A class of 18-19 year old students goes for their traditional end-of-class trip (Kollegstufenfahrt) to the Canary Islands. As a special highlight, some of them want to visit a new volcano island with a small plane.
The plane, however, crashes and only a few make it to the shore of an uninhabited island.
They find water and even some food from the plane. But there are tensions in the group. They break out when one of the girls, Katharina, who has always been the "underdog" in class, pulls out a weapon, a flare gun she salvaged from the plane.
She threatens the other girls and treats thems as her "slaves". One girl she particularly hates, Midori, is to be the "bitch" who receives no food and no water.
Between every chapter there is a small "retrospect" of their time at school and the reader slowly finds out, why Midori has become the sarcastic, cunning girl she is (she has been deceived by her friends before and when she changes schools she decides to never be a victim again).
Midori escapes at night and explores the island on her own. She lives on bird eggs and finds the body of another class mate, Greta, the daughter of a successful right wing politician. It looks as if she fell from a rock to her death.
Midori enjoys being alone but starts to feel responsible for her classmates. She also regrets that she's often been such an "asshole".
She returns to the "camp" and there is a fight during which Katharina accidentally shoots Vanessa. Vanessa is gravely injured. The other girls take the flare gun away from Katharina and shoot in the air for help. Nobody comes. It seems strange that nobody searches for them.
Vanessa dies the next morning, her "murderer" Katharina escapes, but comes back soon.
Another girl appears, Nina, but she is confused and does not really remember what she lived on during the last days. She has seen Midori next to Greta's (the politician's daughter) body and accuses her of killing Greta.
Slowly, however, the girls manage to get along with each other. One morning, they hear the sound of a motor boat. They shoot their last flare gun shot and run to the beach. It's two men in a small boat. Midori notices that Seher, one of the girls, doesn't seem happy at all but looks worried. She becomes suspicious and threatens Seher to tell her if she knows who's coming. Seher says that the men may be "evil" and probably want to make sure that Greta's dead. All are confused and when Midori shouts they should run away, two girls remain and are caught by the men.
Seher (a Turkish girl, btw) later confesses that her little brother was kidnapped for a short time and she received a note that one of her siblings would be killed if Greta comes back alive from their trip to the volcano island. Apparently, the pilot was also bribed or threatened, which is why they flew into the wrong direction (that's why nobody can find them). And the pilot must have been cheated, too, by (probably) manipulating the plane.
The two man have an automatic gun and they force the two caught girls to show them Greta's body. There, one of the man shoots one girl, simply because he thinks she's ugly.
They go back to their tent and rape Nina. Midori and the "free girls" try to free Nina, but there is a fight and Midori is knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, she's alone and she steals the boat. She can't escape from the island, however, as she has no idea in which direction she should go, besides, she doesn't want to leave her friends behind. She rows the boat to a cliff and hides it there.
In the evening, she approaches the men, who have caught all the girls, holding a knife held to her own throat. She threatens them to kill herself if they don't let the other girls go. She says the boat is so well hidden, they'll never find it without her help. The girls are set free and Midori offers to show the boat to the men.
Above a cliff, one of the men climbs down to look for the boat, while the other waits with Midori. Midori than attacks the man and they both fall down in the water. She comes on top of him, and the man is hurt. She stands up quickly and pushes his face under the water, killing him.
The other man does not dare to climb down (neither does he have a boat, as it was hidden somewhere else). He goes back to his tent and gets drunk.
Midori barely manages to climb up the cliff as she's injured and falls asleep.
She wakes with her friends surrounding her. They tell her they've killed the man.
The next day, the girls are on the boat, on their way back to civilization. Midori finds out that Seher really killed Greta to protect her brothers and sisters and notices they're all killers.
The End.
Sorry for my bad English.
Sales are good, I have sales every day. I hope this is going to be a real longseller. Rankings on Amazon are okay, but Amazon is not where I sell most (other sites, such as Weltbild, Thalia and Hugendubel are strong in Germany).
I had the idea of splitting the story into three parts and offering the first for free and that helped sales a lot. As you can see, the story is rather fast-paced; starting with a plane crash. People want to know what happens next :-) I have had some very encouraging reviews and emails from readers, most love the story and many ask for a sequel (which I will likely do, as the end is open enough, so a lot of thing can still "go wrong" ;-).
Two major publisher have asked for publishing rights but so far their offers have not been too interesting. Strangely, I was recently also asked for movie rights, which is something I had not considered at all. I'm told the book reads like a movie. I hope that's not an insult :-/
Nacht
Kein Film, stellte Midori fest. Sie hatte eigentlich damit gerechnet, dass ihr ganzes Leben noch einmal vor ihrem inneren Auge ablaufen würde, aber das war wohl auch eine leere Versprechung gewesen. War ja klar.
Nina neben ihr schrie irgendetwas und klammerte sich an ihrem Arm fest. Angesichts der Umstände konnte man es ihr wohl nicht übel nehmen, dass sie ihre langen Fingernägel in Midoris Unterarm krallte, und so verzichtete sie auf einen diesbezüglichen Hinweis. Sie hatte ohnehin keine Lust, etwas zu sagen und sah lieber nach draußen. Völlig schwarz lag das Meer unter ihnen. Ich bin ein Sturmtaucher, der ins Meer stürzt. Kopfüber tauche ich in die Fluten.
Wird es kalt sein? Natürlich. Das Meer ist immer kalt, außer an den winzig schmalen Rändern, wo die Menschen zu Tausenden in der Sonne liegen und ein paar Meter in das fremde Element eindringen. Dumm herumplanschen und sich dann am Strand ihren Hautkrebs heranzüchten.
Es wird kalt sein und dunkel und still. Hallo, Meer.
Es rumpelte und die Insassen schrien auf, als die Maschine durchsackte. Midori spürte den Höhenverlust unangenehm in der Blase. Wie in der Achterbahn, dachte sie. Ich hasse Achterbahnfahren. Trotz – oder gerade wegen? – des Geschreis hörte sie, wie irgendjemand etwas Monotones murmelte. Ein Gebet? Wer ist hier denn religiös? Gerne hätte sie sich umgedreht um nachzusehen, aber die Maschine wackelte derart, dass sie aufpassen musste, dass ihr Kopf nicht ständig gegen die Scheibe knallte. Oder gegen die hysterisch schreiende Nina.
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Daniel Siqueira
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Author review: Daniel was very fast and the translation looks very good to me (and to a Brazilian friend I asked). There was a slight delay cased mostly by me because of some formatting issues. Sorry for that! Thank you for your great work and I wish you a lot of success, Daniel. |
