Iron Maiden: An Alternate History of the German Empire by J.T. Maicke
Publisher: DX Varos Publishing, Inc. (October 31, 2023) Category: Historical fiction, Alternate History Tour Dates January17-February 23, 2024 ISBN: 978-1955065917 Available in Print and ebook, 411 pages
Description Iron Maiden by J.T. Maicke
What if a woman ruled Germany in 1914? This alternate history explores that very question. An elaborate attempt to rid Germany of the Hohenzollerns has left a young sole heiress, Christiana, to take the throne of the German Empire. But this is no typical princess, hidden away in a gilded cage. This college educated, expert fencer, and accomplished equestrienne is not the meek little girl the politicians think they will be able to control. She has her own ideas how to rule!
Review Iron Maiden by J.T. Maicke
“Somehow, word had leaked out regarding the venue for the coronation ceremony and crowds of thousands of curious people, anxious to witness a piece of history, started gathering at dawn in the main plaza—the Schlossplatz—in front of the Berlin Palace. “ – ‘Iron Maiden,’ by J.T. Maicke.
A compelling alternative history novel from the author J.T. Maicke where history shifts in one bloody act.
Early morning, Easter Sunday, 1910, the Kaiser of Germany and his young family are killed when a bomb is set off at the church where they are attending a service. At the same time, all over the country, all of the members of the royal family are systematically assassinated.
All but one. Christiana Von Preussen is a cousin to the Kaiser and an accomplished woman, herself. As one of the first women in the country to attend University and a talented fencer and horsewoman, Christa is beloved by her family, despite refusing to conform to their expectations about how a princess should act.
But Christa must very quickly go from being a princess, to being a queen when she ends up as the only living member of the royal family left alive. Determined to do her best for the country that she loves so much, Christa claims the throne with aplomb, and proves all of her detractors wrong along the way.
This is a must read that offers a fresh take on a historical novel and I savored every last morsel. ‘Iron Maiden’ is an incredibly satisfying read and, while Maicke clearly did his research it never, at any point, felt like the narrative got bogged down by too many details.
If you are looking for a lush, enthralling read that sucks you in and makes you forget about the rest of the world, ‘Iron Maiden,’ by J.T. Maicke is definitely the book for you!
About J. T. Maicke
A self-described Germanophile, J.T. Maicke writes historical fiction novels that take place in Germany or among German-American communities in the Midwest. He has spent most of his life studying German history, geography, language, culture, customs, and cuisine. Maicke also spent several years living in and traveling throughout Central Europe, and he has visited many of the locations depicted in his novels. Maicke’s debut novel was ‘The Humble Courier.’
Iron Maiden: An Alternate History of the German Empire by J.T. Maicke
Publisher: DX Varos Publishing, Inc. (October 31, 2023) Category: Historical fiction, Alternate History Tour Dates January17-February 23, 2024 ISBN: 978-1955065917 Available in Print and ebook, 411 pages
Description Iron Maiden by J.T. Maicke
What if a woman ruled Germany in 1914? This alternate history explores that very question. An elaborate attempt to rid Germany of the Hohenzollerns has left a young sole heiress, Christiana, to take the throne of the German Empire. But this is no typical princess, hidden away in a gilded cage. This college educated, expert fencer, and accomplished equestrienne is not the meek little girl the politicians think they will be able to control. She has her own ideas how to rule!
