WARTIME VETRANS VERA AND EDDY ENTER THE DIGITAL AGE

Author Sam Smith's paperback, Vera and Eddy's War, went digital today.

The original was the only title BeWrite Books had ever released in print-only format because of an electronics rights hitch, but demand for ebook editions has been too great to deny, so this magnificent non-fiction work is now made available in all formats from the BeWrite Books bookstore and all major and minor ebook stores worldwide.

Many thanks to Alex Marr for re-discovering the original files after a long an intensive search and to Tony Szmuk for recreating, re-formatting and re-designing them to make this ebook possible.

You can read more about this unique work and its equally unique author, see reviews and read an extract by going to the BeWrite Books bookstore at www.bewrite.net or clicking the open-book icon at the top right of this blog post.

Here's the back cover text:

Vera and Eddy were newly married in the early days of World War II; just one working-class couple among millions caught up in the fury of the devastating conflict.

Later, they used to talk and talk of their experiences. One day author Sam Smith decided to listen.

This remarkable book is the result of countless recorded interviews with Vera and Eddy, his late in-laws, and paints an unforgettably human and strikingly real picture of how two small people emerged, scorched but complete, from the flames of the biggest and bloodiest war in the history of mankind.

In their own words, Vera and Eddy lead us through the painful and the outlandish (sometimes with ghoulish humour), the desperate hopes and stark terrors of a time when Britain's doorsteps, schools, factories, churches and cinemas and distant invasion beaches and battlefields were all equally in the front line.

These were days when uncertainty was a constant companion and mutilation and death were never more than a moment away.

So expertly does Smith apply his no-frills narrative style, that the reader can hear the shattering explosions as pregnant Vera dodges the bombs blitzing her streets and feel the hot breath of shrapnel whipping past Eddy's ears in the killing zones of Normandy and Holland.

Smith's book is one of the most gripping, frantically-paced war stories ever written. What elevates it from the merely great to the truly magnificent is that every single word is true and from the very mouths of the couple who struggled to survive -- one at home with a new born babe, the other on foreign battle fields in a tin helmet and armed to the teeth.

Born in 1946 and now living in Maryport, Cumbria, UK and working as a freelance writer/editor, in his time, Sam Smith has been a psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter and decorator, change-maker in a seaside resort's penny arcade ... working at anything, in fact, that's paid the rent, enabled him to raise his three daughters, and that didn't get too much in the way of his writing.

With poetry and articles widely published, he has many sole-authored poetry collections, more than a dozen novels and a history/biography to his name. Since paperback publication of Vera and Eddy's War, Sam has also become BeWrite Books' poetry editor.

He's also become, over the years, my good and admirable pal.

Happy reading, folks and congratulations to Sam. Neil Marr