the german

financier's daughter

and other stories

several of them true

but mostly more interesting than that

Take a stroll through a ‘fragmentary novel’ constructed from memories, songs, poems and scenes from movies you forgot you even saw!

GREETINGS FROM THE PROMISED LAND!

You remember your first holiday romance like it was yesterday. But flicking through the fading photographs, you suddenly can’t recall how the story even ended…

This collection starts off looking a lot like fiction. But slowly you realize the stories might actually be about fiction. The kind we all use to invent an identity for ourselves, building from the raw materials of memories, dreams, and wishes for a life that’s better than the one we have.

Anything that comes to hand is fair game: an image from a film we once saw, something we overheard in the waiting room, a fragment from a Greek myth, a line from a song that speaks to something we all need.

It’s a message of hope. Speaking a faith that it really is possible to weave memories and imaginary worlds into something more enduring.

Like a whirlwind of sex and sand.

Or maybe even love.

The Story Behind the Story

Treading in the Footsteps of my Literary Hero

From the start, I knew The German Financier’s Daughter would consist of small chunks of ‘autofiction’ – fictionalized scraps of autobiography. Several of the pieces have previously been published in literary journals and anthologies, many of them dealing with psychological and existential themes.

As the elongated title suggests, the stories are partly true and partly fantastical, in an attempt to convey the complex nature of our inner worlds, especially if we’re a member of the neurodiverse community.

Some of the pieces could be considered ‘short stories’, but some are even shorter than that. When the book really started to come together for me was when I read In Our Time, written in 1925 by my hero Ernest Hemmingway, and realized that even very short vignettes could be compiled together to make what used to be called a ‘fragmentary novel’.

That’s exactly what I hope I’ve created here!

Putting it All Together

Oh, the Joys of the Reflowable ePub…

I can trace my decision to self-publish this book back to the Sex Pistols sneering ‘You Don’t Need Permission for Anything.’

That do-it-yourself ethic has stuck with me ever since, but I’m not sure Johnny Rotten realized it might mean having to come to grips with Adobe InDesign, Digital Editions, Photoshop and Kindle Previewer to mention just of the few pieces of software I’ve used to put this book together.

I did this work through my own boutique publishing company, Freedom Press. Over the last few years, we’ve published several editions of a new literary journal called ¡hastings!, so thankfully I was able to transfer over some of the same skills to this new project.

The Inside Scoop

Giving the Game Away

Back in the days of real ‘hard copy’ books, the blurb on the back told you what to expect once you cracked your new copy open.

I decided to take the same approach with The German Financier’s Daughter, nesting some hand-written text inside a montage from my first ever trip abroad, to the Occupied Territories, Israel and Egypt.

Here’s the hint: read the clues carefully, this time around you really can judge a book by it’s cover 🙂

Walking on Water

Bring Your Own Loaves and Fishes

In this re-imagining of the German Financier’s Daughter – taken from one of the ‘film strip’ images that accompany each story fragment – our heroine is fresh from making love with the English Boy, standing knee-deep in the holy waters where the River Jordan flows out of the Galilee.

Fittingly, she’s carrying fish and loaves of bread that seem to be multiplying and spilling out of her arms. Whether it’s her or her lover who has magic powers is left for the reader to decide.

Sure, our memories are what make us who we are. But what if we’re also imagining new memories as we go along?