Author Interview:Historical Adventure Authors Michael & Kathleen McMenamin




Michael McMenamin is the co-author with his son Patrick of the first five of the six award winning 1930s era historical novels featuring Winston Churchill and his fictional Scottish goddaughter, the adventure-seeking Hearst photojournalist Mattie McGary. He is the co-author with his daughter Kathleen McMenamin of the sixth Mattie + Winston novel The Liebold Protocol and the novella Appointment in Prague. The first six novels in the series—The DeValera Deception, The Parsifal Pursuit, The Gemini Agenda, The Berghof Betrayal, The Silver Mosaic and The Liebold Protocol—received a total of 15 literary awards. He is currently at work with his daughter on the ninth Mattie + Winston historical adventure, The Phoenix Progression.

Michael is also the author of the critically acclaimed Becoming Winston Churchill, The Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor [Hardcover, Greenwood 2007; Paperback, Enigma 2009] and the co-author of Milking the Public, Political Scandals of the Dairy Lobby from LBJ to Jimmy Carter [Nelson Hall, 1980]. He is a contributing editor for Finest Hour, the quarterly journal of the International Churchill Society and for the libertarian magazine Reason. His work also has appeared in The Churchills in Ireland, 1660-1965, [Irish Academic Press, 2012] as well as two Reason anthologies, Free Minds & Free Markets, Twenty Five Years of Reason [Pacific Research Institute, 1993] and Choice, the Best of Reason [BenBella Books, 2004]. A full-time writer, he was formerly a First Amendment and Media Defense lawyer and a U.S. Army Counterintelligence Agent. 
Kathleen McMenamin

Kathleen McMenamin, the other half of the father-daughter writing team, has been editing her father’s writing for longer than she cares to remember. She is the co-author with her father of the 2018 Mattie + Winston novella, Appointment in Prague, A Mattie McGary + Winston Churchill World War II Adventure and the sixth Mattie + Winston novel, The Liebold Protocol. She also is the co-author with her sister Kelly of the critically acclaimed Organize Your Way: Simple Strategies for Every Personality [Sterling, 2017]. The two sisters are professional organizers, personality-type experts and the founders of PixiesDidIt! a home and life organization business, www.pixiesdidit.com.
Kathleen is an honors graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and received an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University while she was with The Wendy Weill Agency. Prior to starting her own business, she was Senior Advertising and Promotion Coordinator for Bedford/St. Martin’s. The novella Appointment in Prague was her second joint writing project with her father; The Liebold Protocol was her third; and The Prussian Memoradum is her fourth. Their first father-daughter writing project was “Bringing Home the First Amendment”, a review of Nat Hentoff’s The Day They Came to Arrest the Book in the August 1984 Reason magazine. While a teen-ager, she and her father would often take runs together, creating plots for adventure stories as they ran.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: www.winstonchurchillthrillers.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WinstonChurchillThrillers





 
As a book bloggin’ and book luvin’ Princess, I’m always curious to find out how authors got the ideas for their books.  Can you tell us what your book is about?

Short answer: The Prussian Memorandum is an adventure novel set in 1934 about exposing the shameful US Government involvement in creating the “Prussian Memorandum”.

Longer answer: Our idea came from the 2017 book Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Whitman. In 1934, 30 of the 48 American states had laws prohibiting marriage and sexual relations between whites and a variety of other races like African-Americans, Japanese, Chinese and other Asians.
That hit us close to home as Michael has three Chinese-American grandsons and two Jewish grandsons, meaning Aunt Katie has five nephews like that.

As Whitman wrote:

In the early 1930s, Nazi lawyers were engaged in creating a race law [primarily against Jews] founded on anti-miscegenation law and race-based immigration, naturalization and second-class citizenship law. They went looking for foreign models and found them—in the United States of America.

The Prussian Memorandum was a real document on American state laws that the Nazis used to create their infamous 1935 Nuremberg laws rendering German Jews 2nd class citizens forbidden to marry or have sexual relations with “Aryans”. The Nazis actually used one of their own, an American trained German lawyer, to do the legal research in America that became the “Prussian Memoradnum”.

But what if the Nazis had engaged a notoriously anti-Semitic branch of the US government, the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID), to do the research. And what if two determined women—an intrepid Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and a courageous German lawyer—set out to expose this shameful secret? And, finally, what if agents of both the Nazis and US Government were out to stop them at all costs?

That is what the book is about.

Can you tell us a little about the main characters of your book?

