This is not the end
The Resistance Girls Revisited and what’s next?
I often compare the work of an author with that of a fashion designer. By the time a book comes out, I’m already fully immersed in writing the next one, and it’s almost hard to “sell” the upcoming book because new characters are occupying my every day.
But I wouldn’t pay enough tribute to The Resistance Girl Series if I didn’t spend some time reflecting on the finale of the series and the period of four-and-a-half years I dedicated to writing this 8-book series.
The first book “In Picardy’s Fields” came out in September 2020, but I started writing this story at the end of 2019. Since then, I’ve written every day (1650 days) until the completion of this first series (960,000 words). Initially I planned to write a trilogy and finish it in 2021. It went somewhat out of hand. ☺
By book 3, the series began to find an audience and as there was not yet a new series brewing in my head, I decided I’d have another girl attending the finishing school Le Manoir in Switzerland. And then another… and yet another.
I could have gone on and on, but something happened when I was writing The Norwegian Assassin. My research kept circling me back to SOE (Secret Operations Executive), and I made Esther, the heroine of book 4, a secret agent trained by SOE, followed by book 5 The Highland Raven. Sable was also an SOE agent.
Only book 6 had a different topic. Based in Holland, I wanted to write a book about the Dutch Resistance. But the final resistance girl, Anna in The London Spymaker is a fictionalized retelling of Vera Adkins, the SOE spymistress at the Baker Street HQ in London.
It seemed my writing fate was sealed.
Two years ago, I went on a research trip to Beaulieu in Hampshire, England, with my eldest son. Beaulieu was the SOE “finishing school” for secret agents during WW2. At that moment, I knew I would transition from the posh ladies’ finishing school in Switzerland to the die-hard spy school in Britain, and my next series would revolve around the 39 women who became secret agents in France.
I was born in France, but I’m of British lineage, and these two countries, these two nationalities, determine who I really am. And World War 2 was the catalyst that led to my birth as my uncle landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 and my parents met each other through this uncle in 1949.
The Resistance Girl Series was about fictive resistance women. Timeless Spies will be about real resistance women. The research material, the setting, the deeply emotional and heart-breaking female odysseys through the war will be the same, but the writing for me is different.
For the first time in my writing career, I’m portraying heroines who really lived, and it is my solemn task to bring them to life for you.
Today in 2024, none of these female agents is alive anymore, but the memories of their brave missions still linger. My tribute to the SOE women must be as profound as my admiration for them is. I want this tribute to stand the test of time. Let them not be forgotten, these shadow fighters for the freedom of Europe.
But what about The Resistance Girls Revisited? Why did I write this sequel to the series? This is a book specifically written for the fans. It offers you one last glimpse at the individual stories of your beloved heroines who sprouted from my imagination. As “the girls” travel to the place where they met for the first time, the finishing school Le Manoir on Lake Geneva in Lausanne, we wave one final farewell to them.
Now we let Agnès, Madeleine, Lili, Océane, Esther, Sable, Edda and Anna go to raise their families and wish them a long and happy life. We hope for them that the war in which they fought so hard for liberation will slowly become a distant memory no longer haunting them.
And we welcome women like Lise, Eileen and Diana and the 36 others in the Timeless Spies Series.
I write about war because I deeply, deeply care about peace. Lest we forget.
