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Now Offering Writing & Publishing Services

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After a few years taking a break from writing and publishing due to burnout, I am once again offering writing and publishing services to clients.

Preserve and honor the remarkable stories of yourself, your ancestors, veterans, and the legacies they’ve left behind. We understand the importance of capturing and sharing these unique narratives that span generations. Our mission is to guide you through the process of unearthing and documenting your family’s rich history, while also providing a supportive environment to explore and heal from generational and war trauma.

Writing Services Include:

Family Storytelling and Memoir

Unlock the hidden chapters of your story or your family’s past as skilled genealogists, military researchers, and storytellers work diligently to piece together the puzzle of your ancestry. Through meticulous research, personal interviews, genealogical tools, and archival exploration, we’ll reveal the untold stories and forgotten details, connecting you to your roots and heritage.

Veteran Chronicles

Pay tribute to the brave men and women who served their country by capturing their invaluable experiences. We specialize in collecting family accounts, photographs, and genealogical and military records to create comprehensive narratives that honor their sacrifices. By sharing their stories, we ensure their bravery and resilience will forever be remembered.

Trauma Integration

Generational and war trauma can have a profound impact on individuals and families. We are here to guide you through the process of identifying, understanding, and healing from these deep wounds. By incorporating trauma-informed approaches into the storytelling process, we strive to create a safe space for exploration, reflection, and growth.

Publishing Services

Once your family story or veteran chronicle is complete, we offer a range of publishing services to help you bring your narratives to life. From editing and design to printing and distribution, our experienced publishing team will assist you at every step. We’ll ensure your family’s stories receive the recognition they deserve.

Developmental Editing

Developmental editing is a comprehensive and collaborative process designed to enhance the overall structure, content, and impact of your manuscript. You can expect a meticulous examination of your manuscript. We will delve deep into the heart of your story, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. We focus on big-picture elements such as plot, character development, pacing, tone, and thematic consistency, ensuring your story resonates with your target audience. We provide valuable insights and suggestions to help you strengthen your manuscript.

Would you like to know more and book a free consult to discuss your project? Click here and let’s get started!

© 2023 WWII Research & Writing Center

Writing Stories of War

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Photographs. Letters. Military documents. Whispered family stories. Artifacts of war. Questions……so many questions and some answers. Your head is spinning and you are unsure where to start writing the stories of your family’s experience in war. Just as researching your soldier or civilian’s war story follows a process, so does the writing.

Step 1: Do Your Homework

We cannot write until we have something to work with. This means we first have to gather our sources and do some research. What else does it mean? If you need help researching the stories of your soldier or civilian, please see Volumes 1 and 2 of my Stories from the World War II Battlefield books on this website.

  • Creating a timeline of service for the soldier or the civilian.
  • Create a research plan.
  • Conducting research surrounding the original story we heard, through civilian and military record sources.
  • Analyzing the information discovered.
  • Documenting every website, book, and document we locate throughout our research.
  • Citing the sources of those resources located, within the writing.

Step 2: Writing Tips

Check the accuracy of the story your family told you.

Compare the family story you heard to the story the research uncovered. Often through the research process, the story changes in big or small ways. Never rule anything out that you hear or find.

The story is as good as the stories and information the writer had at the time of writing.

No story is ever complete. New documents and stories surface all the time. This is why it is important to cite sources. Also be aware as you read memories in letters and stories written years after the war ended. As we age, memories get mixed up. Always check your facts and document everything.

Try not to jump around.

When we write, it is important to avoid jumping around within the story. This confuses the reader, especially if the story is a narrative and it becomes cloudy as to who is speaking.

Watch the military lingo.

Balance the use of abbreviations and acronyms with the spelled-out word. Most people are unfamiliar with military lingo. Consider a glossary at the end of your story or book that contains abbreviations, acronyms, and definitions to words not commonly heard today.

Cite your sources. Sources provide credibility to work and allows others to review your sources and conclusions.

Step 3: Consider the Perspective

Every story we hear or write, is a matter of perspective. The perspective of the person writing a report or story or telling us a story. The view we take as we listen to a story, read letters and diaries, or examine military records, colors how we write our own stories. We must also remember when a soldier tells a story or writes a report about combat, they do so from their perspective of the action.

For example, if two soldiers are in a foxhole in the woods, facing different directions, what they see and experience will be different. If they both wrote accounts of the combat they just experienced, immediately after, you would have two very different accounts. This is because they witnessed, participated in, and felt entirely different things, even in the same overall combat situation.

Have you seen the series Band of Brothers? In one of the last episodes, Dick Winters is typing a report about the action in the woods at Foy. The scenes rotate between Winters typing his report and the battle. That episode really made me think about the conditions under which all our military records were created. For our writing, this means, when we read letters or diaries from the war, or examine military records, particularly battle action reports, we have to consider a few things, even though we will never know the answer.

