asking us “Where have you come from and how long are you staying?” And the nature of our story means that we struggle to give sensible answers. Increasingly I feel that we just drop out of the sky – like the crew of the Starship Enterprise or the occupants of the Tardis, or perhaps time travellers, we just teleport into a new place every day and look around blinking. Who are these people, where can we stay, how will they welcome us? They always welcome us wonderfully, but the feeling of being random strangers from another world is very strong.

We flew across the USA from west to east!

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"A Dead Straight Line"

Sat, 11 May 2024 23:42:14 GMT

I write this sitting on a porch in Andalusia, Alabama, but I’m two days behind with my record-keeping so you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to find out how we got here!

Thursday was a downtime day because of weather. We stayed another night in Waco. But this meant that my Air Force friend and longtime Code Name Verity fan Jen was able to drive up from San Antonio to see us, meet One Bravo Juliet, be our chauffeur for the day, visit the Waco Mammoth National Monument, eat ice cream, and drink mojitos with us.

Jen & E Wein

We covered a lot of ground on Friday to make up for our day of rest (such as it was!). The first leg took us direct to Natchitoches (pronounced NACK-ih-tish), Louisiana. We finally made it out of Texas! East of Waco the Texan landscape was so much more forgiving and green than in the west, but there were still plenty of oil fields here and there.

Oil wells east of Waco

Natchitoches turns out to be the oldest city in Louisiana, with a gorgeous main street overlooking the Cane River. We were given the keys to another airfield courtesy car, this one of dubious age and condition (I’d guess early 1990s), and the airfield staff also recommended an amazing lunch place – Mayeux’s Steak and Seafood, where I reluctantly eschewed both the catfish and the soft-shelled crab (two of my favorites) for the local delicacy of fried crawfish tails. We also had blackened alligator. I reckon we have to try local stuff. I have no regrets.

"Louisiana's oldest general store," Natchitoches

Natchitoches was getting ready for their annual jazz festival, which opened with a street party that evening. They were setting up for it as we walked along the riverfront, and we were mighty tempted to stay the night. But the hotels were all completely full and we decided to put some distance behind us and go on to Hammond.

Farewell Natchitoches!

The Red River, Louisiana

(Cue The Roches and Whim’n’Rhythm, “If you go down to Hammond,” stuck in my head for the next 24 hours.)

And here we felt that virtue is its own reward. The folk at Northshore Airport in Hammond quite literally rolled out a red carpet for us to step out of our plane onto. The airport manager recommended that we try a place call Mariner’s for dinner, where we sat outside and I had broiled catfish and AMAZING chocolate pie (in fact it was “Milky Way” pie OMG), and there was a very laid-back live jazz band. So I got my catfish and jazz and an extra hundred miles in to boot.

Hammond treating visitors well!

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Iconic Moment

Thu, 09 May 2024 16:08:41 GMT

“Nous demandons à boire, mais nous demandons aussi à communiquer.”
(“We need to drink, but also we need to communicate.”)
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

It’s one of my favorite literary aviation quotations – the pilot, rescued from a crash in the desert, describes his love for the stranger who brings him water. And my favorite literary aviation moment occurs in Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Listen! The Wind, when, after a night of blind flying across the south Atlantic in a small plane, she and her pilot husband buzz the ship Westfalia with whom they have been in radio communication all night. All the sailors are on deck waving at them as they swoop down to wave back. I often think about their final radio message from the small airport in the Cape Verde Islands as they set out on that trip: “We listen for you always.”

Tim and I said our goodbyes yesterday morning in Big Spring and thanked the incredibly welcoming Mike and Sophia again and again. As we taxied past the McMahon-Wrinkle air terminal on our way to the runway, Tim said to me, “Wave as we go by.” So I did, for a long time, though we were already too far from the terminal for me to see through the windows. There were two other planes in the circuit and the radio was full of their traffic calls and of our own. Suddenly, in between these calls, the airport director’s voice came through to say: “Sophia waved back.”

Sophia waved back!

It's just impossible to say how much this moves me.

THIS is what makes us human – our ability to communicate across space and through time.

I was neither looking for such a moment nor expecting it. But I think it may be the highlight of my entire trip – those three words over the radio. Sophia waved back.

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
- Antoine de St. Exupéry

(pause to mop up)

Well! From the sublime to the ridiculous - there actually WAS a gopher on the runway as we took off.

We left Big Spring and flew over increasingly green countryside, to land at Texas State Technical College airport in Waco, Texas, last night. There, the ground staff noticed even before we shut down that One Bravo Juliet’s wheel struts were uneven. The kind and brilliant engineers here had this fixed within two hours. (Someone, not one of them, suggested that an acceptable fix for this problem is to jump up and down on the wing. We don’t believe this is an FAA approved procedure and are ignorant as to exactly where, how hard, and what the required footwear would be, so we didn’t try that.)

One of my two very dearest high school friends, Kristyn, drove an hour after work from Harker Heights and spent the evening with us in the bar of our Holiday Inn. And yes. “We need to drink, but also we need to communicate.”

E. Wein (Harrisburg Academy '82) and Kristyn (Harrisburg Academy '83)

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“Prairie Dogs on Runways and Taxiways”

Wed, 08 May 2024 22:28:32 GMT

Our morning in El Paso included our second really classic early 20th century US Post Office, which we now seem to be collecting (there was one in Phoenix, too), and a ride on El Paso’s amazing restored trolley cars which were built in 1937. We stopped in a big Western wear department store where I did not buy cowboy boots, but really wished I had room for souvenirs (it felt like the Texan equivalent of House of Bruar, which sells Scottish country wear).

A streetcar named Glory Road

Growing more familiar with Julie’s quirks means that we are able to fly more efficiently, so instead of trying to force her up to 9500 feet, we let her make her way there in a leisurely manner. What I really noticed from the air on our way from El Paso to Big Spring, Texas, was how much our land use is really ALL ABOUT POWER. The solar farms gave way to wind farms and then to oil fields, all stretching to the horizon.

Texas energy

We chose Big Spring as a destination because of the wind and the runways and it was about the right distance and in roughly the right direction. Nobody answered as we announced our intentions over the radio as we came in to land, and there were no other planes visible anywhere around the place, so we headed into the air terminal expecting a repeat of Gila Bend.

NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN MORE OF A CONTRAST! We were greeted by Mcmahon-Wrinkle airport director Mike Feeley and his young receptionist Sophia, who plied us with free bottled water and snacks and coffee, handed us the keys to a courtesy car (no charge for anything except the aviation fuel), and pointed us to the most amazing local hotel, the Settles, which was recently fully restored to its 1930s deco glory and is 20 stories tall, towering like a monolith over everything in the small town around it.

The Settles Hotel and Big Spring, Texas

And the view from the ground.

The Settles Hotel

It took us a while to get there because I was getting my kicks driving around the airport in their Ford Escape, and then of course we had to stop to take multiple pictures of the gophers that absolutely infest the place.

We ate incredibly delicious beef skewers and charro beans, and for breakfast this morning we headed to Estella’s Country Café which is a tiny place on US Business 87, with six white Toyota pick-ups parked in front of it, and had huevos rancheros and limitless coffee.

On to Waco!

Prairie dogs at McMahon-Wrinkle airport, Big Spring, Texas

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El Paso

Wed, 08 May 2024 03:01:56 GMT

We wandered around downtown Phoenix in the morning waiting for the weather to clear and the winds to settle further east, then flew at 9500 feet most of the way from Phoenix to El Paso. Here’s what was notable today:

1) Tim tried to taxi down a service road instead of a taxiway at Phoenix Sky Harbor, and the ground staff and controllers were extremely sympathetic in pointing us in the right direction.

2) Our three-hour-flight was without incident except that we discovered Julie climbs VERY SLOWLY in heat and high altitude. We are getting used to this now and are figuring out little tricks to help her up, as well as just being patient.

3) There is NOTHING OUT THERE. OMG. Arizona and west Texas (and a little bit of New Mexico) – SO BARE! We did see some more solar farms and a few wind farms as well.

This is America

4) It was windy coming into El Paso and the controller was a bit concerned. Tim and I were both – what, 15 knots 10 degrees off the runway? That is a normal day at Perth in Scotland! (It was bumpy coming down but it was fine.)

One Brave Juliet at sunset, El Paso, Texas

We arrived pretty late in the evening and didn’t really have time or energy for anything except supper and bed. The FBO (“fixed-base operator”) we parked with in El Paso could not have been nicer. They drove us to the local Marriott and recommended we eat supper at Cattle Baron across the street. So we did, and I had catfish, which was delicious.

When I lie in bed at night and close my eyes, I feel like I am floating gently up and down.

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Cinco de Mayo

Mon, 06 May 2024 17:06:05 GMT

We actually REALLY DID start our trip yesterday, and this morning we are in Phoenix!

We didn’t plan to be in Phoenix. We planned to spend the night in Gila Bend, Arizona, and indeed that’s where we landed, after routing through the Banning Pass, past Palm Springs, California, high over very barren desert country and across the Colorado River, to Gila Bend Municipal Airport. The wind was stronger and bumpier than we expected on landing (but no worse than the past month at Perth!).

Solar farms in California

We landed and refueled. There was a flurry of activity at the airport as a bunch of other people did the same – a young woman flying her grandfather’s lovely old shiny Cessna 172, and a young man working on building his flying time in a Cessna 152, who’d flown out to Tucson and was heading back to Chino (where I’d done a touch-and-go landing on Thursday). Another plane came in, did a few circuits without landing, and presumably didn’t like the wind and headed off again.

Everybody vanished as quickly as they’d come, and there we were at this empty airfield, baffled by the fact that we’d crossed into Mountain Time yet hadn’t lost an hour – till I remembered, after a random discussion nearly a year ago, that Arizona is the only state in the continental US to have abandoned daylights savings time!

There was ONE plane at Gila Bend Municipal Airport that we could see, a Cessna 150 with no wings. The hangar contained only a single antique fire engine. There was an airport office, open, with a sofa, a fridge, a microwave, and a bathroom; the office was inhabited by one spider and no humans. We unloaded all our luggage, made a reservation at the Gila Bend Space Age Best Western, and discovered that we had no transport into town. No Uber, no Lyft, no taxi, no one around to give us a ride – the hotel manager was away for the weekend, or she’d have done it. We thought about walking, but it was over two miles along a state highway full of trucks, and no footpath.

Tumbleweed Aviation

So after three hours, we made another plan, and decided to fly into Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. It wasn’t very far away, and it was the only place with a runway more or less INTO the stiff wind that was now blowing.

We’d already flown for two-and-a-half hours that day, but this last half-an-hour flight was probably some of the most challenging flying that Tim (or I) have ever done in terms of flight management – certainly the biggest airport I have ever turned up in via a single-engine plane! We came in at full power and top speed to avoid slowing down the poor guy behind us (“I can’t do less than 120,” we heard him say, and ATC responded, “Don’t worry, they’re not hanging around”). Tim landed and announced to me, “THIS is why I got my pilot’s license.”

We parked at one of the jet centers where we so definitely qualify as riffraff that it is kind of funny. The Rolls limo collecting passengers from the private jet next to ours no doubt cost thirty times what our plane is worth. I felt VERY CLASSY in my understated navy Lands’ End tank top! And Tim had mocked me for bringing my ACS Aviation, Perth, high-visibility vest with me on this trip, because certainly at Gila Bend, nobody gave a damn. But I was pleased to wear it to cross from our plane to the jet center at Sky Harbor, so NER.

We spent the night in downtown Phoenix and went to their Cinco de Mayo festival and danced to the sound of Big Mountain playing live, and drank fresh sugar cane juice and ate shrimp tacos for supper.

Honestly fabulous.

One Bravo Juliet jet-setting with the big boys at Sky Harbor

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The Best-Laid Plans

Sun, 05 May 2024 01:04:36 GMT

How I would love to tell you that we landed in Gila Bend, Arizona, yesterday afternoon, and drank margaritas at their Cinco de Mayo Festival!