Mattie McGary is the fictional Scottish goddaughter of Winston Churchill and a photojournalist and foreign correspondent for William Randolph Hearst. She hates the Nazis, but she has been Hitler’s favorite foreign journalist ever since she first interviewed him on the eve of his ill-fated “Beer Hall putsch in 1923. She can’t shake that no matter how many negative, but factually accurate, stories she writes about the Nazis, two of which have won Pulitzer Prizes. So her godfather Churchill keeps feeding her leads on potential stories about Nazi wrongdoing and Hearst keeps sending her back to Germany to follow up. She regrets being fluent in German and keeps hoping her next story will take her off Hitler’s Christmas card list.

Hanna Raeder is a German criminal defense lawyer and the younger fictional second wife of Erich Raeder, the Grand Admiral of the German Navy. Raeder was not a Nazi and his real second wife, Erica, was not either. Raeder resisted Nazi demands that he dismiss Jewish naval officers and he and Erica even took their son out of the Hitler Youth. We thought he would be a good husband for our fictional Hanna who hates the Nazis every bit as much as Mattie. As Hanna is serving as a member of the German Commission ON Criminal Law Reform, she is Mattie’s primary source in her investigation.

Both women end up in a concentration camp where waterboarding precedes their beheading.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would that be?

Write every day.

What would you say is one of your interesting writing quirks?

We wouldn’t. We prefer not to bore people. By definition, the actual act of writing is not especially interesting to anyone but the writer. It’s boring to anyone else.

Do you hear from your readers?  What do they say?

We read all of our unsolicited reader reviews and then put the better ones, i.e., the ones we like, at the beginning of all our books. Here are a few:

“Mattie McGary was easily my favorite character and I loved how the authors made her into a strong female character with a very real personality. So many times strong female characters end up feeling almost unrealistic and that was not the case with Mattie.” [Books for Books review]

“Mattie McGary is what every woman wants to be: strong-willed, the ability to take care of herself, and who doesn’t take crap from anyone.” [Goodreads review]


“I’ve read and enjoyed all of the books in this series and I vote this one as the most exciting yet, full of twists and turns and I really cared about what happened to the characters. It was a most believable page-turner right to the very end. I can’t wait for their next book. “[Amazon review]

“This series of books is fantastic—as good as any New York Times Best Seller. Anyone who likes a thriller but appreciates an accurate historical background would like this book. I look forward to the next in the series.” [Amazon review]

“One of the best thrillers I’ve read in a long time. It’s detailed, nuanced and beautifully written. Historical fact and fiction were so seamlessly woven together that I wasn’t sure which was which!” [Amazon review].

“This is a well-written historical novel that stays true to the time period and keeps its historic facts accurate. I really liked how the authors immersed me in the time period right from the first page.” [Amazon review].

“Historical fiction which excels. I immediately became involved with both the characters and plot which took on a life of their own. I have read much shorter books that have seemed far longer than The Silver Mosaic.” [Goodreads review].

“An action-packed and intriguing look at the world leading to WWII that will be enjoyed by all those who like suspenseful political stories. The authors bring to life multiple historical figures and create a narrative filled with interesting anecdotes and asides even as the race to stay alive is vividly depicted.” [Amazon review]


What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author?

Well, this occurred when my co-author on the first five Mattie + Winston adventures was my son Patrick. His older sister and my current co-author Kathleen points out that nothing similar has happened in the next three books we wrote on her watch.

Apart from things that make a good novel like character development and plot, historical novelists have to pay attention more than most to verisimilitude. If you get a fact or two wrong that your readers know to be wrong, you destroy their willing suspension of disbelief. We did that in a novel set in 1933 when we referred to something as being in the Guinness Book of World Records. A helpful reader pointed out in a less than friendly way that the Guinness Book of World Record did not appear until the early 1950s. Sigh. We were lazy. A quick Google search would have shown that, but we assumed since Guinness was around long before 1933, its world record book was as well.

We appreciated the criticism because we had made the same mistake in the next book in the series that we were able to promptly correct before publication. It really is important to get those historical details right. I read a lot of historical fiction set in the 20th century, especially ones set in Germany. If ever I come across Hitler’s first name spelled “Adolph” rather than the correct “Adolf”, I throw the book away. If you don’t even know how to spell his name correctly, how many other things about the period don’t you know?

What has been your best accomplishment?

We both believe in what the famous film maker Billy Wilder once said: “You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.” Aside from marrying our spouses and having our children, here’s the best thing we’ve each ever done:

Michael: Becoming Winston Churchill, the Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor [Greenwood Publishing, Oxford 2007, Enigma Books, New York 2009) with Curt Zoller.

