Hello, and good morning. How are you doing today? I am doing
very well. How are you today? Loving this because I've been waiting to
talk with you because I want to know how you put your imagination inside this
storyline and what you had to do when this book came to an end,
because you really put us into this storyline as readers, but the author has
got to live it first. You know, that is a very interesting question
and I and that's exactly what I think My goal is as an author is
to be so into a story a place of studying a history myself that that
is exactly what the reader experiences as well. And you know, for me,
it's really just all about taking such a deep dive into the history of
a place and really just trying to reach back and find the reality of the
human experience that happened during this time. And so you know, I do
that by listening to people's stories and interviewing people and reading documents, whatever clues
you know that I can find to really understand the reality of a place.
And sometimes that is a very dark place to be, and sometimes it's an
incredible, incredibly joyful place to be as well doing that research. I mean,
I'm such a research nut. I mean, I've got to do it.
I've got to do it because that's part of the personality of the final
performance. And it's like when you go in there inside World War Two?
Where did you go to so that you could envision what everything was looking like?
Yeah? Well, the first thing I did for Artifice is I went
to Amsterdam because I think the city is almost a character in itself and is
a bit of a metaphor for you know, the juxtaposition between the beauty of
Amsterdam and the real ugliness of the Nazi occupation. So obviously I wanted to
go there. But you know, one of the amazing things that happens when
you start putting things out into the world that you can't anticipate is someone had
said to me, you know, in my own hometown. They said,
there's this man he lived through the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, and said I'd
love to talk to him. So I made an appointment and we chatted,
and it turned out that he had known one of the characters that I was
writing about in the book, Han von megrin the art Forger, and he
was able to tell me all these wonderful things about what his art studio was
like, and what kind of paintings were hanging on his walls and what sort
of man he was? And I thought, you know, it is so
incredible. I was getting ready to go to Amsterdam to find out all of
these things, and all of this wealth of information was fifteen minutes from my
house. And that's what happens when you just start seeking. You just never
know what you're going to find. See. That's what I love about being
a writer is the fact that you know, if you allow the energy that's
around you to just move through you, you're gonna you're gonna find things that
they're like, we've ignored. We walk right by him every day, but
open yourself up as a writer, and all of a sudden, it's like,
what what's going on? And you know, I don't even understand the
science behind that, except I know it's true. So I think I think
it must be mystical somehow, but it's absolutely true. Well, and here
here's the thing, Sharon, that that that I love about this story is
that my father was in World War two. I've heard so many stories about
the artwork in World War two and and and even sixty minutes and CBS Sunday
morning and that. But you you give us a spin on it with the
forgery, and it's like, oh, of course that was taking place,
And it's such a fascinating story, isn't it. I You know, Han
von Magrin, the forger was absolutely he was fooling everyone. He had He
had discovered a way to create what I could only term as plastic paint,
paint that could crack be made to look like a four hundred year old painting,
and he was taking in everyone museum's collectors. When the Nazis invaded,
he just kept right on doing it, and he sold a faked Vermir to
Hermann Goring, second in command of the Reich, and that painting hung over
Goring's desk as the jewel of his art collection. It's really, it's really
hoodwinking. The Nazis is always delicious. It's irresistible, you know. But
I have to say, han von Magrin, he made what would now be
the equivalent of twenty three million dollars selling forgeries, and he was living it
up while the rest of the Netherlands starved. Wow. So there's two sides
to every true story. For sure, the money raised has a higher purpose.
I mean, was it not about saving the babies. Yes. Absolutely.
The other true story that sort of balances the story of Han von Megrin
was another real man who was living in Amsterdam during the war. His name
was Johann von Holst, and he started a baby smuggling ring. Basically,
he was rescuing Jewish babies and toddlers that were being held in their own prison
getting ready to be sent directly to the gas chambers. So they were taking
babies and putting them in laundry baskets and shopping facts and handing them out the
windows and anything they could do to spirit these children out of the city,
make them disappear and give them a chance at life. They are credited with
saving at least six hundred Jewish babies and toddlers during the war, and it
was probably actually more than that. Of course, the sad part of the
stories that could have never been enough for every child they had to choose to
save, they had to choose to leave one behind, and it was absolutely
heartbreaking. But you know, it's the difference between these two men that I
think really fascinated me. They were about the same age, grew up in
the same city. I think they even looked a little bit alike. But
you could not see two people who used their time and their talents more differently.
And all I could think I was when I knew about these two two
true stories, is what would have happened if Yo and von Holst the baby
Snuggler had had Han von megrin the forgers twenty three million dollars. I think
the world would have been a completely different place. And that's that's the question.
I really wanted to explore an artifice. See, that's the author and
you coming out in a way of planting seeds or even easter eggs in that
because you'll put things on a page and you stop for a moment as a
reader and you google it, you go, oh my god, and you
start and you it's like you're educating us, but in an entertaining way,
if you know what I mean. Oh, I hope, so I hope
it's I hope it's I hope it's an entertaining way. And I hope it's
a way that you don't know that you're being educated, that you're just living
a world. I really really want my readers to be able to live the
world that I'm that I'm showing them. When did you realize that this book
was going to be authentic? In other words, I mean it starts off
as a thought, you kind of dibble and dabble around, and all of
a sudden when it starts coming together and you're shocked as the author of how
it's coming together. It's like, where is it coming from? Yeah?
I think that's that's such an interesting question because I guess I can't speak for
every author, but I know for me that I don't often actually know the
deeper part of what of what a story is trying to say, or what
I am actually going to pull from my own story until I've finished it.
