Episode 96: Aimie K. Runyan, author of The School for German Brides
Aimie K. Runyan shares why her latest novel was the perfect book to write during the pandemic lockdown and why she never could have written it in happier times. THE SCHOOL FOR GERMAN BRIDES is about the unlikely friendship between a young German girl sent to a horrific “bride school” and a young Jewish woman who is about to give birth.
We chat about what her research looked like during the pandemic lockdown, a few of her favorite sources, and the inspiration behind the story. Aimie also shares the best advice she has for aspiring authors.
Books Mentioned:
The School for German Brides by Aimie K. Runyan (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Emma Project by Sonali Dev (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Call of the Wrens Jenni L. Walsh (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Ashley Hasty 0:00
Well Amy, thank you so much for joining me. I don't want to waste any time. So let's jump right into the book. Will you start by telling our listeners what the school for German brides is about?
Aimie K. Runyan 0:11
Well, the school for German brides is a story of two young women who are encroaching encroaching upon the face of their lives their late teens and early 20s When they are embarking on their first relationships. And we have a young woman Hana. She is the typical blond haired blue eyed Aryan German girl, who is recently her mother's recently passed away and she is sent off to Berlin to live with her aunt and uncle, she finds out very soon that they are fairly high in the Nazi echelon. And they she finds out very soon that they are grooming her to become a perfect German bride. And that's where we lead into the school for German brides which was a real actual thing. And schools that were invented by Hitler and his group of thugs, for lack of a better term in order to train German women to be good German housewives and mothers to increase the German population and basically reduce the infant mortality rate the maternal mortality rate and to of course, propagate the German idiom or the Nazi ideology. And then you contrast that with Tilda who is a Michelin which is which means mixed. She has an Aryan father who has abandoned the family and a Jewish Jewish mother, and she meets a nice young man. And of course, she's not able to pursue the career she wants, being happy, she doesn't have the paperwork to be able to go to law school, she wants to be a lawyer, and women couldn't practice law or medicine or any of those big fields at the time. And our mother has to basically be in hiding most of the time to save her but because tilde being mixed, looks a little bit doesn't look quite as stereotypically Jewish as her mother, she can move around a bit more freely in society still, because this is 1938. Still before the start of the war, at the beginning of the book, she meets a nice young man and their marriage is fraught with a lot of difficulties because of their between the German and the Jewish experience early marriage, and it's
Ashley Hasty 2:21
no secret that I adore the research process of all the steps that lead to a novel especially with historical fiction, it is my favorite step. So I always like to ask authors what their research process is like. So I'd like to hear about any travels you did or favorite sources, or exciting seeing facts you discovered along the way.
Aimie K. Runyan 2:43
Well, actually, the cool thing about this book and you'll pardon the cameo from my writer can visit GG cat he is super helpful in the writing process. But he Yeah, he lays on my desk the whole time. So he's a good research kitten beautiful. So this is the school for German brides was actually born of research from across the wine, you were of course, I'm pointing their way across a whiny River, which you see in the background. If you're watching the video, I had a character getting married. And I'm like, well, man Nazis had they've had some weird wedding traditions. They're just couldn't I mean, based on it. And so I researched this. And I stumbled across these brides schools that were like home back with a lot of propaganda. So that's where the school for German brides was born from. So of course, this was my lockdown book. And I had this discussion earlier with a friend, that there's no way that I could have written this book and happier times, because it was, you know, it was a book that I was writing in little snippets in the middle of the night, after homeschooling my children all day, just whenever I could from 10am to 10pm to 2am. And it was hard. It was really hard. And so if it had been a light fun, you know, let's go off to the coop does your and right have a nice fun beach read of a book? No, I couldn't have done that. But I so I couldn't travel. I get to go to Europe again, for the first time in a while in a long time. Actually, I haven't been back to Europe and way too long. But I get to go back this summer, but I didn't get to go for research for this book. So it was a lot of contact with libraries remotely. I ordered a lot of great research books. One of my favorites, I'm going to grab it off the shelf. Yeah, was a bookshop in Berlin. And this really only features been a couple of one or two chapters. But I mean, it was about this woman. She was a Jewish French woman who had a French speaking bookshop in Berlin. And I we actually my characters Hana and her friend Clara make a visit to this bookshop in the this, the actual bookshop in the school for German brides. And I love how I mean she stayed to the last possible minute and she wanted to she lost her entire stock. They just seized everything because she was Jewish and not a German citizen. And yeah, it was it was just reading about her hardships was fascinating. So I took a lot of that emotion and a lot of that her angst and put it into till those character Francois Frankel's actual bookshop, and they're buying illicit copies of Vogue magazine.