Kathleen: Organize Your Way: Simple Strategies for Every Personality (Sterling, New York 2017) with Kelly McMenamin.

 Do you Google yourself?

Sometimes, but neither of us can recall the last time we did.

How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?

Michael: None, except the first three chapters of our next book that my co-author hasn’t seen yet.

Kathleen: One, my first novel, but I’m going to change that next year.

Optional: Fun question – if you were princess or prince, what’s one thing you would do to make your kingdom a better place?

Michael: Where to start? We’re both libertarians who have written for Reason [Free Minds & Free Markets] so go to www.reason.com and take your pick.

Kathleen: Repeal all the damn drug laws! They’re funding foreign terrorists and imprisoning a disproportionate number of American poor people!

Michael: OK, I could have guessed that would be her answer and it would be a good place to start because you wouldn’t need to be a libertarian to think that was a good idea.
Why would anyone want to keep a law on the books that finances terrorists who oppose everything we stand for and want to kill us?

Do you have anything specific that you would like to say to your readers?

We appreciate all your kind words. Stay tuned.  We’ve already started on the next Mattie+Winston adventure.




Winston Churchill’s adventure-seeking goddaughter, the intrepid Hearst journalist Mattie McGary, sets out in 1934 to expose a major political scandal—a conspiracy between the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID) and Hitler’s Praetorian, the SS, to help the Nazis persecute German Jews.
Churchill alerts Mattie to what he learns from a confidential German source: that the Nazis are working on a new law to strip Jews of their citizenship and forbid them to marry or have sex with Aryans. The year before, Heinrich Himmler’s SS secretly engaged the MID to research racist laws in thirty American states that prohibit sex and marriage between whites and other races. Known as “The Prussian Memorandum”—an actual historic document—radical SS anti-Semites plan to use these racist American laws as a model for their treatment of the Jews
Aided by a courageous German lawyer, Hanna Raeder, Mattie’s efforts to document the conspiracy take her from Churchill’s country home in England to the corridors of power in Berlin and, along with Churchill, to the canals of Amsterdam where his German source is to provide them with conclusive proof of the conspiracy. Pursued by both agents of Himmler’s Gestapo and American MID agents determined to stop them at all costs, Mattie and Hanna race to expose the shameful secret of The Prussian Memorandum.
In a chilling climax, Mattie and Hanna are arrested and taken to a Gestapo-run concentration camp where they are charged with crimes against the state—Hanna for treason, Mattie for espionage— and scheduled for show trials the next day before The People’s Court. If convicted, the penalty is death by beheading.
Literary Awards and Praise for Mattie McGary’s Adventures with Winston Churchill
Three-Time Grand Prize Winner Fiction, Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Three-Time Thriller/Suspense Book of the Year, ForeWord Reviews
Two-Time Historical Fiction Book of the Year, ForeWord Reviews
Appointment in Prague
“A thrilling historical novel with a no-nonsense heroine is what you’ll find… Wow! This is an action-packed, intense story that brings the reader right into the world of WW II espionage. Well-developed characters, a tough heroine, and great attention to detail.” [The Book Connection review]
“Mattie McGary was easily my favorite character and I loved how the authors made her into a strong female character with a very real personality. So many times strong female characters end up feeling almost unrealistic and that was not the case with Mattie.” [Books for Books review]
The Berghof Betrayal
“Mattie McGary is what every woman wants to be: strong-willed, the ability to take care of herself, and who doesn’t take crap from anyone.” [Goodreads review]
“I’ve read and enjoyed all of the books in this series and I vote this one as the most exciting yet, full of twists and turns and I really cared about what happened to the characters. It was a most believable page-turner right to the very end. I can’t wait for their next book. “[Amazon review]
The Silver Mosaic
“This is a well-written historical novel that stays true to the time period and keeps its historic facts accurate. I really liked how the authors immersed me in the time period right from the first page.” [Amazon review].
“Historical fiction that excels. I immediately became involved with both the characters and plot, which took on a life of their own. I have read much shorter books that seemed far longer than The Silver Mosaic.” [Goodreads review].
The Gemini Agenda
“A thick and rich tale that is impossible to put down, So many twists and turns and the ending is gripping…This book holds its own with the best historical fiction.” [Goodreads review]

ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE PRUSSIAN MEMORANDUM

Amazon → https://amzn.to/2BhPctO

 Barnes & Noble → https://bit.ly/3ibS5wY

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