About the Book

Book: Faces in the Window

Authors: Andrew Busch and Melinda Busch

Genre: Christian Historical Fiction

Release Date: October, 2022

Franz Maedler, an officer in the Wehrmacht, loses a leg in Stalingrad and is evacuated just before it becomes impossible to do so. He returns to a desk job with the Army General Staff in Berlin but is deeply conflicted. His father is committed to the Nazi cause, as seems to be his brother Friedrich. Yet his girlfriend Katrin is a devout Christian, as was his now-deceased mother, and his conscience is haunted by things he was a part of on the Eastern Front. He wants to marry Katrin, but she will not agree until he decides who he is and who he follows. Then, unexpectedly, a moment of crisis forces Franz to choose. Will he side with the cross or with the swastika? And what will it cost him?

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About the Authors

Andrew and Melinda Busch were both born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, and were introduced in 1994 by their junior high school math teacher. They married in 1995 and have three grown children. They now live in Rialto, California.

Andrew teaches American government at Claremont McKenna College in southern California. He has authored or co-authored about two dozen books on American politics, government, and public policy. He received his Ph.D. in Government from the University of Virginia. Melinda is a freelance author who has published numerous short stories and children’s books. She received her Master’s degree in education from Concordia University-Portland. Faces in the Window is their first co-authored book.

More from Andrew and Melinda

We came up with the idea for our book after a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2006, but didn’t start writing it until late 2019. The COVID lock-down gave us a lot of time at home to work on it.

Writing together was fun. Sometimes one of us would draft a section and the other one would revise it and then we would go back and forth until we were satisfied with it. Other times, when there was important dialogue, we would each pick a character, go onto Google Docs, and have the conversation in real time. We had to be sharp, since our characters often found themselves in a tight spot. Though we planned out the story, sometimes the conversations took on a life of their own, and things went in a different direction.

One of us is a poet and an author of children’s books, fantasy stories, and fan fiction, while the other is a professor who has written extensively about American government but has never before dipped his toe into the vasty depths of fiction. Together, we had a great time!

Interview with Authors

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your book?
1. Melinda had always told me about how her characters would talk with her and take the story in their own direction, but I never really understood until we were writing this book together. Now I do. This is something that doesn’t much happen when one is writing non-fiction about, say, presidential elections. It wouldn’t do for me to tell my co-author “Hey, we need to change the narrative. John McCain told me he won the 2008 election after all.” (Andrew)
2. The value of planning out the story. Usually, I just start writing and see where it takes me. My husband is more of a planner, and insisted we work from a basic outline. Of course, things didn’t always go according to plan, but it was good having a basic idea. (Melinda)

How do you overcome writer’s block? Do you have any advice for others in finding their process to overcome it?
1. For me, the key is to force myself to write a little bit every day, even if I know it is bad. The beauty of word processing is that you can take something that was initially not great and easily turn it into something better later. I also find that it is a real hindrance to think that you have to write purely sequentially. If I get stuck somewhere, I just go backward to improve something I already did or I jump ahead to some future section that I am more interested in or excited about. This might work better in non-fiction than story, but if you have at least a rough outline of where you are going with the story (as we did with Faces in the Window) it can work with fiction, too. (Andrew)
2. Sometimes I have to take a break. Maybe that means I go watch tv or hang out with the dog; maybe it means I go work on a different project. And sometimes I do what my husband suggests—edit a part I’ve already written or jump to another section. Mainly, I have to get my mind off whatever I’m struggling with and look at something else. (Melinda)

How did you come up with the title for your book?
1. We knew more-or-less where we were going with the story, and after the first few chapters were drafted Faces in the Window just seemed right. For us, the title came out of the writing, it did not (at least initially) drive the writing. Once we had the title, of course we subsequently looked for other opportunities to work the theme into the writing. (Andrew/Melinda)

Do you participate in writing challenges on social media? Why or why not?
1. Sometimes, mostly because Melinda is. We actually started writing Faces in the Window on November 1, 2019, in order to participate in NaNoWriMo. We got a lot written that November as a result—we met the challenge. We still had a lot of work to do, but it got us off to a good start. (Andrew)
2. Yes, I do. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I’ve been having fun with NOVPAD (November Poem a Day) in my poetry writing group. I haven’t written a poem for every day like I did last year, but I’m still enjoying it. (Melinda)

Is your writing space pristine or organized chaos?
1. Definitely organized chaos! Every three or four months, it becomes nearly (?) dysfunctional, so I have to call a time-out and spend a day or two cleaning it up. Then I’m good for another three or four months.
2. More organized chaos here. Actually, I’m not sure the term organized can be used honestly. It’s mostly chaos, except on those rare occasions when I make an effort to straighten it up. (Melinda)