Ashley Hasty 5:13
As your six, the historical fiction has slipped by cats directly, and you have a contemporary fiction coming up next. Yes, yes. So I'd like you to think back to I think I read that you were 33 when you decided to write your first novel. So I have this. Yes, that's correct. So I'm curious what advice you would give to yourself at 33? Or what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Aimie K. Runyan 5:38
Okay, so I mean, the the advice to aspiring authors I always give the same piece is stop aspiring and start writing my first book, The promise to the Crown sat in a drawer for 10 years, I wrote it as a short the first chapter basically, as a short story for a creative writing class that I was taking while I was in graduate school. And I was also taking a class on Canadian civilization, learned about the feederwatch, which were the women that Louie the 14th, sent over his mail order brides to help populate the Quebec colonies. I'm like, well, that's a great fodder for a book, I want to write that. And so I wrote like, basically what what became the opening chapter for at least a little while before I cut it. And I wrote that it but it took me 10 years to feel like I was somehow qualified to spend the time to write an entire novel. And I was 33, my daughter, the youngest of my two children, was finally sleeping through the night at four months old. Finally, and, you know, I figured, you know, I'm getting a little bit of myself back. But I'm 33. And my grandmother, my, the women of my family lived to about 99, it seems like my grandmother, my great grandmother lived to be 99 are really close to it, I figured I'm a third of the way done with my trip around this rock at best case scenario. So I need to do something big with my life. I couldn't go to the Taj Mahal or anything like that with two small children. So I decided to start writing the book. And I said, You know what, I'm going to write three chapters. And if I like it, I'll keep going. And then I did, I kept going. And then, you know, six months later, I had a really bad draft of a book. And I gave myself permission to make it better. And then I invested in going to a Writers Conference. And that was hugely helpful, I made great contacts, and, you know, eventually got an agent the next year and got a book deal four months after that. So the thing is that, you know, everybody is going to tell you how hard it is to be successful. But you can't, you have no chance of success if you don't actually write the book. So write the book, if you want to. And the thing is, you don't go in with the expectation, you're going to become rich and famous, because you will be disappointed, it will never be enough money or enough attention, it will, it will never be enough. If you go in with the expectation that you might leave something worthwhile behind the human record. That's, that's something that you know, the rest of us can do, you know, to just leave behind something of yourself for humanity. And that's always, you know, my chief goal is to leave something behind that's worth reading. And maybe nobody will read it in 50 years, maybe nobody will read it in 100 years, but at least I know, I've left something of myself behind that, then somebody might simply stumble across in 200 years and say, Wow, that was an interesting look back on history from you know, the perspective of 80 to 100 years later.
Ashley Hasty 8:27
That's the you know, so, like thinking of writing that way, it's much more fulfilling than sending out to be rich and famous.
Aimie K. Runyan 8:34
Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of writers though, to be fair, they just want to be able to write full time and do make a living doing what they love. And I get that. And but I know a very few of us who don't have some sort of small, high side hustle at best, you know, it's just the truth of the matter. But I think that, you know, that's not an unreasonable goal. Is it nice to be able to do because I feel like I don't have time to do anything but right, and maybe raise my kids when I'm trying really hard. But, you know, it's the truth of the matter is, you know, it does get to the point where you have to if you have to choose between, you know, are you able to devote the full the time that your writing career needs to make to give it a go? And or do you have to have, you know, a full time job. I mean, it gets really hard once you reach a certain level of success, because right now I'm editing two projects, drafting another and of course, I'm with you marketing, the school for German brides. And so it's a lot, it's a lot. So you have to you know, I'm very fortunate. I'm privileged that I've been able to devote an entire you know, I devote most of my time to writing now, which is a blessing. It's an absolute blessing, for lack of a better term.
Ashley Hasty 9:42
I love to hear what authors are reading. They always have the best book recommendation. So can you tell us a bit about your reading world and what you like to read books you would recommend right now.
Aimie K. Runyan 9:52
I am so excited for Sonali dives. The Emma project I love her stuff. I've read the other three in her series. To record a modern day, Jane Austen retellings, of course, we have Pride and Prejudice and other flavors, which is a Pride and Prejudice retelling, recipe for persuasion, the best title ever incense and sensibility, which is of course, Sense and Sensibility. And then then the one that's coming out here in about a week, or, yeah, a week is the Emma project, which is an ever retelling. And it's a modern day, from the perspective of an Indian American family, which I absolutely love. So I'm really excited for that one. I haven't read it yet, but I hope to, I'm reading some great arcs. I've got Jenny Walsh's, her newest book that's coming out, I just got an advance review copy of that yesterday, I'm very excited for those of you who really love with Jennifer Coburn as the author and it is a, I got a copy on my desk, I have to read it. And I'm very excited about that one as well. Because I think it gets into kind of the deep, dark crevices of history that we don't learn about in you know, history classes. And I think it's important, you know, because we've rehashed the story. And some of them are so beautiful of the French Resistance and the British resistance. And they are so they're stories worth telling. But understanding the history from kind of more of the point of view of the bad guy. And that's kind of what the school for German brights does give us an insight as to why it all happened. So we can prevent it from happening again. I think that that's that's valuable.
