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Viper
In the aftermath of the second world war in Germany a mother has to leave her child behind to be able to escape two former Gestapo officers, who are in search of revenge for what she did in the war, when her code name was Viper. She leaves the boy in the care of two ladies of the quarter, Hamburg’s famous red light district, the Kiez, as the locals call it.
The more the boy learns from his “aunts”, who care for him, the more his desire grows to become like his mum, when he grows up. At his fifth birthday his mind is made up.
When five years later, now in secondary education, he defends Mei Ling, an older girl against an older boy, she takes him for a tomboy and her family takes “her” in. The patriarch, Master Wang Da Long notices potential and starts teaching the child, whom he names Xiaolong, ancient Chinese martial arts.
At her fifteenth birthday Master Wang sends Xiaolong to Italy and a family, who was associated to Viper during the war. Here Xiaolong starts stepping into the mother’s footsteps.
The more the boy learns from his “aunts”, who care for him, the more his desire grows to become like his mum, when he grows up. At his fifth birthday his mind is made up.
When five years later, now in secondary education, he defends Mei Ling, an older girl against an older boy, she takes him for a tomboy and her family takes “her” in. The patriarch, Master Wang Da Long notices potential and starts teaching the child, whom he names Xiaolong, ancient Chinese martial arts.
At her fifteenth birthday Master Wang sends Xiaolong to Italy and a family, who was associated to Viper during the war. Here Xiaolong starts stepping into the mother’s footsteps.
Kindle Edition
First published February 29, 2020
14 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Monique S.
12 books55 followersMonique S is my pen name, legally I am Monika Magdalena Schenke. I was born in 1953 in Hamburg, Germany to a journalist father and Secretary mother as a boy.
Yes, I am a transwoman and a lesbian one at that. You might be surprised, that I am so outspoken with it, but if you had any idea what I had to go through in inner turmoil and childhood traumas, professional disappointments and discrimination, you might even get a glimpse at the reasons, why today I am so proud of what I have achieved for myself and who I have become.
I have had several jobs in my life, paramedic (during my obligatory service), bar person, delivery driver and finally cabinet and flight case maker in a company I had co founded at 25 with four partners while still male. What never left me during all that was the deep almost desperate desire to be the woman I knew I was inside. When a dispute about company policy ended in legal procedures to get rid of me and even my girl-friend of 5 years betrayed me, I thought I had reached the end of my tether, but some friends who remained, when I came out, and the manager of the Scorpions, for whom I had re-designed a system “my” company had shown 1980 at the music fair in Frankfurt, kept me working and alive, so I started my transition. Very soon I had to find out, that the recent (1982) German law on Transgender (called Transsexuellen Gesetz) was there to make it as difficult as possible, to do it legally.
I felt being classed as incompetent to make decisions for my future, I felt like treated as a child, but at 32 years of age and after I had run a very successful company for years. First they expected me to find work as a woman without being able to legally change my name, then I was to go through two years like that during which I might or might not become allowed to take female hormones. All I could do was to laugh in their faces at that, leave the country in 1986 and go to the UK, where the name change with the help of a Deed Poll was a breeze. That way I also escaped at least some of the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl.
Following that experience I and my then female partner became interested in the astrological system called “Münchner Rhytmenlehre”® by Wolfgang Döbereiner. It did not take long, until our efforts were rewarded. First of all I understood a lot more who I was and why, but together my lady and I were a fabulous team reading charts. Living as a woman called Dhyan Magna with her we became sought after as astrologers and co-therapist for certain therapy groups.
After three years my lady began being interested in men again and we parted ways amicably, she to study alternative medicine (Heilpraktiker) with her man and I to continue as travelling astrologer on my own, spending more or less 10 years “on the road again”, giving readings in England, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In 1996 I finally decided to put down roots in Somerset/Devon on Exmoor. Seeing the social climate in what was until then the soil of my choice for life degenerate rapidly, a friend and I decided to have a look at the other side of the channel. In 2000 she bought a not quite derelict farmhouse in Brittany, where we lived together rebuilding it.
By 2015 my friend and I had pretty much developed in different directions and, since I didn’t find any work in electrics any more, I accepted the invitation of an old friend in the UK and found work there as Independent Quality Analyst for translations between German, English and sometimes French. I left again in 2016 after the Brexit vote.
In May 2019 finally I reached the German retirement age for my year and month of birth, but it took a year until all the German bureaucratic nightmare was over and I could ask for a pension in France, that finally enabled me to fully concentrate on my writing.
Yes, I am a transwoman and a lesbian one at that. You might be surprised, that I am so outspoken with it, but if you had any idea what I had to go through in inner turmoil and childhood traumas, professional disappointments and discrimination, you might even get a glimpse at the reasons, why today I am so proud of what I have achieved for myself and who I have become.
I have had several jobs in my life, paramedic (during my obligatory service), bar person, delivery driver and finally cabinet and flight case maker in a company I had co founded at 25 with four partners while still male. What never left me during all that was the deep almost desperate desire to be the woman I knew I was inside. When a dispute about company policy ended in legal procedures to get rid of me and even my girl-friend of 5 years betrayed me, I thought I had reached the end of my tether, but some friends who remained, when I came out, and the manager of the Scorpions, for whom I had re-designed a system “my” company had shown 1980 at the music fair in Frankfurt, kept me working and alive, so I started my transition. Very soon I had to find out, that the recent (1982) German law on Transgender (called Transsexuellen Gesetz) was there to make it as difficult as possible, to do it legally.
I felt being classed as incompetent to make decisions for my future, I felt like treated as a child, but at 32 years of age and after I had run a very successful company for years. First they expected me to find work as a woman without being able to legally change my name, then I was to go through two years like that during which I might or might not become allowed to take female hormones. All I could do was to laugh in their faces at that, leave the country in 1986 and go to the UK, where the name change with the help of a Deed Poll was a breeze. That way I also escaped at least some of the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl.
Following that experience I and my then female partner became interested in the astrological system called “Münchner Rhytmenlehre”® by Wolfgang Döbereiner. It did not take long, until our efforts were rewarded. First of all I understood a lot more who I was and why, but together my lady and I were a fabulous team reading charts. Living as a woman called Dhyan Magna with her we became sought after as astrologers and co-therapist for certain therapy groups.
After three years my lady began being interested in men again and we parted ways amicably, she to study alternative medicine (Heilpraktiker) with her man and I to continue as travelling astrologer on my own, spending more or less 10 years “on the road again”, giving readings in England, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In 1996 I finally decided to put down roots in Somerset/Devon on Exmoor. Seeing the social climate in what was until then the soil of my choice for life degenerate rapidly, a friend and I decided to have a look at the other side of the channel. In 2000 she bought a not quite derelict farmhouse in Brittany, where we lived together rebuilding it.
By 2015 my friend and I had pretty much developed in different directions and, since I didn’t find any work in electrics any more, I accepted the invitation of an old friend in the UK and found work there as Independent Quality Analyst for translations between German, English and sometimes French. I left again in 2016 after the Brexit vote.
In May 2019 finally I reached the German retirement age for my year and month of birth, but it took a year until all the German bureaucratic nightmare was over and I could ask for a pension in France, that finally enabled me to fully concentrate on my writing.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 3, 2019
A very interesting quick read!
January 24, 2021
Found on amazon.co.uk
5out of 5 stars
reviewed by alison
A good well paced tale
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 July 2020
Verified Purchase
Viper set in the shadow of post war Europe is a well written tale of a young boy's progress to be like his absent mother. Like all Monique's work well worth a read.
5 out of 5 stars
reviewed by amazon customer
Brilliant story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 June 2020
What a great story i could not stop reading once I started I really engaged with the heroine with what she had to endure as a child and to finally blossom and finally reunite with her birth mother. This was a story that made me laugh and cry beautiful
5out of 5 stars
reviewed by alison
A good well paced tale
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 July 2020
Verified Purchase
Viper set in the shadow of post war Europe is a well written tale of a young boy's progress to be like his absent mother. Like all Monique's work well worth a read.
5 out of 5 stars
reviewed by amazon customer
Brilliant story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 June 2020
What a great story i could not stop reading once I started I really engaged with the heroine with what she had to endure as a child and to finally blossom and finally reunite with her birth mother. This was a story that made me laugh and cry beautiful
April 5, 2020
This was a truly lovely book. A sweet story about finding self, love, family, and a place to belong. I enjoyed getting to know the main character and following the ever evolving cast of friends who joined along the way.
Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review and grant the author permission to reproduce the review in full or part with attribution.
Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review and grant the author permission to reproduce the review in full or part with attribution.
August 12, 2019
A wonderful book... there were a few sad parts where I shed a tear or two.... There were a few very tense parts where I had to stop reading and come back later to let my heart slow down. Monique has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I look forward to her books.
July 28, 2020
Great story
This was great story of young boy who mother had to leave him to protect him. He decided to be just like her and did.
This was great story of young boy who mother had to leave him to protect him. He decided to be just like her and did.
March 27, 2020
Found on Amazon.de today (03/13/2020)
Amazon Kunde
5,0 von 5 Sternen The Princess of Lights
Rezension aus Deutschland vom 11. März 2020
Format: Kindle Ausgabe
Having read “What if?” and “Viper” before and loved them “The Princess of Lights” certainly startled me a little bit, but then I remembered the title image and realised, that I had been deceived by my expectations of another fantasy/adventure kind of thing. I soon realised, though, that this is a completely different kind of adventure, the adventure of a gifted technician, who, forced by circumstance, discovers a repressed part of herself and embarks on the adventure of joining a musical production, that might be difficult, as the theme could become quite contentious.
As she concentrates, though, on making the technical side as perfect as can be and yet as cost conscious as possible, she unwittingly embarks on a road to success, personally as well as professionally. I will stop here to avoid spoilers, that might reduce your enjoyment of this story, that is as heart warming as sometimes funny, deep and in all a gripping read. There’s romance in there, too, just in case you are wondering. The setting is somewhat contemporary, London in the second half of the 1980s, and it is clear that the authoress has a deep and fond affinity to both, the work and the place here described. I love the book a lot.
Found on amazon.co.uk on 03/25/2020:
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet transgender story with a wonderful main character.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 March 2020
Format: Kindle Edition
I enjoyed this story because it was very heartwarming and left me with a smile on my face. My favourite type of story.
Amazon Kunde
5,0 von 5 Sternen The Princess of Lights
Rezension aus Deutschland vom 11. März 2020
Format: Kindle Ausgabe
Having read “What if?” and “Viper” before and loved them “The Princess of Lights” certainly startled me a little bit, but then I remembered the title image and realised, that I had been deceived by my expectations of another fantasy/adventure kind of thing. I soon realised, though, that this is a completely different kind of adventure, the adventure of a gifted technician, who, forced by circumstance, discovers a repressed part of herself and embarks on the adventure of joining a musical production, that might be difficult, as the theme could become quite contentious.
As she concentrates, though, on making the technical side as perfect as can be and yet as cost conscious as possible, she unwittingly embarks on a road to success, personally as well as professionally. I will stop here to avoid spoilers, that might reduce your enjoyment of this story, that is as heart warming as sometimes funny, deep and in all a gripping read. There’s romance in there, too, just in case you are wondering. The setting is somewhat contemporary, London in the second half of the 1980s, and it is clear that the authoress has a deep and fond affinity to both, the work and the place here described. I love the book a lot.
Found on amazon.co.uk on 03/25/2020:
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet transgender story with a wonderful main character.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 March 2020
Format: Kindle Edition
I enjoyed this story because it was very heartwarming and left me with a smile on my face. My favourite type of story.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews