Welcome to Silent No More

The idea for this book was actually conceived more than 20 years ago, when I was just 15 years old. I was riding my bike through my neighborhood in Plano, Texas, and I was passing by a small wooded area away from the rest of the homes. As I rode along, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young man step out of the woods. It was one of those moments in life that seems to go by in slow motion. He wore a German World War II uniform - even with that short glimpse, I knew that's what it was since I had seen many of those kinds of uniforms displayed in museums and old photos when I lived in Germany. It also looked like some sort of machine gun was slung over his shoulder. I guess I should have been scared, but it all happened too fast. I slammed on my brakes and looked back over my shoulder. His face was expressionless as he stared at me. Then, he just turned away, walked back into the treeline and disappeared. Was he some guy taking part in a freakish reinactment somewhere? Was he a weirdo? Was he a ghost? To this day, I have no explanation for what I saw. I often rode my bike past that spot to see if he would ever come back (as a parent, I'd be mortified if my child did that today), but I never saw him again.

That image, and a desire to build a fictional story around a real group of rebellious young university students in World War II Munich, Germany, drove me to write this book. Indeed, it wasn't until I finished my last revision (of course, I'm sure once a publisher gets ahold of it, there will be many more) that I truly felt released from some sort of life-long compulsion to tell this story.

Anyway, as we go along, I'll be posting little bits and pieces of the story, as well as some background info on the real people depicted in the novel. This blog is also a forum for your feedback, as Silent No More is, as yet, an unpublished novel. My hope is that, at some point, you'll be interested enough to want to read the book. So please, enjoy!