What is the title of your latest release?
THE GOSSIP COLUMNIST
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A young woman is given the job as gossip columnist at the biggest newspaper in Berlin shortly before the Nazis take over and threaten her when she refuses to write flattering accounts of them. With her lover, an editor at the newspaper, she has to flee for her life, hiding in a brothel from where they put out word-of-mouth gossip that infuriates the Nazi leaders. All of it true. It actually happened,
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Berlin was the only possible setting --as wild and sexually permissive as any place on earth, and then equally as terrifying and totalitarian.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
With pleasure. Bella would have interesting stories to tell.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Courageous. Determined. Scared.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
History is a river. It depends on which part of it you find yourself.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Both. I always revise yesterday’s work before beginning today’s writing. And then when the first draft is completed, it’s time to look at the book as a whole.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
New York hot dogs
Describe your writing space/office.
An endless attempt to bring order out of chaos. Crammed bookshelves; photos of loved ones; posters from around the world.
Who is an author you admire?
There are so many: Orwell; Camus; Tom Wolfe
Is there a book that changed your life?
Wuthering Heights. As a fourteen-year-old, it rearranged my suburban mind and sent me roaring off onto the joys of compelling fiction. I owe Emily Bronte big time.
Tell us about why you decided to independently publish your book?
Like all areas of entertainment, publishing is being turned inside out. There is a new ecosystem elbowing its way into the light. All my other books have been with major publishers; The Gossip Columnist is with a small LA independent. It has an excitement attached to it that I have not felt before.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Fiction; History
What’s your favorite movie?
So many favorites: From The Godfather to Dr. Strangelove to Lawrence of Arabia (partly because I worked with Peter O’Toole and Anthony Quinn and cherished them both)
What is your favorite season?
Spring. Every year I make sure I’m back in Toronto from LA just to watch that one magical week where the trees explode with leaves and flowers start to appear.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Usually by ignoring it.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
They’ll look at the early 2000’s as a golden age: Breaking Bad; Mad Men; Sopranos
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
The two I’s - Italian and Indian
What do you do when you have free time?
Find something to fill it.
What can readers expect from you next?
I am completing a follow-up of sorts to THE GOSSIP COLUMNIST - a book with a few of the same characters but with a very different story.
A gossip columnist's pursuit of the truth in Nazi Germany . . .
When twenty-something Bella lands a job she doesn't really want-as the gossip columnist for Berlin's largest newspaper-she's thrust into a new, glamorous world. Then the Nazis take over, and her job turns into a lethal assignment.As the Nazis rise swiftly to power, Hitler's top aide, Josef Goebbels, ruthlessly takes control-from the information printed in gossip columns to the city's movie industry, where Goebbels earns a reputation as a rampant predator.To escape their deadly authority, Bella and her editor, Paul, flee to a brothel. There, they collect scraps of information and repackage them as gossip that weaves through wartime Berlin, sending the Nazis into an enraged search for the source. But as they fight to share truth amidst endless propaganda, Bella and Paul find out the hard way that the truth can be deadly, too.Romantic, propulsive, and relentlessly vivid, The Gossip Columnist is a sharp, cinematic novel that's as shocking as gossip and as real as history.
Historical [ Darkspur Press, On Sale: January 27, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9798993024516 / ]
Martyn Burke works in a multitude of worlds, moving between novels, films, and documentaries. He has published six highly acclaimed novels; he has won the Peabody Award and the International Press Academy Auteur Award. He has also been nominated for Emmys and Writers Guild awards. He often researches his novels by making documentaries which have included the Academy Award-short listed Under Fire: Journalists in Combat and as well as other topics ranging from traveling carnivals to war and terrorism.
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