  • What information was omitted from the report or letter?
  • What information may have been censored?
  • What information was slightly altered during writing?
  • What state of mind was the writer in while he or she wrote the report? How might that have affected the text?
  • What kind of emotions was the writer dealing with when he wrote the report?

Step 4: Writing the Story

Before we begin writing, we should have an idea of how our story will evolve. We accomplish this through the timeline of service we created as we researched our soldier or by building an outline of what we would like our story to look like. There are many ways to outline a story. Some basic suggestions follow.

Writing the Soldier’s Story

Biography

Early service

Service

Big picture/historical context

End of war/life

After the war

Writing the Veteran’s Story

Biography

Early service

Service

Big picture/historical context

Lessons learned

End of war

After the war

Remembering the Fallen

Writing the American Civilian Story

Biography

Life before the war

Life during the war
Lessons learned

Writing the European Civilian Story

Biography

Life before the war

Life during the war – Occupation or Annexation

Propaganda

Battles

Family involvement – soldiers, resistance, forced labor, etc.

The end of the war

Life after the war

Remembering the Fallen

With all these thoughts in mind, are you ready to begin writing? To help you start, I’ve included a few writing prompts from my new books.

Writing Prompts

The following prompts are writing themes focused on the U.S. experience, with one or two prompts from each, to give you an idea of what is possible when writing the stories. My book, Stories from the WWII Battlefield:Writing the Stories of War, contain over 500 writing prompts to help you write your stories of war.

Life on the Home Front Before the War & Life After the War

  1. Describe life before the war. Consider education, jobs, and the roles of men, women and children in your family.
    1. What jobs did your father hold?
    1. Did your mother work outside the house?
    1. Did anyone in your extended family live with you or nearby?
    1. Did the children in the family help with chores in the house or work outside the house to help support the family?

Community Impact

  1. Describe the impact the community where your family lived had on the war effort. How many men and women did they send off to fight and serve?

Women in the War

  1. Did any of your female soldiers join the military or Red Cross during WWII?
    1. Which branch?
    1. What job did she hold?
    1. Where did she train?
    1. Did she serve overseas? Where and when?

Military Service

  1. Was your soldier drafted or did he or she enlist in the military?
  2. Where did he or she train?

Race and Ethnicity

  1. Consider how ethnicity and race affected people during WWII. For example, during World War II in the United States, Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps and African-Americans were segregated in the armed forces. Did this affect your family? How?

V-E and V-J Day

  1. Where were your family members on VE Day and VJ Day? Where was your soldier?
  2. Did you celebrate the end of the war in Europe? The end in Pacific when ended the total war? How?

After The War

  1. What the homecoming like for your soldier? Was there a community parade? A celebration at home or something quiet?
  2. What did your soldier come home to when his or her service ended? Marriage? A job? Family? College? Did he or she enlist to serve again?

Memories of Post-War Generations

  1. What memories do you have of your parents, grandparents, or other family members telling you about the war? What stories did they tell you?

Preserving the Memories

  1. How does your family preserve the memories of those who fought and died or those who lived through the war?

Can I Help With Your Research & Writing Projects

If you need help with your WWI – Vietnam research projects or writing projects, I am taking new clients. You can email me at info@wwiirwc.com to set up a phone call to discuss your projects and what’s possible.

© 2022 WWII Research & Writing Center

Women’s History Month – Love, War, & Death

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I’m often asked, why did I start researching and writing about World War II? My business began 10 years ago in genealogy. That was my dream and focus. About 20 years ago I started researching my family’s history and my uncle told me about a cousin, Robert Brouk, who was one of the original AVG Flying Tigers. At the time, that meant nothing to me because I didn’t know about the Flying Tigers or much about WWII. Then I started researching……..

Robert flew in the 3rd Squadron with the Flying Tigers and when they were disbanded in July 1942, he returned to Chicago. A month later he met Ginny Scharer and the two fell in love. Robert was ordered to report to Orlando, FL to train pilots in October 1942 and not wanting to be apart from Ginny, he proposed. The two were married late November 1942.

Three weeks later, Ginny watched Robert die in a plane crash in Orlando while training pilots. At 20 years old, she was a widow. No one in the family knew what happened to her after that. Robert’s parents and brother were dead and the story, it seemed, died too. My uncle, in 1996, was retiring from work and decided to investigate Robert’s life. He spent hours searching through old microfilm newspapers in Cicero and Berwyn, IL looking for stories on Robert. He came up with stacks of papers. Robert was Cicero’s Home Town Hero because he had fought the Japanese around the time of Pearl Harbor. His story and appearances in the Chicagoland area were written up in newspapers across Cook County, for months!

