Introducing THE WAR LANTERN Book Trailer!

 

THE WAR LANTERN has a new book trailer, I hope you enjoy it!  

THE WAR LANTERN is my newest book and also happens to be my sixteenth, somehow. That's sixteen books in seventeen years of publishing, and I'm incredibly grateful to my publisher at DCB Young Readers for helping get this book into the world. 

My first book, THE GARGOYLE IN MY YARD, was published in 2009 and I'm pleased to say that it's still in print. Here's a book trailer for the LOST GARGOYLE SERIES of three books (my very first book trailer attempt, it's pretty sweet!).

NOTE: I recorded the droning engines of a squadron of WWII Hurricanes which flew over my house last Remembrance Day, which is the background sound in THE WAR LANTERN Book Trailer.

All Posts About THE WAR LANTERN on this blog.

The Blue Door, a World War II Air Raid Shelter

Today, Remembrance Day 2023, I share this picture of the entrance to a WWII air raid shelter. 

In 1941, this was the site of Parnall's Aircraft Factory, (Yate, UK), which manufactured and tested Lancaster bomber gun turrets. Today it's the Whirlpool factory, thank you to them for the tour. 

My father was working at Parnall's on February 27, 1941, when the factory was bombed by a single Heinkel He III bomber, in an unusual daylight raid. My father survived by diving under his lathe, there was no time to run to the shelters since the sirens blew almost at the instant the bombs dropped.

He was 15 years old; 53 coworkers died in the raid. Sadly timely and universal, this blue door reminds me that no child should experience war, or fight, or die, in one.

UPDATE: THE WAR LANTERN, a book for middle-grade readers based on the Parnall's bombing, will be published Oct. 2026. More here. 

 Photo: Author taking notes at the factory site. (Hair braided for safety). Photo courtesy Rich McDonough.