But I would be making it up because we never got off the ground yesterday. We waited until 2 p.m. for the mist to burn off. Then when we were pre-flighting the plane, we discovered a disconnected Something. The poor engineer, who was on his way out to Nevada for the weekend, was called back. He decided to put in new spark plugs and refresh the ignition system as well. We made a plan B, then a plan C, and then, at 8 p.m. with night having descended, we went to plan D and returned to the Corona Best Western for a meal of beef jerky and potato chips.

Today was mostly unflyable anyway, but the work on One Bravo Juliet was still going on, so we sloped back to the airfield at about 10.00 a.m. We spent two hours on a wild goose chase trying to get a spare key cut for the plane; ate some ice cream, drank some coffee, hung out a bit more. There was one issue the engineer wasn’t satisfied with – turned out he’d received a faulty NEW part, which finally got replaced at around 4 p.m., and we took Julie for a check flight. (Let’s face it, she’s obviously Julie.)

And she is fine.

Tomorrow is supposed to be fine, too, so that is our revised departure!

The Corona, CA, Best Western from the Corona Municipal Airport downwind leg. I swam in that pool!

Space-age refueling station at Corona Municipal Airport - finally ready for departure.

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"The Friendliest Little Airport in America"

Fri, 03 May 2024 15:32:48 GMT

That’s Corona Municipal Airport, an hour outside Los Angeles, where we’re starting from. Yesterday I had my
first flight in One Bravo Juliet, with Eric Cordova as my instructor – joining the circuit and landing at Riverside, then Chino, and finally back to Corona. It was incredibly good practice for me to get familiar with various American flying conventions – the 45-degree downwind join (sorry, technical details :-P , it happens), the fast and complex radio calls, the very cool flight app that everyone uses (which is only available on Apple products and forced Tim to suck it up and buy an iPad). Everyone I met at Corona was AGOG at the UK’s practice of making you do all your student navigation exercises using dead reckoning and a mechanical flight computer. “Oh yes, I saw one of those once,” was the general reaction. “You have to use that on your FLIGHT TEST???”

One Bravo Juliet getting a small makeover

Despite Tim having flown this plane to Big Bear yesterday, it was ME who spotted, on the initial start-up checks, that the electric fuel pump didn’t work. This postponed my own flight for an hour while Eric drove around the corner to the most amazing aviation supply shop I have ever seen, Aircraft Spruce and Specialty, to buy a new fuel pump, and the mechanics installed it.

***I WAS PROUD***

With flight instructor Eric Cordova after an hour of landings at other airfields!

Corona Municipal Airport may have been around for as long as a hundred years – it was a training center for the Army Air Corps during World War II, though it’s now completely civilian. They ran flight tests for the Mustang here! It still shows the bones of its wartime buildings, but it’s a vibrant recreational airfield now, with training and private pilots sharing the sky. The Corona Airport Café gives out toy airplanes to small people ordering from the kids’ menu.

Currently we are waiting for the mist to burn off so we can head to Phoenix.

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Bravo Juliet

Thu, 02 May 2024 16:32:31 GMT

I write this sitting in a Best Western Courtyard in Corona, California. Tomorrow begins my biggest flight adventure ever, though it takes some topping (“Flying across Kenya,” “Niagara Falls from the gun turret of a Lancaster bomber,” “A barrel roll in a Spitfire over Ben Lomond,” and “Wingwalking atop a Boeing Stearman bi-plane,” to name a few – but to be fair I was not at the controls for any of those experiences).

Well, after thirty years of talking about it, Tim and I are going to have a go at flying across America in a small plane. We start tomorrow.

The plane is PA-28 N991BJ (if you want to try to look us up on Flight Following), or Bravo Juliet for short, which is A GREAT NAME FOR A PLANE. It is a PA-28/Piper Warrior which is what I just renewed both my CAA (UK) and FAA (USA) licenses in last week. I can’t believe that flight test was JUST LAST WEEK – they already managed to send my new license!

Tim arrived here in California two days ago and did a training flight to Big Bear Airport very high in the mountains (because Scottish mountains are dinky and California mountains are ginormous), and I arrived yesterday and am doing a local training flight today because I have not done as much flying in the USA as Tim has.

Then tomorrow we set out, flying as far south of the mountains as we can go without busting the Mexico border. We have rented the plane for three weeks. We’re going to see how far east we can get, and then turn around and come back. Our stops are not planned in advance as they are weather-dependent, but we’re routing via Arizona and Texas towards Charleston, South Carolina.

As Stella North says in Stateless, “Oh, the astonishing freedom of wild geese!”

*

(Full disclosure: This adventure is brought to you by a Roz Chast cartoon captioned “Middle Age – the clouds before the storm” and featuring a lady thinking, “I bet if I really wanted to I could bicycle across Canada”; and by Christian Miller, who actually did bicycle from Virginia to Oregon at the age of 59. She chronicled that trip in a book called Daisy, Daisy, which includes very good advice for how to plan a low-weight wardrobe. I am mindful also of the possibility of having to spend “a frozen night in the back of a Fox Moth,” as Maddie once said.)

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Launching American Wings

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 15:55:27 GMT

Three inches of rain fell in Los Angeles the day I arrived to celebrate the launch of American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky. In American Wings, fellow YA author Sherri L. Smith and I tell the story of four incredible men and women: Cornelius Coffey, John C. Robinson, Janet Harmon Bragg, and Willa Brown, and how they brought about the integration of the Civilian Pilot Training Program in the 1930s, leading to the eventual integration of the U.S. military in 1948.

Los Angeles is Sherri’s home, and she scooped me up from LAX – due to a cancelled flight the day before, I arrived a mere three hours before our first event began! Then she ably whisked us through the rain to Upland, California, where we spoke to middle schoolers at Foothill Knolls STEM Academy and high school students participating in the Black Student Union at Upland High School.

Foothill Knolls STEM Academy, Upland, CA

Everyone was incredibly excited to see us, and we were so grateful to the library staff and booksellers who helped everything to run smoothly: the sisterly team of Katie and Heather Laird (who provided us with seemingly unlimited drinks and snacks), and Maureen Palacios of Once Upon a Time bookstore (who provided books and regaled us with bookseller gossip).

