Author Interview with Alan Stroe
What inspired you to write a science own. And I thought it was very
fiction such as your first novella,
cool that this trait also makes her
Against Her Gentle Sword?
an excellent fencer, by giving
her the edge of accurately readI decided to write it as a debut pracing her opponents’ intent during
tice project before attempting more
duels, when it’s so important to
serious work. I was looking for
distinguish a feint from a real
something fun and easy to write, and
attack.
I found the inspiration for it in some
of my schoolboy-era fantasies.
For those readers who haven't
read your stunning yet brilliantly
A recurring theme back then was the
written novella, Against Her Genidea of a boy falling in love with a
tle Sword, can you tell the readfeminine girl who is in some ways
ers briefly what your novella is
more powerful than him, especially
about?
in the social sense. He's delighted to
have found someone so special to
It’s a love story set in a peaceful,
love, but at the same time he resents female-dominated society estabher dominance and fights back out
lished on a remote island. At the
of a natural male inclination to domi- end of high school, some guys
nate and resist domination.
are selected to duel in a competition in order to impress young
As I wrote it, more serious themes
ladies and attract romantic interstarted sneaking into the work, for
est. The main character, Dario,
better or worse. At first impression
finds himself chosen to fight in
some of the readers get a bit suspifront of the girl he’s been obcious of the book's inter-gender polsessing about his entire life. The
itics. The gender interplay is mostly
problem is he will be facing
the playground for the story, howevsome of his closest friends, and
er.
he’s quite a bit the underdog.
The book does raise the question
His dilemmas get an order of
whether or not matriarchy would
magnitude more difficult when
result in a much less violent society, he realizes a former friend of his,
but lets the reader answer that for
the sociopathic Sylvester, is
themselves. It also makes the point planning a bloody coup to overthat it'd be difficult to maintain a
throw the current regime.
healthy balance: the natural male
You have another novella compropensity to fight and compete
ing out. It's your second novella.
would need to be kept in check
What is it called? And can you
without falling into the extreme of
tell us readers what it is about?
being too oppressive and unfair
And when it will be released?
towards the more "dangerous" gender.
Crossing the Eastern Front is
based on the real story of my
Which of your characters from your
grandfather’s survival of World
first novella were your favorite to
War Two. He was a teenager in
create and why so?
1944, when the German army
I was glad to hit on the idea of Gwen- kidnapped him during its retreat
dolyn being this super-empathetic
from Transylvania. He found
person, who has an uncanny ability himself starving to death in a
to understand others, to sympathize POW camp. He was able to get
with their needs, and to use this
out of there by volunteering to
quality toward being an excellent
fight in a Romanian Waffen-SS
future leader, someone who puts the division. That saved him from
needs of the others—as community starving to death, but now he
and as individuals—ahead of her
was wearing the war’s most hated
uniform while both the Soviets and
the Anglo-American forces were
closing-in on Nazi Germany.
I plan on releasing the book in early
May 2015. It will probably be available for pre-order on Amazon in early
February.
For your second novel, Crossing the
Eastern Front: The True Story of a
Teenage SS Volunteer, how much
research did you have to do before
writing it?
A couple of months. It also helped
that I was very familiar with the subject matter from extensive reading
(both fiction and nonfiction) and
college coursework.
What inspired you to write this new
novella of yours?
My grandfather was a very devout,
gentle and kind man. Shortly after
returning from the war, with only the
clothes on his back, he was conscripted to serve a two-year term in
the Romanian military. After that he
built his life from literally nothing
but his strong faith. He learned a
difficult profession, got married,
built a house with his own hands,
and raised five children. For half a
century his miraculous story of survival could not be told outside of
immediate family. The Communist
regime would have severely punished him for being under arms with
the German army. It wouldn’t have
mattered that he was merely trying
to survive a desperate situation he
had been thrown in against his will.
When I was a kid I once asked
grandpa if he had killed anyone in
the war. He answered me that he
always made sure to shoot in the air.
A disappointing answer to an immature boy seeking a story of heroics
and feats of arms. Now, as a grownup man, I’m very proud of his answer. And I know that if every soldier fighting in that war had his
courage and respect for life, tens of
millions of lives would have been
spared a very cruel fate.
Writing this book is a way of honoring his memory, and preserving his
marvelous story of survival for future
generations.
Did you always know that you wanted to become an author or did you
discover that later on?
I had a very rich, vivid imagination
as a child. I would always imagine
cool (to me) stories involving me, my
close friends, and my romantic interests (especially! :)). Left to my own
devices, that kind of daydreaming
was often my favorite pastime. The
thought that some of these daydreams or stories might become
literature only occurred to me