For my part, I started investigating the Flying Tigers. I contacted their reunion association and posted a message in 1996 on the Flying Tiger message boards. Nine years later in December 2005, Robert’s widow’s grandson saw my post. Ginny was still alive and had Robert’s AVG war diary, photos of his service, and some things he brought back from Asia.

Ginny and I exchanged many hand written letters and she sent me his war diary. She had also lost her second husband and had been hand writing giant volumes of her family’s history. To this written history she added photos, documents, newspaper clippings, and other items. She sent me copies of the pages that told the love story of her and Bob.

Ginny being inducted into the WAAC. Photo courtesy of Ginny Davis and used in “The Tiger’s Widow”

I sat on Robert’s war diary until 2010 when I started my business and decided, as a bucket list thing, I’d write a book. Robert died so soon after the Tigers were disbanded that he’s barely mentioned in any other books. His memory had to be preserved.

Once I wrote his story, all my other relatives who died in WWI and WWII showed up and said, ‘if you write his story you have to write ours.’ That began the start of my writing career and also my journey into the world of WWII research.

So what happened to Ginny after Robert’s death? A few months later, the minute she turned 21, she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which later in 1943 became the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). She ended up overseas in Egypt where she met her second husband Harvey. What a story they have! Harvey had a brother, Fred, who was a co-pilot on a bomber that went down 2 November 1943 in Austria. He now rests in Lorraine Cemetery.

When I wrote Ginny’s story, The Tiger’s Widow, it was meant to be a biography. However, after my editor went through it and returned it, I let the book sit for several months while I finished writing Stories of the Lost. When I returned to Ginny’s book, it took me four days, a box of tissues, and allowing my heart and soul to crack open, heal, and pour love out into the book. I cried most of those four days I edited and rewrote her story. The book didn’t want to be a biography, but a love story, and Fred and I were to be added as characters.

You never know, when you start a new project, book, or genealogy search, exactly where it will lead. I have learned with each new WWII project I start, book I begin to research, program I write, or client I speak with about their family member’s service, there are always lessons to learn. There is often a tremendous amount of love for the soldier. And there are many unanswered questions that the research or project help to answer, which brings immense healing to the client, myself, and all those living or dead attached to what I’m working on.

We are all connected in this universe through love.

I’d like to share with you some of that connection with the first chapter of Ginny’s story.

Five Hearts Joined Together

Love knows no boundaries of time and space or life and death. It exists forever in our hearts as we remember and honor those who have gone before us. Through those memories we pass life lessons on to the next generation. We teach others there is light after darkness, hope after despair, and love is the glue that puts shattered hearts back together. This is a story of five hearts separated by time and space; hearts which would meet in the perfect moment. It is a story about never ending love that lived on even after death.

A famous pilot met a young beauty and the two fell in love, Robert and Ginny. Their love soared with the eagles. Their time together was brief but they lived so fully in love in the moment, it is as if nothing but death could have broken them apart. Then death knocked on their door and a plane fell from the sky in a fiery ball. One heart silenced on earth but lived forever in death. One heart shattered into a million pieces.

A year later on another continent, two brothers fought a war, Harvey and Fred. The boys grew up as orphans and wanted a heart to come home to. Fred flew a bombing mission over Austria and was lost, listed as missing for a year. Harvey feared the worst and waited for word which came a year after Fred went missing. A brother’s love lived on after death.

Less than a year after Fred went missing, Ginny found Harvey. A chance meeting and two hearts became one. Pieces of Ginny’s shattered heart started to glue back together, slowly at first and then more quickly. Harvey’s heart had finally found its home with Ginny. He was no longer an orphan or alone. They found each other during a time of war when the world around them collapsed in chaos. Together they created a new world filled with joy, love, and the memories of those lost before their time.

Almost 65 years later, another heart emerged. A young woman trying to start a new life after her heart was shattered. She and Ginny, now a widow for the second time, connected. Little did they know the impact that meeting would have.

Five hearts separated by time and space that met in perfect time, would change the lives of all they touched. Their love would span decades. Their life lessons would provide hope to others in the future.

Five hearts joined forever.

Have you worked on a project or written something that helped change or heal you or those involved? Our readers would love to hear your stories of War, Love, and Healing.

You can read Bob’s story in Stories of the Lost. You can read Ginny’s story in The Tiger’s Widow.

Are you ready to learn the bigger picture of your family member’s military service? Email us at info@wwiirwc.com to discuss project options, fees, and time. You can also sign-up for our free newsletter!

© 2020 World War II Research and Writing Center