Upland High School, Upland, CA

The next morning dawned clear and fresh and sparkling – surely L.A. is never so wonderful as just after a rain! Coming from winter in Scotland, I was boggled by the profusion of citrus trees and bougainvillea growing not just in gardens but also on the verges of the freeway.

Tuesday’s visit was to another excited group of kids at View Park Preparatory School in the city, where we were delighted by Emma Schultheis-Gerry’s brand-new library of her own creation, focusing on Black interest books and full of cozy nooks for reading.

Library at View Park STEM Preparatory School, Los Angeles, CA

Children’s Book World provided books through their non-profit, Readers & Writers Rock! This was our only school visit on Tuesday, which gave us a bit of breathing space for dinner with our husbands and a game of mini-golf before our final school the following day.

Sherri and E Wein at Castle Park Mini Golf, Sherman Oaks, CA

Wednesday’s visit to the Octavia E. Butler Magnet School was a real marathon, with four full presentations to the eighth graders, and an informal lunch with the Black Student Union and librarian Natalie Daily. The kids really opened up when they were able to talk to us face to face! Books here were courtesy of the Light Bringer Project.

Octavia E. Butler Magnet School, Pasadena, CA

One of the cool things about our talks was how much we refined our double act – cutting out extraneous information, smoothing the transitions, and learning to toss the subject back and forth between us like a ball. When we prompted the students at Octavia Butler for questions, somebody asked, “Are you two best friends?”

In the evening, we did an event at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena (more chairs had to be brought in at the last minute) – mostly attended by grown-ups, this time, and I think probably ninety percent of the packed audience was made up of Sherri’s friends!

Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, CA

Both friends and strangers were a wonderfully responsive bunch. We were particularly touched by the appearance of “Literary Aviatrix” Liz Booker, who’d come all the way from Florida just to hear us talk and who bought FIFTEEN books herself.

The evening ended with an enormous meal attended by friends, family, and fans at a local Mexican restaurant.

Toasting launch day with my aunt Susan!

It was all a fantastic way to launch this book that we’ve been working on so hard for so long. In the aftermath we had a Zoom call to meet with Craig Coffey, the great-nephew of our hero Cornelius Coffey, and I spent a wonderful morning in the Palm Springs Air Museum admiring their display celebrating the Tuskegee Airmen.

P-51 Mustang "Bunny," dedicated to Lt. Col. Bob Friend and the Red Tails

Here's a link to the interview we did with Jed Doherty for his Reading With Your Kids podcast.

Here's a link to Erika Long's thoughtful Educator Guide for American Wings, published by Penguin Teen.

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Virtual Book Launch for STATELESS

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 14:29:40 GMT

Here’s a bit of a Virtual Book Tour for my new novel, Stateless, with videos and interviews that I’ve done to promote the book for its release in the USA and Canada on 14 March and in the UK on 16 March 2023!

Recap of Instagram takeover by Munro Books in Victoria, British Columbia, on Friday 24 March 2023, with cool pics: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17986705747794102/

TeachingBooks has posted writing hints and a recording of me talking and reading on their Virtual Book Tour, 24 March 2023. Includes a cat photo, lol https://forum.teachingbooks.net/2023/03/elizabeth-wein-on-stateless/

I’ve written up a post for Marshal Zeringue at the Campaign for the American Reader on the “Page 69 Test” for Stateless. It went up on 20 March 2023: http://americareads.blogspot.com/2023/03/pg-69-elizabeth-weins-stateless.html

Also for Marshal Zeringue I’ve got a post on “My Book, the Movie” on 16 March 2023: https://mybookthemovie.blogspot.com/2023/03/elizabeth-weins-stateless.html

ReadingZone in the UK has a post up on “Elizabeth Wein’s new murder mystery,” including a sample chapter and Q&A, 15 March 2023 https://www.readingzone.com/news/elizabeth-wein-s-new-murder-mystery/ Here’s the direct link to the Q&A: https://www.readingzone.com/authors/elizabeth-wein/

Prior to visiting Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Shelley Irwin did a live interview with me on the Grand Rapids WGVU “Morning Show.” It aired on 9 March 2023 but is still available for listening at https://www.wgvunews.org/the-wgvu-morning-show/2023-03-09/stateless

Kristen McDermott has posted a wonderful review/essay/interview about Stateless for the Historical Novel Society called “An Unfamiliar Mirror – Elizabeth Wein reflects on writing for young adults.” It’s here https://historicalnovelsociety.org/an-unfamiliar-mirror-elizabeth-wein-reflects-on-writing-for-young-adults/ and in the Historical Novels Review Issue 103 (February 2023).

And finally, Little Brown Young Readers (with my help) has put together a video intro for Stateless here: https://vimeo.com/787043283?utm_source=LB+School&utm_campaign=7ecba296eb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_10_14_04_14_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_43fa2756ba-7ecba296eb-65228533&mc_cid=7ecba296eb&mc_eid=9f620ce587

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Verity Speaks

Tue, 10 May 2022 10:45:06 GMT

In honor of the tenth (TENTH!) anniversary of Code Name Verity's release, there's a new edition containing additional material - a short story, a retrospective essay, and author Q&A.

I thought I'd celebrate here by revisiting this shout-out from a certain Scottish wireless operator, really a wee bit of navel-gazing CNV fanfic I wrote myself in May 2012 for the original release, no longer available on the internet.

The virtual manuscript of Code Name Verity is something that has a weird shadow-life of its own in my mind. I loved playing with the idea of the narrators scrounging for paper and writing materials - of the physical existence of the “real” book, which ends up safely and lovingly preserved in the library of Craig Castle. So I thought I would give Verity herself a say in what is was like to write the book, because - well, deep in my heart, her thoughts about writing Code Name Verity are indistinguishable from my own. So here she is - Verity herself, on writing Code Name Verity, in her own words.

WOMEN’S ROLES IN WARTIME, 1943

This makes me really rather proud to be British. We got battered with anti-Nazi propaganda during my Special Operations Executive training, and quite frankly I would be EMBARRASSED if the only thing my King and Country was asking me to do for the war effort was the “three Ks” - kiddies, kitchen, and kirk (all right, Kinder, Küche, Kirche - children, kitchen and church. You have to admit it translates better in Scots than in English). Fräulein Engel has assured me that the Three K’s are neither current nor Nazi policy, but she has also admitted that there is an astonishing thing called the “Cross of Honor of the German Mother” which is awarded to you if you have four babies. Or more.

