Interview with Historical Fiction Author Jeane Slone

Jeane Slone has a B.A. in History and enjoys researching pieces of the forgotten past especially involving female heroines and multi-cultures. She self-published She Flew Bombers, a novel based on the true adventures of the Women Airforce Service Pilots known as WASP. The Sonoma County Arts Council awarded her a grant to organize and moderate an oral history panel of six former WWII women pilots. Jeane has four daughters, one son, and one “brilliant” grandson!


Hello Jeane. You are the author of three books set during World War II. The first is called She Flew Bombers and is based on the true adventures of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during WWII. Your second book is She Built Ships During WWII. The third one is called She Was a Spy During WWII. When will the second book be released?

She Built Ships During WWII will be out in January. It is about a woman welder in the Richmond Shipyards. This historical fiction weaves a Tuskegee Airman, a black sailor hurt in the Port Chicago explosion, an airplane riveter, and a Japanese American mother interned in a horse stable and the first day care center in Richmond, California.

I love historical fiction because I learn so much about history and at the same time be entertained. How much research did you do?

She Flew Bombers took a lot of research since the women pilots were kept as a “secret weapon.” I did three years of research. I read many true stories about these brave women pilots. One WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) performed tow targeting. Tow targeting is flying a plane and towing a cloth sleeve behind 15 hundred feet of cable. The Army men practiced their infantry skills by shooting the target. This one WASP got her toe shot at by accident. After a medic removed it she had a jeweler in town make a necklace out of it! This is only one of the many hilarious adventures these brave young women had. Of course there are sad accounts in the book about dying. After I wrote my book, more information has come out about these brave women pilots. Since then, they received the Gold Medal this past March from the President. 

Who are the Soviet Night Witches?

The Soviet Night Witches are another group of little known women heroes during WWII. The WASPs would deliver Pursuit airplanes for these women to fly into combat. Unlike American women pilots, they were in combat. There were 400 soviet women pilots who flew 23,000 combat missions, and 15 - 18 missions a night bombing the Nazis. 

This is so interesting. Where did you get the inspiration for your novels?

I love to write about the forties, especially the values back then. Both my parents were in the Army during WWII and that is all they ever talked about. I read the history and then simply put fictional characters into it to make it personal and come alive.

All three of these books sound wonderful. I love learning about female heroes in history. Thank you for this interesting interview, Jeane. Now it’s time to tell us something about the real you that we’ll never forget.

To balance out all my sitting in order to write, I love riding my cruiser bicycle into town to run all my errands. (I have two big baskets!) I also have the Russian River right outside my window and am an avid kayaker and swimmer.

Awesome!!! I tried kayaking once and it was so much fun. And having the Russian River in your own backyard? Wow! That’s heaven. Jeane has a blog in which she interviews authors about their newly published books and a blog about females during WWII at www.jeaneslone.com. Visit her website, discover new authors, poke around a bit and see what you can find. And by all means, have fun while doing it!

She Flew Bombers is available through paypal on her website: www.jeaneslone.com.