About Roses…

This is something of a foreword for Roses on the Battlefield, I guess.

The World War One has always held fascination for me. In a way, that war was the first and the last of its kind. It wasn’t the war to end wars, but to change wars forever. The world was changing; the old methods of warfare became inapplicable. And no one had been ready for it. It brought out the worst and sometimes best in humanity.

And WWI’s impact had stretched beyond the art of war; it impacted Empires, technologies, society.

Of course, one cannot attribute all the changes that had happened in the twentieth century to this tragic event, but in many ways, I feel, it had been a catalyst. The society’s laws began to change, and WWI had a hand in it. The officers, historically mostly represented by aristocrats, were supplemented by the common people, as lieutenants continued to die and there wasn’t enough gentry to replenish their ranks. And so the classes mixed. And in the trench warfare, where the tedium had often been far more present than action, it happened whether they wanted it or not.

So that societal standard shifted.

There still would be a half a century wait for the society to change enough to legally accept homosexuality, and it would come with struggles and horrific acts. To the young men of WWI, forced by the inescapable proximity and heightened emotions to revaluate, or find new, attraction, the idea of being free of fear of discovery would be bizarre at least.

But I wanted to give my heroes a possibility to have a happy ending.

If you want to find out if I managed it, the book is available for preorder now.