Four babies or more. For a state decoration! It makes being half-choked to death by an enemy undercover agent seem easy (that is what I got my state decoration for).

But I could have done anything. I mean, maybe not to get a medal for it, but short of actually being a serviceman on active duty, I could have trained at and done any man’s job I’d wanted, because all the men are busy fighting. Of course I did train as a radio operator, but I could have been an aircraft mechanic, or a parachute packer, or worked in any number of factories, or learned to drive ambulances. If I’d been a nurse I might have been posted to the front lines when the invasion finally comes. I could have driven my own ambulance to the front. I have an older cousin who was awarded a Military Medal for driving an ambulance in the last war, in 1918.

I bet even the German women with four babies are working as field hands, just the way our Land Girls are. And I know that Germany’s most daring and accomplished test pilot, Hanna Reitsch, is a woman. Really, neither Germany nor Britain is as broadminded as the Russians. They let women fly fighter planes into combat.

Oh - I talk so high-mindedly, but all I’m really doing - all I’ll be remembered for - is this story. I know it is the only thing I’ll ever write - the only thing that matters. I feel as though all the writing I’ve ever done, all the school history essays, the tentative attempts at sonnets, the rambling letters to Mother and Jamie and Maddie, the dreadfully immature adventure stories and the earnest Dramatic Society plays, the brave, witty articles for the Maidsend Aerodrome Officer’s Club newsletter - all of it was only preparation for this - this tremendous manuscript I am writing now. It is meant as a confession but I want it to be as good as a novel. It is my one and only chance at literary perfection - I want it to outlive me. I want it to be my masterpiece - my Finest Hour.

I suppose I am fooling myself. But I wouldn’t be able to write it otherwise.

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You can get a copy of the tenth anniversary edition of Code Name Verity here at Indiebound:

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316426312

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Pioneers in Flight

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 18:23:26 GMT

I wrote this piece for publication in Words & Pictures, the SCBWI British Isles newsletter, in Autumn 2001. I re-read it this morning and thought it still really resonates, twenty years later.

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My aunt, Kate Adams, lives near Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, far enough away from Manhattan that she was not directly affected by the attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, but close enough that when she went out to the beach a day later she could still see clouds of smoke and smell the fire across the New York Bay. Kate is a visiting nurse, and she expected to be able to help in the rescue effort; boats with people fleeing the city had landed at Atlantic Highlands. Like many who desperately wanted to give their assistance in some way, my aunt’s help was never needed. She wrote to me that day: ‘So we just keep working at what we do, which often feels pretty unimportant.’

My own work as a writer of fiction felt immeasurably less important that day than the work of a visiting nurse. But I took to heart my aunt’s implied advice: ‘Keep working at what you do’. It was the only thing I could do from faraway Scotland. I threw myself into the imaginary world I had been creating on paper, and out of the wreckage of my real world I pulled a different ending for my story. I had intended to conveniently kill off my villain at the end, because I could not bear the thought of leaving my beloved child hero with the fearful uncertainty that he might yet again come under attack from his enemy. The acts of September 11 made me realize that the Whole Point of the Story is that you DO have to live with that fear. And in spite of it, you keep working at what you do.

Over the past year I have become a great devotee of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the writer and wife of Charles A. Lindbergh. She was the first American woman to receive a glider pilot’s license, and is well known for her inspirational Gift from the Sea. She has also written many other books, including Listen! The Wind and North to the Orient, accounts of survey flights she made with her husband in the early 1930s. In their two-seater Lockheed Sirius monoplane, the Lindberghs tested potential commercial air routes from America across the Atlantic Ocean, and northward via the great circle route to cross the Pacific. Anne Morrow Lindbergh died in February of this year, at the fine age of 94. As I read her obituary in the FAA’s Aviation News in April 2001, I thought that this extraordinary and poetic woman could not have failed to marvel at the changes that her own pioneering efforts had helped to bring about in aviation. Not six months later I find myself thinking, thank God she did not live to see to what horrific end that effort has now been used.

But Anne Morrow Lindbergh was not a stranger to horror herself. In March 1932, the Lindberghs’ one-and-a-half-year-old first son was kidnapped and murdered. In her retrospective on this personal and yet high-profile tragedy (the Lindberghs dealt with media intrusion on a scale only equaled by Diana, Princess of Wales), written 40 years after the event in Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, Anne Morrow Lindbergh makes her testimony of love and loss, strength and courage, ‘bearing witness to my journey, for others who may follow’ (p. 217). Her message is every bit as relevant to the present crisis as it is to the individual, and it is this: ‘To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable—open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering.’ ‘Courage is a first step,’ she writes, but ‘In the end one has to discard shields and remain open and vulnerable’ (p. 215).

Throughout this crisis, and I can neither write nor speak of this without weeping, I have been struck by the last messages of 11 September’s courageous dead. To a man, to a woman, they speak not of revenge, or fear, but of love. Faced with certain death, faced with their own inevitable murders, all who were able sent one final message of love to their partners and children and parents. I have lost no one in this tragedy; I have lost thousands. My job is to teach my children, and the children of others, to love: to keep themselves open and vulnerable without yielding their courage and strength; to recognize evil, and to fight it without fear.

And this is the job we all face, all of us who write and draw, who show and tell, who produce and cast abroad all fiction and non-fiction for young people. What we do may feel ‘pretty unimportant’ day by day, but it is infinitely important that we do it. We have no choice but to exist in a changed, frightening, yet still terribly beautiful world. Young people have no choice but to inherit the world we leave them. I would like to leave them hope, and love, and the courage to remain ‘open and vulnerable’. I would like my children to be able to board an airplane with excitement over the coming journey, to respect diversity while remaining blind to it in forming friendships, to find wisdom and solace in the words of others without compromising their own beliefs.

Our every smallest effort adds to this end. In writing and illustrating for children we are all, like Anne Morrow Lindbergh, pioneers in flight. This enormous tragedy, like the Lindberghs’ own personal tragedy, has shown us all that ‘Greed, madness, cruelty, and indifference [are] countered by goodness, devotion, self-sacrifice, and courage’ (p 212). It is our job, our driven duty, to witness this truth to the rising generation.

‘So we just keep working at what we do.’

28 September 2001

(All referenced quotations are from Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1973)

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A Sewing Rant

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 16:00:24 GMT

Utterly by coincidence, this year, I have read no less than FOUR books – all by women, all of them aimed at young readers – in which the main character’s saving skill, the skill for which she is recognized, and on which her future hangs, is dressmaking.

As I began the last one my heart sank. I actually wailed aloud, “Oh, not ANOTHER book about SEWING!”

I’ve read 75 books in 2020. Of those, ten were recent young adult fiction. The four books that inspired this rant are all brand new young adult historical fiction, all published within the span of one year, all by respected and award-winning authors. The stories take place over a seventy-five year time span in the 19th and 20th centuries, in four different countries. Each book has its own merits and an overarching plot that has nothing to do with sewing, and each is valuable reading for different reasons. But forty percent of the new YA fiction I read this year, FOUR good books by respected YA authors, were about seamstresses? What’s going on?

My personal complaint about Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, a beloved book which we can all acknowledge has serious flaws, is that its heroine, Wendy, is sewing in every single scene in which she appears. Go check. Even sitting on the Mermaids’ Rock in Neverland, she’s mending the Lost Boys’ clothes. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized this, on one of many multiple re-reads. I vowed, at the time, that I would never, ever use sewing as a way to give a female character a skill, or use it as a plot point. Ever since I noticed Wendy Darling’s interminable mending in Neverland, I have thought of Sewing as a Trope Representative of Demure Womanhood whenever it appears in fiction.

My mother made most of my clothes when we lived in Jamaica in the early 1970s. She used a 1960s electric Sears Kenmore “portable” sewing machine that weighed at least 15 kilos, and it did not have a “buttonholer.” My mother refused to sew buttonholes by hand, so when I begged for a dress with buttons down the back, she taught me to sew my own buttonholes at the age of eight. Five years later, when I learned dressmaking in Home Economics in junior high, I used the same machine to make my own clothes; and did so, still sewing my own buttonholes, until I moved to England at thirty-ish and bought a more up-to-date sewing machine.

I like making my own clothes. I’ve become an adept dressmaker and have some skill at designing. I can’t tell you how much fun I have making skating dresses for my daughter.

Sara as Anna, 2015. The dress was made using this pattern as a base and a number of online images of Anna's coronation dress in Frozen!

But although some of the other skating moms were so impressed they offered me commissions, I do not consider dress design to be part of my career skill set. It’s just something I can do, like making an angel food cake, or wiring a bedside lamp, or hanging wallpaper. I am pretty good at a lot of useful things that need doing.

It doesn’t mean I find them interesting to read about.

One of the authors of these four recent seamstress books put a great deal of effort into her historical research for her character’s sewing efforts, and seemed to know what she was talking about in general. As for the other three authors – well, speaking as an amateur needlewoman, it was patently obvious to me that none of them knew anything whatsoever about dressmaking in particular and sewing in general. This in itself irritated me – if I had made similar errors writing about horses, or engines, or baseball, a fact-checker would have been called in. Copyeditors would have made inquiries. Reviewers and critics down the line would have called me out.

To my mind, the only thing worse than a book about sewing is an inaccurate book about sewing.

I would also like to point out that up until about 1960, most ordinary women throughout the world were pretty good at sewing. It was a standard and straightforward domestic task, like cooking meals and doing the laundry. So being able to make your own dress, or embroider, or quilt, didn’t automatically make you special or give you a marketable skill. (Most of those ordinary women would have noticed the sewing errors in these books, too.)

But never mind the sewing errors. Never mind that sewing is even more boring to read about than it is to do. What I find truly alarming in these four books is the trend for enlightened, intelligent, modern women writing about enlightened, intelligent role models, to fix on sewing – this menial, domestic, womanly chore - as the single safe, acceptable talent and career option that they feel their historical setting offers to their female heroines.

I wouldn’t have noticed one book. Two was a coincidence; three was funny. But the fourth made me angry.

I have two requests.

First of all, consider other options for your historical heroines. Historically speaking, how about telegraph or switchboard operators, nurses or midwives, post-office workers, musicians or music teachers or even composers, social workers, farmers, actresses, x-ray technicians (yes), painters, photographers, horsewomen? I don’t know, make something up. Please. Pull back on the seamstresses.

Sewing isn’t just stereotypically feminine in the context of a career choice or talent bestowed by an author on a character: it’s far too easy. As someone who knows how to sew, I am offended by the assumption that it doesn’t merit the same amount of attention to detail and accuracy as, say, carriage-making or lighthouse-keeping.

Next: Think about your assumptions. I get why a writer would make her character a seamstress: it’s a skill readily available and straightforward to practise in a time when other skills might be difficult to acquire. But I feel that it’s just as much of a dangerous stereotype as making your nerdy male character a computer geek. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” As a writer of historical fiction, I know all too well how hard it is to see beyond our own familiar boundaries.

Our ancestors had different skill sets to ours, and that in itself is frustrating as well as fascinating. But they didn’t live in a cloud of darkness, waiting for the enlightenment of the 21st century. Many of them thought of themselves as pretty progressive. They tried to stay informed. They were creative too. They fixed things, or tried to, just as we do. They weren’t involved in their own world; they were involved in our world.

The whole point of historical fiction, it seems to me, is to highlight the connection between the past and the present, not to examine the past as preserved in amber.

And honestly, do we really want Wendy Darling as our role model?

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Release Day for The Enigma Game in the UK!

Mon, 11 May 2020 14:23:55 GMT

Welcome to #TheEnigmaGame virtual launch party and giveaway!

Published by Bloomsbury Children's Books in the UK on 14 May 2020, The Enigma Game is a World War II thriller set in the world of Code Name Verity. If you’re familiar with that world, you’ll be familiar with Jamie Beaufort-Stuart, now flying Blenheim bombers, and Ellen McEwen, working as a driver for the Royal Air Force.

But you can pick up The Enigma Game without ever having read any of my other books. This one introduces teen Louisa Adair, half Jamaican and half English, as a major new character and narrator. Louisa, Jamie, and Ellen come together on a remote airfield in Scotland in the winter of 1940-41 to do some unexpected code-breaking that allows them to remain a few steps ahead of the enemy – but that enemy is closing in on them.

Where:

Here on my blog, on Twitter (ewein2412), on Facebook (Elizabeth Wein), and on Instagram (ewein2412) – but also at my front and back gates! I have a few signed copies to give away, so if you’re on your daily walk in Perth, stop by and pick one up. I’ve made bookmarks, too. Take a selfie and post it to show you’ve gone to a book launch today!

From 7- 7.30 pm BST I'll be discussing the book with Sara Barnard on Twitter to celebrate the launch. Join us there!

Guests of Honour

Meet some of the real life airmen and women who inspired The Enigma Game</>!

The Caribbean women who served in World War II

Wonderful Pathe footage of aircrew and planes at a Bristol Blenheim bomber station in 1940. It really gets to me how young these airmen are.

Lilian Bader, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

Alastair Panton, Blenheim bomber pilot

Refreshments

Contraband butter from the Isle of Man, a pint of heavy if you’re of age (a wee dram of whisky will cost you two and six), spam sandwiches, or ersatz coffee. Louisa has decided not to drink any more coffee till the war is over or she goes back to Jamaica, whichever comes first.

You might also enjoy a PIMMS, which is what Jamie's flight section is named after.

Entertainment

Here I am reading a sneak peek from The Enigma Game! Thanks to Porter Square Books in Boston, Massachusetts, for originally publishing this video.

We're also running a blog tour all through this week and next. Feel free to stop by!

Here are links to some of my guest posts:

'Louisa Adair Takes to the Sky'

'Flying & Factories: Women & War'

I've also got an interview about The Enigma Game posted at School Zone on Readingzone.com.

'Perception and Belonging'

Music is so important to Louisa – and to the airmen she plays for sometimes. Here are a few of the dance tunes they listen to:

'Moonglow' – Cab Calloway

'Jitterbug' – Cab Calloway

And Mendelssohn's 'Hebrides Overture' – it’s in the book trailer (above), too. It’s an orchestral piece, but I chose this amazing piano (8-hands) version because Felix Baer, the German pilot in The Enigma Game, plays it on the piano and makes Louisa cry.

'Ave Maria' – Music by Bach and Gounod. Johanna von Arnim is the stage name of the old woman Louisa cares for, and this 'Ave Maria' is her first record. I couldn’t find a recording of a mezzo soprano in her mid-50s made in about 1915, so I went for Maria Callas.

And of course, there's 'The Spitfire Song'!

Oh – and if you're looking for entertainment - how about a ride in a Bristol Blenheim bomber?

Ready to leave?

If you’re heading out, here are some virtual museum exhibits that might interest you:

The Montrose Air Station Heritage Centre: Not far from the imaginary RAF Windyedge, RAF Montrose in Scotland was Britain’s first military aerodrome, opening in 1913 for the use of the Royal Flying Corps.

Pilots of the Caribbean: Volunteers of African Heritage in the Royal Air Force

Here’s the actual plane that inspired the German defectors in The Enigma Game, among the RAF Museum’s online collection.

And while you’re at it, take a virtual visit to the pub and the airbase that helped me visualize the setting for The Enigma Game: The Blue Bell Inn, Tattershall, Lincolnshire, England. (If you scroll through the picture gallery, you’ll find shots of the airmen’s coins stuck in the pub beams.)

Giveaway! (Ends 22 May 2020)

If you can’t stop by my back gate, I’ll post out three signed copies (international as long as your postal service is currently receiving mail from the UK – please do check if you’re not sure). To enter, please comment and let me know why you’re looking forward to The Enigma Game!

Mission:

And finally, here’s your War Work. Sometime in the next week, if you’re interested and able, order a book from your local bookstore or buy one on line. Then Tweet, Facebook, Instagram, comment on Goodreads, or blog about your purchase, using the tag #TheEnigmaGame – and ask your friends to stop by here.

From your couch to the front lines, spread the word about the giveaway, and above all, enjoy!

You can buy The Enigma Game here.

Thanks for stopping by - hope you enjoyed the party - and that you enjoy the book!

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First time in Asia

Tue, 07 May 2019 16:15:01 GMT

It’s now two months since my return from China, and how proud my mother would have been that I went there on my own. I thought of her so much, and her obsession with Chinese culture and communism – I wonder what she would have thought of the changes that have come to China, and which it has brought to the world, in the forty years since her death.

I went because I was invited to Shanghai to visit as Author in Residence at the Concordia International School, and after nearly a year of planning with librarian Jennifer Chapman, we finally managed to make it happen. We had two or three discussions and workshops every day for a week, as well as sitting in on the students’ after school writing club, where it was a real challenge for me to have to produce some flash fiction (my latest work-in-progress being over 100,000 words at the moment…). We talked about anime and inspiration and writer’s block and Buck Rogers, and we took selfies. My idea of a good time!

I loved the chance to talk to these talented and multilingual readers – mostly Chinese, but all speaking fluent American-accented English. The adult educators casually tossed around a term coined in the 1950s but which was never applied to me while I was growing up: TCK, or Third Culture Kid.

The BBC calls them “citizens of everywhere and nowhere.” Wikipedia defines them as “people raised in a culture other than their parents' or the culture of the country named on their passport (where they are legally considered native) for a significant part of their early development years.” Not only does this define ME (I spoke fluent Jamaican patois when I was eight), but it applies to my own Scottish-raised British/American children with their mid-Atlantic accents. And – revelation! – it is the single trait shared by almost all my fictional characters, from Telemakos to Julie to Rose to Em and Teo. So that was a surprising and wonderful connection I was able to make with a group of young people I didn’t expect to have anything in common with.

But of course there was plenty to connect with, because we are all writers and readers engaged with the world. (Most unexpected question from a Chinese 7^th grader: “What is your opinion on Brexit?”) I visited with 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th graders in English and Humanities. We talked a LOT about Ravensbrück, as the students were getting ready to do projects on the Holocaust. I loved how interested, appreciative and attentive everybody was as I showed off my World War II artefacts and encouraged people to make up stories about them. At one point, when the students seemed to be chattering during a period when they were supposed to be doing individual writing projects, it turned out that they were helping each other with their English spelling.

I borrowed a bicycle from my hotel and rode to the school and back each day. I had a foot massage in a local massage parlour, and was treated to a meal out in the Former French Concession neighbourhood by Jennifer and the Concordia library staff. On the way home in the dark, the huge city was alight – the futuristic towers of Pudong glowed and sparkled with changing colours like fireworks.

I also fit in a visit to the Aurora Museum, full of two thousand years’ worth of blue-and-white porcelain and jade, and a trip to a posh supermarket – the Chinese equivalent of Waitrose, perhaps? I bought noodles and tea and a lot of mysterious snack food, most of which I couldn’t tell from the wrapper whether it was candy or beef jerky. I bought some stuff just because it was so pretty.

The highlight of my time as a tourist in Shanghai was wandering around the Bund and the Old Town on my own – amazed by the variety of life as people hung washing on telephone wires, set up impromptu barber shops on the street, visited with friends.

I found my way into the Yu Yuan Gardens, hidden behind high walls in the middle of a furiously busy shopping district – five hundred years old and focused on Feng Shui, meaning wind and water.

Pagoda after pagoda, rocky little stairways and waterfalls, covered wooden bridges and stone bridges (zigzagged because evil spirits travel in straight lines), huge koi in all the pools, tiny banzai cherry trees blossoming everywhere, birds singing in the mature trees, secret nooks and crannies, benches, mirrors, windows, and a grove of “metasequoias” or “dawn redwood” trees, deciduous conifers which date to 60 million years ago and were thought to be extinct until someone found one growing obscurely in 1941.

Every time I thought I’d finished I’d go through another tunnel or archway or staircase or bridge and there would be a whole new section of the garden that I hadn’t seen before.

And that is a good metaphor for the whole visit, really. Shanghai is so huge (23 million people) and China is even huger, and the tiny little 625-square-kilometre sample that I saw scarcely scratches at the surface – it’s like looking at the moon of someone’s pinkie fingernail and counting that as meeting the person whose hand it is part of. YOU HAVEN’T EVEN SEEN THE WHOLE FINGERNAIL.

So – many, many thanks to Jennifer Chapman, and to the Concordia International School and the wonderful students and faculty there – you made me so welcome and shared such a busy, exciting week with me!

When Jennifer dropped me off at the airport, we realized we didn't have a picture of the two of us together! So we took a selfie. XD

Tourist tip: Fancy chopsticks make the BEST souvenir present ever. Back in Scotland, they are exotic and unusual and thoughtful, and they are really easy to pack.

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Remembrance

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 16:13:21 GMT

“I loved yesterday,” said Sara on 12 November, and she was talking about the Remembrance Day Service at Dunkeld Cathedral on 11 November 2018. In the UK, the Armistice is traditionally marked on the 11^th, as it used to be in the USA – it is not a holiday. At 11 a.m. during the normal workday, whatever the day of the week, a two-minute silence is held nationally to remember the Armistice that ended World War I, and to remember those who served throughout the past century. There is a worship service held on the Sunday closest to the 11^th, known as Remembrance Sunday.

Coincidentally, this year Remembrance Sunday fell on the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Armistice, and it was marked nationwide and throughout Europe. (The ceremony under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, with world leaders gathered side by side, is AMAZING. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRFRsX-KhWE)

Because it was such a special moment in 1918 when the church bells in the UK rang out to mark the end of the war, there was an effort to ring bells wherever possible, and that was where we came into things. We rang “half-muffled” before the service at Dunkeld (muffles on the clappers cause every other stroke to sound quietly, as an echo, a symbol of mourning), and with the bells open after the service (the muffles off, the bells in full voice, ringing for life and joy).

I am sure there is no place I would rather have been than Dunkeld Cathedral in Scotland on this particular day. For the service, the choir started off singing “They Shall Not Grow Old” and then a piper began “The Lament,” left the church, and as the sound of the pipes faded into the distance, it was eleven o’clock, a hundred years on from 1918. Complete silence in the old cathedral for the customary two minutes, eleven o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a hundred years to the day and minute that the guns stopped.

It made me sad – makes me sad – (“Don’t say it!” Sara exclaimed, when I began to tell her this. “Of course twenty years later –”) Of course it is nearly twenty years since I first went to a Remembrance service at Dunkeld, in Scotland, and the veterans are all gone.

They were eighty and ninety when I first came here and now they are gone.

But it was a lovely service. They structured it around readings of stories by local people about local boys who were killed in the war – very focused on the First World War. Someone’s grandfather, someone’s father. A former headmaster read aloud the Headmaster of Breadalbane Academy’s address from 1921 on the dedication of a memorial plaque to former pupils. “Some day these will just be names, but to me they are individuals, young boys I knew.” One woman had inherited a box of letters from her grandfather, killed before his child (her parent) was born, and his fiddle, which he’d taken along with him to the battlefields of France. She’d had the fiddle restored, and a local musician had written a piece for her grandfather and played it on that fiddle there in the service.

And it was incredible. Because a musical instrument is a voice, not just an object that spoke in the past, but that spoke for someone - and still speaks. This fiddle was that dead soldier’s voice. It was there in the trenches and it is here now and it spoke there and it speaks here.

The tune was like a traditional folk tune – a Strathspey – and it was just beautiful.

When it was done, nobody knew what to do. There was a ripple of scattered applause. It quieted down. Then behind us, someone began to clap loudly and everyone joined in.

After the service, we bell ringers rang a quarter peal of Plain Bob Doubles, and then we all had lunch together. And in the evening we watched Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, in which original footage from the trenches has been colorized and speed-corrected – and to complete the documentary, there is a voice-over soundtrack of actual veterans, recorded some years ago when they were alive as old men. The immediate urgency of the restored and enhanced film was stunning.

Here's the list of ringing events connected with the Armistice Centenary - quite impressive:
https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/event.php?id=9128

And scroll down here for a map showing ringing-related events throughout the UK:
https://armistice100.org.uk/events/

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