Praise for J.T. Maicke’s First Novel The Humble Courier
“A great story of an unlikely hero during an awful time. J.T. Maicke has crafted a compelling story of an unlikely hero during a most troubling time, the rise of Nazi Germany. This is a compelling book to read, whether you are a fan of historic fiction or simply seeking a terrific narrative and story. Maicke has created compelling and realistic characters that one can identify with, and truly care about. It is a story that will last with you long after the book is completed, and leaves one longing for new works from this author.”-John, Amazon Review
“This was an engaging read. The years between the ending of WWI and the start of WWII set the stage for events that would completely change the world. Normally when we think of the world wars, we think of Germany occupying other countries, and not other countries occupying Germany. This book takes the reader to a point in time often overlooked, and lets us step into the story through the eyes of a Catholic priest who wishes for justice, and the freedom to practice his religion and minister to his parishioners. I loved Father Harti as a character, and thought Maicke did a wonderful job bringing him to life. It was easy to get lost in the story. A great book for historical fiction lovers.”- Liliyana Shadowlyn, The Faerie Review
“I have greatly enjoyed this book. I am impressed with the historical accuracy which makes the story even more compelling. The reader is draw into the story as if they were right there.”- J. Larkin, Amazon Review
“A humble village, loving community caring Catholic priest. Sounds perfect, but then it centers in Germany in the 1930’s. The idyllic life of the priest and others is turned around affecting not only the grownups but children as well. I especially liked the references at the back of the book to places and people. At the end of the story, I had tears in my eyes.”- Christine Mueller, Goodreads Review
“An intriguing story set in Germany mainly during the early WWII era leading to thought provoking events! Harti is a Catholic priest of the small village where he was born. Sounds like a boring life? Oh, no, not for Harti! He is consumed by a deep sense of justice… That’s only the beginning of Harti’s trail of thoughts…. What I particularly enjoyed in this novel, lies in the writing style. All along the plot, the author gives a summarized account of the political situation in Germany along with the reactions of the Allies from the end of WWI on (French occupation after the Versailles Contract had been signed). I learned details I was not aware of, particularly about the role of the Catholic church at this time. Harti referred many times to the Bible (though not overwhelmingly) in order to find a way to find justice. That was for me very interesting and definitely thought provoking! The characters are fictional, some events and real people made fitting the story, but all made sense. A compelling novel!”-Christine, Amazon Review
Interview J. T. Maicke, Author of Iron Maiden
TR: Please tell us something about Iron Maiden that is not in the summary. (About the book, character you particularly enjoyed writing etc.)
J.T.: I find the most interesting characters in stories to be the supporting cast. The interaction between the heroine—in this story, the Princess Christiana—and the secondary characters, both good guys and bad, not only moves the plot forward but also creates the opportunity for readers to develop an understanding of and a relationship with the protagonist. How can a reader care about the fate of the heroine if the writer has surrounded her with wooden, two-dimensional characters lacking in personality? My favorite characters in Iron Maiden are not Princess Christiana, her love interest Rudi von Alvensleben, or even her principal foes. They are Christiana’s advisers who play important but secondary roles in the story, including General von Heeringen (my personal favorite!), Gerhard Schwartzwalder, Colonel Nicolai, and Colonel Koch. I even enjoy the brief appearances by noteworthy historical persons, such as Queen Victoria, King George V, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill.
While I enjoy producing interesting heroes, heroines, and secondary characters, what I really love is creating villains! My stories usually feature several bad guys that range in character from the simple, mean, and stupid—such as Prince Henry in Iron Maiden—to the more intelligent and complex, like August Bibermann and Chancellor Manfred von Eichenburg.
TR: How did you come up with the premise that Christina would take the German throne instead of Wilhelm II? Thanks for re-writing that history, he was dreadful!
J.T.: Several years ago, I read an excellent biography of Wilhelm II called The Kaiser and His Times by the English historian Michael L. G. Balfour. This outstanding book provoked the principal idea for Iron Maiden. How might the history of the 20th century have developed if Germany had been ruled by a monarch equipped with a more mature and integrated personality than Wilhelm II?
In my original plan for this novel, Wilhelm was to be succeeded by an obscure Prussian prince. After further thought, however, I asked myself “Why a man? Why not a woman?” Indeed, why not a princess, armed with intelligence and insight, an appreciation for the power and potential of democracy and modern technology, and equipped with a long-range vision of peace and prosperity, not only for Germany but for the whole of Europe? Moreover, what better way to initiate a break from the paternalism and overbearing masculinity that characterized Wilhelmine society than to put a woman on the Prussian and imperial German thrones?
