I am an indie writer in my mid-forties ( my prime!). I am proud to have survived my youthful foibles and extravagancies and now content I have settled down with a husband and three dogs in the country side to plant peonies and write to my heart’s content. I am German but lived half of my life in the UK. If you watch TV then you can imagine me as a cross between Monica from “Friends” and Sheldon from “Big Bang Theory” (minus the genius of course), although I aim to be more like Joey and David Fisher from “Six Feet Under”.
What was your first book?
Funny you should ask that. I am finally re-writing the very first book I wrote (without publishing) with the possibility of finally putting it out there. It is called “Conditions” and is a contemporary drama about mental health and is set at a country funeral. Around the age of 16 I did have to go to an awful lot of funerals in my family and the dramas and revelations that can occur during those events have always shocked and fascinated me.
What is your favorite genre to read? To write?
I keep changing my mind about that, in both writing and reading. For reading, I never used to think much of crime or science fiction but I have read some very good work in those genres over the last year and am beginning to develop a taste for it. Comedy and drama are still high on my list.
As for writing, I love to write new material and explore new genres. I just finished writing my very first thriller and really enjoyed it.
Your writing has a lyrical quality, almost poetic. What has influence your writing style?
Thank you very much. I read so much different materials and like such a variety of authors and styles that it would be hard for me to name one that influenced me most. I like Lionel Shriver’s sharp and painfully honest writing, Armistead Maupin’s warm tones and Henry Miller’s passion. I fear my books are nothing quite like any of their styles, though.
Many of your novels are set in different periods. How do you research them?
I read a lot of history books and novels set in the periods to get dry facts as well as a feel for the period. Before writing “The Luck of the Weissensteiners”, I must have read 50+ books and looked up lots of sources on the internet. With my other novels it was a little easier. Admittedly I did not travel abroad to search the local archives but I made sure I was confident I got it right before using any data or information in my books.
I find though that even in contemporary fiction precise research is required and the tiniest detail can cost you a lot of time to investigate.
Why did you pick the periods, you did?
Curiosity.
“The Luck of the Weissensteiners” was the product of research into my own family history which goes back to Slovakia in the 1930s and 1940s. I wanted to know more what happened or might have happened to my family, which inspired the novel.
A lot of books I read during my research about WW2 mentioned the famous Golden days of Vienna before WW1 and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Out of curiosity I began to read books set in the era and history books about that time and came up with the story for “Sebastian”.
German history lessons stopped with the end of WW2 so “The Black Eagle Inn” was my own research project into how a Nation with such shame could recover and become a new and modern country.
I wrote another (yet unpublished) novel about Finland and its history, also out of curiosity.
What makes a protagonist interesting?
Contradictions. Everyone has more sides to them than one and people are capable of change. I like it when characters surprise me, both in real life and in fiction.
What is the best thing about being a writer?
Writing the first draft. It is exciting and full of possibilities.
What is the worst thing?
Waiting for the editors to get back to me with feedback and rewrite suggestions.
Pantser or plotter?
Mostly Pantser
What do you see the direction of your future writing taking? What can we expect next? Give us a little taste.
I guess more drama. I have a few novels ready in draft form so another historic war epic is definitely in the making and a few more contemporary dramas. I have just given my first psychological thriller to my crime-fiction-loving partner who surprisingly approved of it so maybe one day I will publish that one, too.
Just for fun
Cat or dog person?
Dog
Favorite food?
Right now I quite fancy a Tomato and Mozzarella Salad but I am hiding some Haribo sweets on my bookshelf.
Favorite book?
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Favorite movie?
Murielle’s Wedding / Groundhog Day
Favorite vacation destination (you just have to want to go there)
Japan
Time to Let Go is a contemporary family drama set in Britain.
Following a traumatic incident at work Stewardess Hanna Korhonen decides to take time off work and leaves her home in London to spend quality time with her elderly parents in rural England. There she finds that neither can she run away from her problems, nor does her family provide the easy getaway place that she has hoped for. Her mother suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and, while being confronted with the consequences of her issues at work, she and her entire family are forced to reassess their lives.
The book takes a close look at family dynamics and at human nature in a time of a crisis. Their challenges, individual and shared, take the Korhonens on a journey of self-discovery and redemption.
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Time-To-Let-Go/257989361049799?ref=hl
On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21947533-time-to-let-go
On Amazon: http://bookShow.me/B00K9G8M8W
The Luck of the Weissensteiners (Three Nations Trilogy Book 1)
In the sleepy town of Bratislava in 1933 a romantic girl falls for a bookseller from Berlin. Greta Weissensteiner, daughter of a Jewish weaver, slowly settles in with the Winkelmeier clan just as the developments in Germany start to make waves in Europe and re-draws the visible and invisible borders. The political climate in the multifaceted cultural jigsaw puzzle of disintegrating Czechoslovakia becomes more complex and affects relations between the couple and the families. The story follows them through the war with its predictable and also its unexpected turns and events and the equally hard times after.
But this is no ordinary romance; in fact it is not a romance at all, but a powerful, often sad, Holocaust story. What makes The Luck of the Weissensteiners so extraordinary is the chance to consider the many different people who were never in concentration camps, never in the military, yet who nonetheless had their own indelible Holocaust experiences. This is a wide-ranging, historically accurate exploration of the connections between social location, personal integrity and, as the title says, luck.
On Amazon: http://bookshow.me/B00AFQC4QC
On Goodreads: http://bit.ly/12Rnup8
On Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1bua395
Trailer: http://studio.stupeflix.com/v/OtmyZh4Dmc/?autoplay=1
B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-luck-of-the-weissensteiners-christoph-fischer/1113932211?ean=9781481130332
Sebastian (Three Nations Trilogy Book 2)
Sebastian is the story of a young man who has his leg amputated before World War I. When his father is drafted to the war it falls on to him to run the family grocery store in Vienna, to grow into his responsibilities, bear loss and uncertainty and hopefully find love.
Sebastian Schreiber, his extended family, their friends and the store employees experience the ‘golden days’ of pre-war Vienna and the timed of the war and the end of the Monarchy while trying to make a living and to preserve what they hold dear.
Fischer convincingly describes life in Vienna during the war, how it affected the people in an otherwise safe and prosperous location, the beginning of the end for the Monarchy, the arrival of modern thoughts and trends, the Viennese class system and the end of an era.
As in the first part of the trilogy, “The Luck of The Weissensteiners” we are confronted again with themes of identity, Nationality and borders. The step back in time made from Book 1 and the change of location from Slovakia to Austria enables the reader to see the parallels and the differences deliberately out of the sequential order. This helps to see one not as the consequence of the other, but to experience them as the momentary reality as it must have felt for the people at the time.
On Amazon: http://bookshow.me/B00CLL1UY6
On Goodreads: http://ow.ly/pthHZ
On Facebook: http://ow.ly/pthNy
Trailer: http://studio.stupeflix.com/v/95jvSpHf5a/
B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sebastian-mr-christoph-fischer/1115243053?ean=9781484156001
The Black Eagle Inn (Three Nations Trilogy Book 3)
The Black Eagle Inn is an old established Restaurant and Farm business in the sleepy Bavarian countryside outside of Heimkirchen. Childless Anna Hinterberger has fought hard to make it her own and keep it running through WWII. Religion and rivalry divide her family as one of her nephews, Markus has got her heart and another nephew, Lukas got her ear. Her husband Herbert is still missing and for the wider family life in post-war Germany also has some unexpected challenges in store.
Once again Fischer tells a family saga with war in the far background and weaves the political and religious into the personal. Being the third in the Three Nations Trilogy this book offers another perspective on war, its impact on people and the themes of nations and identity.
On Facebook: http://ow.ly/pAX3y
On Goodreads: http://ow.ly/pAX8G
On Amazon: http://bookshow.me/B00FSBW2L6
Trailer: http://studio.stupeflix.com/v/mB2JZUuBaI/
Short Biography:
Christoph Fischer was born in Germany, near the Austrian border, as the son of a Sudeten-German father and a Bavarian mother. Not a full local in the eyes and ears of his peers he developed an ambiguous sense of belonging and home in Bavaria. He moved to Hamburg in pursuit of his studies and to lead a life of literary indulgence. After a few years he moved on to the UK where he now lives in a small hamlet, not far from Bath. He and his partner have three Labradoodles to complete their family.
Christoph worked for the British Film Institute, in Libraries, Museums and for an airline.. ‘The Luck of The Weissensteiners’ was published in November 2012; 'Sebastian' in May 2013 and The Black Eagle Inn in October 2013. He has written several other novels which are in the later stages of editing and finalisation.
Website: http://www.christophfischerbooks.com/
Blog: http://writerchristophfischer.wordpress.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6590171.Christoph_Fischer
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Christoph-Fischer/e/B00CLO9VMQ/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Christoph-Fischer/e/B00CLO9VMQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1400301014&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.de/Christoph-Fischer/e/B00CLO9VMQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1400301014&sr=1-2
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All Facebook links:
http://www.facebook.com/WriterChristophFischer?ref=hl
http://www.facebook.com/TheLuckOfTheWeissensteiners?ref=hl
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sebastian/489427467776001?ref=hl
http://www.facebook.com/TheBlackEagleInn?ref=hl
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Time-To-Let-Go/257989361049799?ref=hl