And for this one, it was it was very much about choice. This
is my third World War two book, and previously I have written about choices
of courage and sacrifice and humanity over hate and seeking justice and self transformation.
That's what those stories mean to me. And it looked back at Art Ofice
and I realized that this is really a story about choosing beauty, like choosing
to preserve what is beautiful in our world, and how we can choose for
ourselves to create a world around ourselves that is that is beautiful. We can
surround ourselves with what is good, and we can seek it and choose it
and build it and rebuild it, even when the rest of the world is
a world of real ugliness. And I think that is so relevant to our
lives today. You know, we live in so many ways such an ugly
world, and there are terrible things that are happening around us. But that
choice to choose what is good and what is beautiful and surround ourselves with that,
that's a powerful choice, and I think it's a life changer. I
really think it can be a world changer. I can't imagine what your creative
imagination is going through with all the research that you've done on all three books,
with World War Two and then you get snapshots of what's happening on this
planet now, there has to be something that's giving you flashbacks, because I
mean, you're being creatively sent back to World War Two, but look at
the world now, and it's like, oh, it exactly exactly. I
mean, I think that we could all agree that the hate that created the
Holocaust is alive and well in our world and in many different forms and in
different forms of genified that are still you know, taking place today. These
are very relevant topics, and I think that sometimes as an author, it's
very difficult to plumb those deaths, you know, and realize that we're still
plumbing the depths of what human beings are capable of. But what I always
try to remember, and I think what I have pulled a lot from my
own stories and from these histories, is that there is always the balance,
There is always the light on the other side, and there are people who
have lived and who have made these choices of courage and sacrifice, and we
may never know their names, that they have always always been and that means
they're here now too, And I think that actually gives me a lot of
hope. There's a lot of hope in these books for our world, while
at the same time acknowledging that we have a lot of challenges and that we
need to be challenged by these choices of yesterday so we can make a stand
and decide what to do with our choices today right now. I wish you
could see my notes, because I put a note in here while I'm reading
it and it's and I go, I want to know who the sharing of
of the eighty years from today is going to be writing about because they're going
to find your book and they're going to see how you you turned World War
Two into a subject that we can talk about long after it happened, because
it's going to be the forgotten war, just like the Korean War. But
because you're sharing the stories, you're keeping it in the conversation, and you
know, I think that's something that's actually really really important to me. It's
important to me to write things that are timeless in a way because because they
are important and have deep meaning for different times of our history. I think
I've always been a person who's just really really aware. Since childhood, I've
been very aware of the idea that so much of our history, the reality
of human experience, has been lost. It dies with people's memories. And
every time I reach back into the past and I grab one of these stories,
one of these people, one of these little bits of our experience,
and I put it down on a page, it feels a little bit like
a rescue to me. And I find that really satisfying to hopefully have these
stories live in a timeless way. You know. I think the war,
I think the war with Israel right now will be something that people will be
writing about I hope that we'll be writing about the experiences of the pandemic.
I hope we will be writing about the things that take place in Africa right
now. I think there are so many stories in this world that need to
be recorded and put on paper in a way that is not just a fact
that we learn, but is it makes us feel these stories, because I
really believe that the facts will say from memory. But when we feel,
when we feel another person's pain, when we feel their joy, that is
something that we're never ever going to forget. And that is what makes a
story live. And I hope that's what I can do. Yeah, you
know where those stories are. They're being written, but they're in boxes,
underneath people's beds, they're up in addics, they're in garages. And because
people are so afraid to release their writing, and it takes people like yourself
to inspire them, just take a step, Just take a step, get
it out there. Yeah, one step at a time, you know,
I think I think all of us, you know, when we start.
I know, when I started this creative journey, if I had known,
you know, every single step that it was going to take, what I
have even started. I don't know. I think the important thing is to
recognize your own passion, you know, to reach out for that thing that
is meaningful to you and so important to you. For me, it's these
it's these heroes of the past and these people who took a stand. Find
whatever that thing is for you, put it on the page, and and
then just like you said, take a step. Yep, yeah, take
a small step. Put it out there. Let somebody else read it,
Let another person read it, Let another person read it, and let these
stories have their own life. I still find it to be a really scary
thing to do. It's a very vulnerable thing to do, you know,
but it also is so worthwhile and it is so ultimately satisfying. So yeah,
I would encourage anyone who has that passion to let that passion lead them
you sharing that journey that deep. Let me ask you a question, because
your last name is Cameron, any relation to Julia Cameron or have you studied
you are? No? Oh, no, I'm not no. I was
just yeah, I was just thinking what you said about Cameron, you know,
because ironically, my last name is really the whole reason I got into
writing. I was a musician, I was a classical pianist for many years,
and I thought I would do that forever. But I had been researching
Cameron's and the Cameron name, which led me to a little obscure, you
know, piece of history about what happened to this one Cameron family during the
seventy forty five rebellion that happened in Scotland. And that is really what led
me to sit down for the first time in my life and start writing unassigned
words. And I didn't find out untill much later, and because of DNA
projects and that kind of thing, that everything I had writing about really was
direct ancestry for my family. So it made me feel like somehow I was
doing what I was supposed to do. But it was because of the camera
named that the whole thing, that the whole thing started. Wow, you
got to come back to this show anytime in the future. The door is
always going to be open for you. Oh please, I would love to
walk through that door anytime. Excellent. Will you be brilliant today? Okay,
okay, you too, Thank you so much. It was really a huge pleasure