Elaina James

I'm thrilled to join in with the blog tour for Mary Rosie's War by Catherine Byrne. Both my grandfathers served in World War II. I never knew my Dad's father, sadly he passed way before I was born. But a glimpse into his life during the years he spent fighting for his country can be found in faded black and white photographs. We'll never know the stories behind the photographs, or what became of the men are that are pictured beside him. According to my Dad his father didn't talk much about those dark days. He had lived through the nightmare and didn't want relive it. But occasionally he'd tell of the friendships, the adventure, and the wonder that took him far from his home to places he barely even heard of. Mary Rosie's War is a beautifully told tale of the conflicting emotions that war brought to the young men and women who served their country, and the heartbreaking reality that nothing and no one would ever be the same again. Told from the ...

I'm joined on the blog today by fellow writer  @Naneh_V_H. We met recently at a writing event, and I was struck by her heart wrenching journey to creative writing: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD: A DIFFERENT ONE Although I was born in the 70s, mine was nothing like your imagined, Western experience of the decade. My native country of Armenia, to the south-east of European frontiers, was part of the Soviet Union then. One good thing about it was that by virtue of association, I’d say domination, alongside my native, Armenian language, I also learnt Russian, the lingua franca of the empire, and grew up bilingual as a result. I am proud of the fact that apart from reading centuries-old Armenian literature, I also studied Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov in the original. Being a bookish pupil, I wrote poems and essays in school - in Armenian and Russian - but I began writing in earnest as Arts and Culture Correspondent in the post-Soviet Armenian media; first, there w...