Ashley Hasty 11:25
Absolutely. Absolutely. I also want to talk about what you're working on, is there anything you can tell us about it? Besides it being contemporary? And do you want to make the switch to his contemporary from historical fiction?
Aimie K. Runyan 11:40
Well, I'm not switching per se, I still have I'm actually diversifying, that's the word. So I actually, the timing is still up in the air. But my next historical is a dual timeline with the Paris Commune, and post World War Two. So think lay ms meet shockula. And it's called a bakery in Paris, and it's coming from my good friends at William Morrow. And that will probably either be in spring of 23 or 24. We're working on that. And then my contemporary, which takes place in puzzles is centered around a young woman who has never fit in with her family. And her mother was an immigrant from France. And her mother dies when the main character is in her about 13 years old. She and her mother was always the one that she related to the most, but her father being very straight, laced, you know, kind of yuppie, you know, old money, Connecticut style family, and her mother was this bohemian immigrant from the south of France. And so she's always felt like she never belonged to her own family. And so after her father passes away, she gets a small inheritance. She goes off to the south of France, she discovers a family mystery, and some other kinds of really cool things or dashes of magical realism, and a cute black cat. And it's going to be great. And we are working on the title for that one. Like literally, I think they had a meeting about that today. So that's always exciting. And I'm also working on a collaborative novel with two of my dear friends Rachel Macmillan, and Janelle Celski is called the castle keepers. And that's coming in March of next year. And it's a collaborative novel, I'll take place around one beautiful castle in the north of England, it takes place kind of in the shadow of three different wars, the Boer War, World War One and World War Two, and the impact that those conflicts have on the castle in their family, the family that lives there. And so that was I'm working on edits on that right now. And it's been brilliant, fun. And working with two very talented authors. It's been a great experience.
Ashley Hasty 13:42
Is this your first book that's co written with other people?
Aimie K. Runyan 13:45
Yes, I mean, I submitted it. I have one short story that was in a collection that was kind of it was a charity Anthology for women in, in engineering, and it's called, oh, was oh, the brand new girls. That's right. And so but that was a short story collection. So a little different. But this is definitely my first collaborative novel. And it was so so great to work with two people that have such compatible working styles. And they're just great people. And yeah, it was great. You know, we talk daily, like a lot through like Facebook Messenger, and just having that camaraderie through, you know, the height of the COVID lockdown, and everything was just a lifesaver.
Ashley Hasty 14:25
You have a number of books that take place, and then 1940s Is there something about that time period that you're particularly drawn to?
Aimie K. Runyan 14:33
Well, I think there's so much rich history to be mined from the World War Two era. It's of course it's something that has captured the attention it's part of the Zeitgeist right now people are so interested in learning about more about World War Two because our our World War Two veterans are dying off are Holocaust survivors are dying off. Yeah, of course. So it's the you know, through the natural course of human events. I think there's this sort of desire to Hold on to that history and in the last dying breath of having the that record, that living records still available to us. And I think that there's also an interest in hearing the women's stories because you'll notice that all of my my here, all of my books are very women's centric, learning about the kind of untold stories that of the women that were either part of the conflict or lived through the conflict is really important. And it's something that is, especially the, the more you go back in history, the less the fewer women's stories are documented. And so that's why historical fiction exists, is to shine a light and to tell the untold stories that we don't learn about and you know, Bailey's History of the United States that we are all used in, in US history in high school is just a different form of learning about history.
Ashley Hasty 15:50
And it's one of my metaphors about historical fiction is that you get to it's a very approachable way to learn about history.
Aimie K. Runyan 15:58
Yeah, that's Yeah, and I think that that's why people enjoy it so much. And me it was always the genre that I gravitated to as a reader. Gosh, back when I was even, you know, middle school and whatnot. i That was always the I always love things that were set in the past, whether it was a historical romance, or you know, ya set in the past, whatever, what have you I loved it. I think there's a transportation effect to historical fiction that most people really resonate with.
Ashley Hasty 16:24
I also want to share how people can find you can you tell us where you hang out on social media and your website?
Aimie K. Runyan 16:29
Yes, I am very active on Facebook. So if you search for Amy K Runyan as ai m IEKRU, and yn, you will find me there I am at bookish AMI ai m i e on Instagram and at Amy K Runyan on Twitter. And notice that my Instagram is not the same as my Twitter because I got locked out of my Instagram. And yeah, that's a long story. And my website is www dot AMI que runyon.com. And I would love to see you there. And I've got a great newsletter that comes out once a month. And I love hearing from my readers. There's a contact form if you ever want to send me a message. Yeah, I'd love to hear from everybody love to see people on social media.
Ashley Hasty 17:13
Amy I love that. So it was such a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for joining me for this podcast. Oh, thank
Aimie K. Runyan 17:19
you so much for having me. I appreciate it. And I hope to talk to you again about my future projects.
Ashley Hasty 17:24
I would love to great