iUniverse Announces Optioning of Robert Chipley’s “Germania”

iUniverse author Robert Chipley has attained his second option agreement in less than a year, with movie-production company  Thruline Entertainment.

Chipley has finalized an option agreement for his 2009 iUniverse novel, Germania (ISBN: 978-1440154256), with producer Danny Sherman and Thruline Entertainment.

An aficionado of European history who also speaks and reads German, Chipley said he was pleasantly surprised that Thruline was interested in the story.

“I did think while writing the book that it had certain cinematic possibilities, but I never thought they might actually be realized,” Chipley said. “The book has an unusual hero … a former East German intelligence officer who is an expert on America and still quite hostile toward the United States. The main plot involves his search for Nazi treasure stolen from the Jews and hidden in a secret room beneath the streets of Berlin.”

Thruline previously reached an option agreement for another Chipley work, Gorging Out (ISBN: 978-1462036837), which he self-published with iUniverse under the pen name Robert MacNeill.

“Robert Chipley’s novel Germania has everything you would want in an international thriller, and I’m excited to develop this amazing book into a feature film,” said Sherman.

“I went the self-publishing route as that seemed to me the best way of getting attention for the book,” Chipley said. “Approaching major publishers is discouraging and demoralizing, and with self-publishing one can at least get someone to pay attention to it.”

iUniverse is delighted to congratulate Mr. Chipley on this milestone and looks forward to following his story of success!

Some further information on this exciting title:

Hans Klug has a past he doesn’t want revealed. A former East German border guard and American expert with the Ministry for State Security, Hans now ekes out a meager living as an interpreter. He is accosted on the street by a woman who demands 100,000 euros, or she will expose his role in the death years ago of an escapee at the frontier.

Hans seeks assistance from his former colleagues, who in return for the money ask him to help locate the Black Vault, a chamber built by the Nazis beneath the streets of Berlin, filled with gold and diamonds looted from death camp victims. The key to the vault is held by an SS-man who escaped to America after the war. Only Hans, with his fluent English, is the right man for the job of traveling to America to track him down.

Many obstacles stand in Hans’ way, including a former Communist party official, a neo-fascist history professor at a Bible college in Virginia, and the daughter of the SS-man. Hans must deal not only with these present perils but the shame of the past—his grandfather, a highly decorated SS-officer, helped destroy the Warsaw Ghetto.

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