TR: I always enjoy looking at the names that authors choose to give their characters. Where do you derive the names of your characters? Are they based on real people you knew or now know in real life? How do you create names for your characters?
J.T.: In many cases, I took the names of prominent German families from the period and simply added fictional family members. For example, many members of Christiana’s cabinet are fictional characters who were portrayed as scions of famous families, including Rudolf von Alvensleben, Ludwig von der Marwitz, Klaus Thyssen, and Eduard Warburg.
Of course, Christiana herself is a fictional character. I have portrayed her as the sixth and youngest child of Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia—an actual cousin of Wilhelm II’s father—and his wife, Princess Maria Anna of Anhalt-Dessau. In reality, Prince Friedrich Karl and Princess Maria Anna had only five children: four elder daughters and a son, Leopold.
TR: Where did you get the inspiration for your cover?
J.T.: I suggested to my publisher, Daniel Willis of DX Varos Publishing, to have Christiana portrayed on the cover standing in front of a famous Berlin monument, such as the Brandenburg Gate or the Victory Column. Daniel selected instead the Berlin Cathedral, which I think works very well. The cover was designed by Ellie Bockert Augsburger of Creative Digital Studios. She did an outstanding job! The depiction of Princess Christiana is almost exactly how I envisioned her when writing the story.
TR: Which actors would you like to see play Christiana, if the book were to become a movie, play, or mini series. (you are welcome to choose actors for other characters as well)
J.T.: For a movie version of Iron Maiden, Scarlett Johansson would be my first choice to play Christiana. She’s incredibly talented and, at 39, the same age as Christiana in 1914. Moreover, Scarlett displayed a pretty good German accent playing Rosie Betzler in the movie Jo Jo Rabbit.
TR: What kind of messages do you try to instill in your writing?
J.T.: I usually do not try to aggressively push any sort of message or point in my books. I’m simply trying to tell an interesting and, hopefully, novel story set in a historical period. However, the theme of good people fighting against odds to prevail over evil is a theme that appears in most of my stories.
TR: What draws you to this genre?
J.T.: I love writing historical fiction that takes place in Germany or among German-American communities in the Midwest where I grew up. I’ve spent my entire adult life studying German history, geography, language, culture, customs, and cuisine. I’ve also spent several years living in and traveling throughout Central Europe and I’ve visited many of the locations depicted in my stories. Conducting the historical, social, and geographic research for a book is almost as much fun for me as writing the actual stories. I love creating characters, having them interact with real historic persons, and, occasionally, re-writing history.
I first fell in love with historical fiction during my youth reading James Michener’s books, especially Texas, Alaska, and Poland, as well as James Clavell’s Shogun, Tai Pan, Noble House, and King Rat. I still read historical fiction regularly. Aside from Michener and Clavell, I enjoy books by Ken Follett, Bernard Cornwell, Robert Harris, George MacDonald Fraser, and Morris West.
TR: Do you have any writing projects that you are currently working on?
J.T.: I’m currently working on a sequel to my first novel The Humble Courier, which is the story of Father Hartmann Bottger, a German Benedictine monk and priest who resorts to violence to oppose the terror of the Gestapo and the SS. The sequel continues the story with the American branch of the Bottger family in Chicago and St. Louis during the 1950s. I hope to have a completed draft later this year.
TR: Thanks so much for this interview.
About J. T. Maicke
A self-described Germanophile, J.T. Maicke writes historical fiction novels that take place in Germany or among German-American communities in the Midwest. He has spent most of his life studying German history, geography, language, culture, customs, and cuisine. Maicke also spent several years living in and traveling throughout Central Europe, and he has visited many of the locations depicted in his novels. Maicke’s debut novel was ‘The Humble Courier.’
Publisher: Gival Press, (October 1, 2023) Category: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction Tour dates: January 16-Feb 23, 2024 ISBN: 978-1940724454 Available in Print and ebook, 280 pages
Description HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha
If the fate of unrequited love survives fifty-one years, nine months, and four days in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, it leads the way for HER: The Flame Tree, a spare, remorseless love triptych that sweeps through the rich panorama of two generations of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. The hopeless love of a young eunuch for a high-ranking concubine is one of this novel’s three stories that illuminate the oriental mystery of Vietnam, as epic as it is persevering,
Despite a rich trove of documentary films, Western readers know little of the spiritual face of Vietnam. Framed between 1915 and 1993, HER: The Flame Tree begins in Huế, the former imperial capital Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.
The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.
Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.
Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her.
HER: The Flame Tree does not have the flavor of historical fiction, plot-heavy and sexually graphic. Rather, it is atmospheric and impressionistic, in the style of Snow Falling on Cedars. The magnificent poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance. Its symbolic image befits Phượng for her magnanimous nature and grace, and the scarlet blossoming flowers when Jonathan Edward bids Phượng farewell is beauty without sadness—Wait and Hope.
Guest Post by Khanh Ha, Author of HER: The Flame Tree
What process do you go through in creating visual background scenes to involve your audience with the feeling they are in the story?
I write with cinematic visuals in my head. Words must flow like a river, fast, slow at times. Cadenced words exhale emotions and breathe scents and therefore create moods. Visuals are birthed by the use of language and imagination.
The English language is cashmere to me as a writer, and, in William Faulkner’s The Bear, I found myself falling in love with the English language. His depiction of Lion, the great blue dog, is unparalleled in its sheer power of bringing an animal to life.
Imagination, though, is raw creativity without form, without substance, that ebbs and flows in your mind, leaving just sediment on its bottom until you can dredge it for fecund silt. Does language sustain imagination? Does imagination sustain language? I write from the deep well of my imagination about what I believe in, what I advocate, what I stand for, and I’m always drawn to books that speak to me in their beautiful language. It’s like looking at a woman who is both exquisite and alluring. That’s a writer’s sustenance.
Visuals are paramount in bringing a character to life. To create lively imagery of characters, I must absorb all the details from my research and let them crystalize into a glowing image full of shades and colors; and the ambiance carried in its womb will set up the mood for the characters.
Lastly, visuals are related to senses owing to the ambiance which is the sheer force in a novel. Without it, a novel feels barren. The ambiance brings a novel to life, and what flame the ambiance are tastes, touches, smells, sights, and sounds. All five. They build the mood affected visuals.
Praise HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha
“In this almost folkloric saga of a royal eunuch, his adopted daughter and the tragedies and triumphs of love in their lives from the days of the emperor’s court to the war with America, Khanh Ha takes us deeply into the heart of traditional Vietnam in a tale told in such lushly poetic, descriptive language that it immerses the reader deeply and sensually into the gorgeousness of the land, the texture and taste of food, and the complex humanity of the characters. Her: The Flame Treeis an intricately woven, seductively fascinating story of family, sacrifice, loyalty and redeeming love in the face of heart-breaking loss that breathtakingly weaves the lives of individuals we come to know and care about into the saga of Vietnamese—and American—history.” —Wayne Karlin, author of Memorial Days
“Ha evokes a visceral image of Vietnam . . . A vivid study of a country’s fraught history and how its people struggled to make sense of it.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Her: The Flame Tree is a beautiful novel, rich with evocations of natural setting in coastal Vietnam; remembered action going back more than a hundred years; and characters both extraordinary and poignantly ordinary, developed by layer upon layer of stories.”—Elizabeth Harris, judge and author of Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman
“Early in Khanh Ha’s latest novel Her: The Flame Tree, the author describes a book made of delicate leaves of gold. Such a volume would be ideal to record this shimmering and often tender tale of love, loss, and memory.” —Steve Evans, author of The Marriage of True Minds
About Khanh Ha
Award winning author Khanh Ha is a nine-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for The Ohio State University Fiction Collection Prize, Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, Prize Americana, and The Santa Fe Writers Project. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, and The Red Hen Press Fiction Award.
This giveaway is for 2 print or ebook copies print is open to the U.S. only. Ebook is open worldwide. This giveaway ends on Feb 23, 2024 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.
Iron Maiden: An Alternate History of the German Empire by J.T. Maicke
