book cover German historical novel The German translation of Coal Dreams – Kohlenträume – won the Kindle Storyteller Award 2025 from Amazon Germany. Needless to say I’m over the moon about being selected. Just attending the award ceremony with Marit Bernson and Nika Lubitsch,  my fellow finalists, in Munich was super exciting. I met the jury, several book bloggers, fellow authors and various Amazon employees.

Kindle Storyteller Award – Preisverleihung 2025
©superneo

When juror Jobst-Ulrich Brand, Ressortmanager of Culture and Life at Focus Magazine announced my name and the title of the book, I was speechless and pretty emotional. Afterwards, I received many congratulations, but more importantly met amazing, interesting people.

Since then I’ve talked to Amazon Publishing whose publishing arm Tinte & Feder will republish my book next year, Audible will create an audio book, I’ve been in the paper and in general feel like I’m part of a whirlwind. Most of all, this award provides national recognition for something I’ve doing quietly and continuously for more than two decades.

So thank you Amazon, thank you jurors and fellow finalists!

Junge in Ruinen Buch cover 2. Weltkriegbook cover with miner and farm woman and goatsIt’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Not because there isn’t much to tell, but because it’s been challenging to manage the many “plates” I’m currently juggling. Let’s see, there is my son, his wife and two children who moved in with us in May. Just this change alone requires a lot of my time as I am helping him get used to German burocracy. We also organised a wedding celebration for him and his wife, another rather large project. Not to forget the novella – 5 Months: The Wait – and novel – Coal Dreams – I wrote and published this year, teaching a writing class once a month. There’s also beekeeping I started last year, which classifies me still as a very new beekeeper. And there is the garden, a little bit of social life, my husband and…and

Workshop with The History Quill

On January 8, 2026, I’ll be teaching an online workshop on Writing Emotional Fiction. I’m very excited to share what I’ve learned over many years. I’ve worked with The History Quill, a British writing organization – you guessed it, specializing in historical fiction – when I had them edit a couple of my books.

A New Novel is in the Works

I’m hard at work at a new manuscript, here is the first description hot off the press:

Eastern Prussia, 1945: As the Red Army advances, Ellie Johansen flees her family’s small farm with her three-year-old daughter, Lenchen, and her mother. But when a wrong turn brings Russian soldiers to their path, Ellie is separated from her child. Alone and desperate, she begins a harrowing journey west—haunted by the hope and need of finding her daughter again.

Münster, Germany, 1993: When Lena von Schweig’s mother dies, a shattering truth emerges: Lena was adopted. With no birthdate, no family name, and only a single clue—that she once came from Eastern Prussia—her carefully built identity unravels. No longer the daughter of privilege, she embarks on a painful, seemingly impossible search for her roots.

Spanning two generations and nearly half a century, Home of Ice and Ashes is a poignant story of war, loss, and the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters—even across time and silence.

I have ordered the cover and am very excited to see it finished in December/January.

 

 

Something interesting happened recently. Four years ago, I wrote A Lightness in My Soul, a WWII novella about a boy who is taken to the concentration camp, Dachau, by American troops. My friend, Marion, had met an old man in a car repair shop and he’d told her his story as a teen. Despite my friend’s efforts, she never found out his name. Another friend, who also lives in Herten, decided to investigate anew. She knocked on doors in the street, the old man had lived, and asked various neighbors.

Guess what, she found out his real name – Helmut N. He’d passed shortly after he’d told his story to my friend in 2021. Helmut had been childless, lived alone and been reclusive, apparently a complicated man. I’m not surprised. Considering what he saw and experienced, he would’ve been utterly traumatized. And no person in the 1950s or 1960s received therapy. In fact, he’d been so burdened, he’d never spoken to a soul about his ordeal – until he met my friend.

I just wish I’d had the chance to meet him.

The Last Novella about my Father Is Coming Out

In 2017 I’d written 47 Days, a novella about my father, Günter, as a youth at the end of WWII. Because this little book has been consistently successful – many love the fact that it’s the perfect story for teen boys and reluctant readers, also perfect for schools – I added a second novella, 24 Hours: The Trade in 2024.

Well, I have now written the third and last one called 5 Months: The Wait, set between April and August 1945. Right after the war, Günter and his mother and little brother began the painful and uncertain wait for his older brother, Hans, and his father. Neither has been from in months and millions are rumored to be missing. During this time, American troops have taken over the town while all schools and media outlets have been closed. There is little to eat while the country waits for Hitler to end the war …

All three novellas are biographical and take place in or near Solingen in Germany between December 1944 and August 1945.