Blog Tour Interview & Giveaway - The Riesa Series by L.D. Towers

New Austrian Order
Author: LD Towers
Genre: Military fiction

Book Description:
1938. Germany is moving faster than Standartenführer Hagen Kohl thought possible. Sent down to Vienna to investigate a potential threat to Hitler’s plans for Austria, Hagen is drawn in to an aristocratic world he’s never encountered before. Without Hauptsturmführer Eugen Friesler at his side, Hagen is in more danger than he could have imagined as he hunts for a shadowy organization called the New Austrian Order. Back in Germany, Galiena von Steinberg returns to Riesa and the von Steinberg Gesellschaft, but taking over the reins of her Grandfather’s empire comes with many challenges. Can she protect her family holdings while keeping true to the new sense of self she has worked so hard to find?

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Author Interview

1. What inspired you to write your first book?
I think I had something to say, and I wanted to share it. It’s rather hard to say. The starting of a book is always easy but the finishing of the book is the difficult part. I have a ‘movie theatre’ which plays in my head, and some of those stories are pretty cool. Only by writing can I share those stories.

2. Do you have a specific writing style?
I’m told I use a lot of descriptive text. Probably because I am a very visual thinker.  I really do see my books as a movie, and my writing is just describing the action.

Otherwise, I write fairly exclusively in Third Person Limited- one person per chapter. In Teufel and New Austrian Order, it’s either from Hagen Kohl or Galiena von Steinberg’s point of view. Anschluss, the third book is almost finished, and it is the same way. In the unnamed 4th book in the series, I’m thinking of adding two more people because it is relevant to the story, but I might not.

I do have a book coming out next spring/summer that is in the first person. I used to hate reading first person books, so I generally don’t write in the first person. 

3. How did you come up with the title for your book?
There was alcohol involved! :) With my book coming out in Spring 2016, Curse of the Devourers, I talked about it with my editors, and then there was a ginormous iMessage discussion with my family over about 18 hours about the title. I bounce a lot of things off the family. My mother, sister and niece are ladies of strong opinion. They also buy a lot of books! :D

4. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
That there is so much more to Germany in the 30s than what we learn in history class. There were good people, bad people and everyone in between. We have this idea of a monolithic, Star Wars society with legions of Stormtroopers following the Emperor, and it really wasn’t like that. In fact, the only person to survive more assassination attempts than Adolf Hitler was Yasser Arafat.

5. How much of the book is realistic?
A fair amount of both Teufel and New Austrian Order is able to be referenced. I work very hard to be realistic- especially when dealing with the real people in the books. I’ve done a lot of research into the Third Reich and I try to be fair. I’ve had a few people say to me- what does it matter? They were bad and you can say whatever you like about them. I personally don’t think that’s the right thing to do. Yes. Some of those people did incredibly evil things, and there is no doubt in my mind that Hitler was a bad man, but some of the people around him, or a few layers down, were people caught up in something which seemed like a good idea before it spiralled out of control. For example, there were many ‘Hagen Kohls’ in the SS. Smart, educated men with varying levels in belief in the organisation who ended up in situations that wasn’t of their choosing.

I’ve always said that one has to study Nazi Germany as two different countries. There is the Germany from 33-40, and there is the other Germany from 40-45. There is a change once the war starts, and an even bigger change once it starts going badly in winter 1941.

6. What book are you reading now?
Given what I write about, this might make you laugh. I’m reading Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I LOVE the Little House on the Prairie books, and I’m really interested in the post American Civil War migration across the North American continent.

I’m also reading the Oxford Illustrated History of World War One, edited by Hew Strachan.

7. Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
Not really, but to be fair, I actually don’t read much fiction anymore. When I want to read, I go back to my tried and trues!

8. What are your current projects?
Curse of the Devourers is coming out in March-ish. It’s a totally new spin on vampire lore. I’m very excited about it. My editor, the Divine Miz Rachel, just sent me back the first 20 chapters two days before Christmas and told me it was the most interesting thing I’ve ever written. :D And she HATES vampire books, so I think that’s huge praise.

Murder Amid Slaughter is about the hunt for a serial killer on the front lines of World War One. I’m hoping for May or June with that one, but it might get bumped to September. The summer is a bad time for book sales, so I might hold it if it isn’t ready for June.

Then there is Anschluss, the third in the Riesa series, which is planned for next or November. We will see. The Riesa books are MUCH bigger than my others. Teufel was 267k words. New Austrian Order is 192k words. Anschluss will probably be as long as NAO, so they take longer to write. It’s started though! :)

Then there is the first of the Meinrad von Steinberg novellas, which should drop in April.

Wow. That schedule makes me feel tired! OY!

9. Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?
That I could do it? That some people might want to read it? I learned a lot from all the research I did. I do SO much research. I think the research takes longer than the writing… and then there is the time I just get lost researching things on the internet. So. Much. Time. Wasted!

10. What were the challenges (research, psychological etc) in bringing your story to life?
There are some things in Teufel and New Austrian Order that are very deeply personal. Some of Galiena’s struggles are rooted in my own- though hers are much MUCH greater. Sometimes it is difficult to take some of my own pain and put it into a character.

As I mentioned, I do a lot of research, but learning is an utter joy for me, and never a challenge. I pretty much spend my days running around like a hungry robot going ‘input! input! input!’ (And if you know what movie that’s from, I will give you a big, shiny cookie! :D

Thanks so much for hosting me!


Excerpt

The parade ground was large, and all about there were people. The SS men, in their black uniforms, and the camp guards in their grey seemed drab on the sunny square. There were so many, trailing behind Himmler like a flock of crows. Galiena hated that analogy, but it seemed so appropriate. Here and there she saw people she assumed to be prisoners, in their black and white horizontal striped suits, and grotesquely shaved heads. They almost reminded her of larvae, their scalps so pale in the light. One man turned and stared at her, the bright splash of colour that she was, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then his face dropped back to his toiling in the black earth of the flowerbeds near the Administration building. The place was so dour. So grey. In her scarlet, echoed only in the swastika flag on the flag pole, she must look like a drop of blood on a piece of slate.

Himmler moved to intercept her, his eyes shining with something she couldn’t define. In this place he was a thousand feet tall, and his knowledge of his power emanated from him in waves. The men trailing after him followed his every movement and gesture. When he smiled, so did they, when he laughed, they echoed, and the moment he stopped, there was silence behind him. Galiena had never seen this Himmler. This was the Reichsführer-SS, and his power was consuming. His eyes met hers, as he clicked his heels and bowed his head before her. When the peak of his hat came up again, he was smiling; warmly and broadly. More the man of her acquaintance, but the look in his eyes seemed to mock her. This Himmler was a predator and he was in his lair with all his sycophants around to admire his magnificence.

Teufel
Author: LD Towers
Genre: Military fiction

Book Description:
Against the politically charged background of Nazi Germany's police state, Standartenführer Doctor Hagen Kohl is trying to carve out a profession for himself in the SS. A middle class intellectual with a doctorate in Literature, Hagen is a an investigator who hunts criminals within the party apparatus itself. Hagen justifies everything by his personal code and patriotism, unable to see the flaws of the regime he serves. When he is ordered to investigate members of the army, he discovers patriotism is entirely a matter of perspective. His eyes are further opened by exposure to Galiena von Steinberg; an aristocrat whose own experiences bring him into the entanglements and intrigues at the highest levels of Third Reich society.

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Excerpt

“I don’t think it right to order a man to his death and then not have the fortitude to stand there and watch him die,” Hagen voiced gruffly to Best.

“What ever happened to plausible deniability, Kohl?” Best blustered.

“Damn, Best! Shut up!” Müller groaned again.

Hagen bored his eyes into Best. “I don’t give orders I feel the need to deny. I acted as I saw fit.”

Best stared back for a moment and then tore his gaze away. “I am only worried about potential legal entanglements, Kohl! I can only protect the SS from itself if it behaves in a responsible manner,” The words were insultingly spoken. “You already have half the SA trying to kill you. Do you want the Wehrmacht out for your blood too? If they hear about Bittrich, you could bet your car on the fact they would send someone to eliminate you. Quite rightly from a legal standpoint.”

Hagen stood, pulling his dignity and authority around him like a cloak. Very formally, he addressed Werner Best. “Oberführer Best, you seem to have a great deal of choler over this matter with Leutnant Bittrich. Would you care to step outside and discuss it in private with me? I really don’t think we need to clutter up the briefing with this sniping.” Hagen was more than willing to go toe to toe with Best over this. If anything, reducing the man would give him no end of pleasure.

Werner Best snapped to his feet. “Gladly, Standartenführer Kohl.” The tension between the two men crackled in the air as they bristled at each other like a pair of wild dogs.

About the Author

LD Towers travels the world like a rootless vagabond! A military historian, she searches out places of conflict to find a deeper insight to the things she writes about. Presently enjoying the warm weather and azure seas of Central America, she has lived all over Western Europe, including 5.5 years in the incomparable Berlin.

Primarily working in Historical and Military Fiction, LD sometimes sneaks in the odd Dystopian or Modern Thriller piece. Also look for a series of novellas about the despicable yet intriguing Meinrad von Steinberg from the Riesa Series, coming in fall 2015.

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