Natascha's Story by Gill James

 

Natascha is forever falling off the piano and getting sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

Natascha is the smallest of a set of Russian dolls and envies her bigger sisters as they have more detail on them.

The family acquire a new vacuum cleaner and this time it takes Natascha to another world where she has an amazing adventure.  But is it all a dream and related to the story the mummy is reading to young Alfred?

Up to you to decide in Natascha’s intriguing story told by Gill and Ashleigh James.        

 

RRP  £7.00

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Face to Face with the Führer

 

 

Käthe wants to be a scientist. She sees herself as more than a housewife and a mother. And she is in her own eyes definitely not Jewish.

Life in Nazi Germany sees it another way however. She has to give up a promising career and her national identity. She has to leave the home she has built up for her husband and daughter. But she is not afraid of challenges. She enlists the help of a respected professor to help her fulfil her ambition, she learns how to use a gun and how to drive a car. But what will she do when she finds herself fact to face with the Führer or, indeed, with the challenges of modern life?

Face to Face with the Führer is the fourth novel in Gill James’ Schellberg cycle.

 

RRP £10.00

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Girl in a Smart Uniform

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"Girl in a Smart Uniform" is the third book in the Schellberg Cycle, a collection of novels inspired by a bundle of photocopied letters that arrived at a small cottage in Wales in 1979. The letters give us first-hand insights into what life was like growing up in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

It is the most fictional of the stories to date, though some characters, familiar to those who have read the first two books, appear again here. Clara Lehrs, Karl Schubert and Dr Kühn really existed. We have a few, a very few, verifiable facts about them. The rest we have had to find out by repeating some of their experiences and by using the careful writer's imagination.

Gisela adores her brother Bear, her gorgeous BDM uniform, and her little half-brother Jens. She does her best to be a good German citizen, and is keen to help restore Germany to its former glory. She becomes a competent and respected BDM leader. But life begins to turn sour. Her oldest brother Kurt can be violent, she soon realises that she is different from other girls, she feels uncomfortable around her mother’s new lover, and there is something not quite right about Jens. It becomes more and more difficult to be the perfect German young woman.

We know that BDM girls set fire to the house in Schellberg Street but got the children out first. This story seeks to explain what motivated the girls to do that, and what happened to them afterwards.

What a nice review.

This is a clever collection of short snippets inspired by the first image Gill James saw on Twitter on specific dates. Each story is 140 words long and the collection contains 140 entertaining pieces. The date she saw the image becomes a part of each story.

It’s the ideal collection to take with you on the bus or read before going to bed. There’s a story for every mood. One of my favourites is Blue Planet, which is a reflection on humankind’s inability to respect and look after our world. This story is followed by another favourite – Reading Cat – because it makes you look at your own pets and wonder what they know or are thinking. Procrastination had me laughing, because as a writer, I often sit staring at a blank page.

Gill has covered many genres in this collection. If you’re interested in sci-fi, history, or romance, there’s a story for you. And cat lovers won’t be disappointed because cats feature quite a lot. 

A fun collection!

The Schellberg Cycle comes to Chapeltown

The House on Schellberg Street  was first published by Crooked Cat in 2014. It has now gone out of print and has been taken over by Chapeltown. Chapeltown will  also publish the other books in the next few years.

This is the first novel in a cycle of stories set in mainly the 1940s and having strong links to the Holocaust and ordinary lives in Nazi Germany. There is plenty of information, too, about other decades in the 20th and even the 19th century in the stories, and about life in England and at the front in both world wars.

Gill James used a sabbatical from the University of Salford in 2011 to conduct much of the research needed for this project. It was a very fruitful sabbatical: it has led to at least five novels, several academic papers and a whole project which includes workshops in schools.

There is a whole web site devoted to the project. Take a look here.

This new edition has a new cover, though it is in the style of the other one. The glossary has been extended.  The blurb more explicitly invites engagement with those interested in the 1940s, World War II and the Holocaust. The whole text has also been lightly reedited. Crooked Cat had done a very good job but even in three years language and fashions in writing change. We made just a few little tweaks.    

Get your copy of the second edition here:
             

Cover reveal for latest flash fiction collection

January Stones 2013: One a day, written in January, welcoming returning light

Working on our flash collections

I'm pleased to say that we have three authors signed up for flash collections.


Neil Campbell   has had work published previously by Salt and Knives Forks and Spoons and Salt Publishing. He works part-time as a creative writing teacher.  His collection is called Fog Lane and is to do with memory. 

Allison Symes  is published by Cafe Lit and Bridge House. She is self-employed and works part-time as a writer. She runs several blogs and blogs for Chandler's Ford Today. Her collection is called  From Dark to Light and Back Again. There's quite a bit of the supernatural   

Gill James, your editor is the third and we'll be publishing her January Stones.  They will remain on line until they're published.        






Here are a couple of excerpts from Allison and Neil:

Allison:

A KIND OF HELL

I never believed in hell. Of all my mistakes in life, I never thought that would be my biggest. But it is.

There are no flames. There’s no smell of sulphur. I am surrounded by furry animals of differing sizes. So where is the problem?

Not only am I allergic to fur so I spend most of my time sneezing my head off, I spent my time on Earth shooting furry animals. Not with a camera either. Somehow I thought hunting animals only for fun was macho.

Guess who are holding the guns now?

Neil:

THE SUN IN SEPTEMBER

Corned Beef went to his local in Burnage to ease himself out of the day with pints of bitter. For years he did this until at one stage he began to see scratches on his face in the bathroom mirror in the morning. Usually they were on his forehead but sometimes on his cheeks. He washed away the thin lines of dried blood and then got on the 197 to work as usual.

     The scratches began to develop into cuts and one morning he woke to see blood across the pillow. He felt for his forehead and his forefinger squished into a gash. He went to the bathroom mirror and took a plaster from the cabinet, placing it across his forehead. In work that day, below a staircase in a dark chamber within the neo-gothic splendour of Manchester Town Hall, he sat with the other porters at break time drinking coffee from his flask.

     ‘Hey, Corned Beef,’ said Bungalow, ‘what’s with the fucking plaster?’

     ‘Cut me head.’

     ‘How did you manage that?’

     ‘Don’t know.’

Three very different collections then but hopefully this gives you an idea of what's possible.    

You can find the full call to submissions here: