Exciting news! The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin has won the 2023 Julia Ward Howe Award for Older Readers! The Boston Authors Club announces the awards annually for books published in the previous year, and there will be a ceremony in September to celebrate. Already looking forward to meeting fellow winners and finalists then!
This week, the L.A. Times announced the finalists for their prizes for books published in 2022. What a thrill and honor for me to learn that The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin was one of the five finalists in the YA category!
Readers of this blog might recognize the first three titles. I loved them so much that I listed them among my top ten favorite books of the year! So landing on this list with these other books is such a huge honor. Plus, I’m going to get to go to L.A. for the ceremony, woot! It will be amazing to spend time with the other authors in person. I’m already thrilled for whichever title will win the prize. Yay!
Today is November 29, which means there are four months left until the release of The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin! I started the countdown two months ago with a book teaser. Last month, I shared some of my book research. (As a reminder, here’s a link that lists out what I’ll be sharing each month until release.)
This month I’m sharing my playlist, which you can find here!
Most of the music is actually from the era, and includes several songs mentioned in the book. But it also includes a few newer recordings. Some come from the Babylon Berlin soundtrack and from Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester.
I don’t usually listen to music as I write or revise, but I adore listening to related music when brainstorming or thinking about a story. Hope you enjoy this musical glimpse into this quite musical book!
Today is October 29, which means there are five months left until the release of The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin! Last month, I began my monthly release countdowns with a book teaser. This time, I’m here to share some of the book research I did as I was writing and revising. (As a reminder, here’s a link that lists out what I’ll be sharing each month until release.)
Like most historical fiction authors, I absolutely love research, and I especially loved researching the world of Berlin in 1932 for this novel. Besides reading general works of nonfiction about the era, most of the books I read fell in one of four categories:
Journalism: Along with reading issues from many periodicals from 1932, these books were great resources for me.
Guidebooks: The Moreck and Hessel books are reprints of guidebooks from the time, but the book in the center is actually from 1929 (purchased from a used bookseller).
Memoirs: I read several others, but these are a couple I purchased in non-electronic form. The one on the left contains stories from several women, and the one on the right is by singer Claire Waldoff (who makes an appearance in the novel).
Fiction: These stories all take place in Berlin in the 1930s, all by authors who lived there at the time.
Overall, these books represent just a portion of my research, but hope they are useful for anyone wanting to learn more about my process and about this world.
With less than six months to go until the release of The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin, it’s time to start a countdown with fun tidbits leading up to the release. Looking forward to sharing each of these with you! For now, please do check out the short teaser (link below). Full trailer to come at the end of January!
September 29: Teaser
October 29: Book research
November 29: Playlist
December 29: Berlin research trip
January 29: Trailer
February 28: Film research
March 29: RELEASE DAY
I finally decided to gather all of my YouTube recordings together, and the result is a newish YouTube channel!
Any requests for specific content you’d like to see? Just let me know and I’ll do my best to add it!