While reviewing old Smyrna newspapers for material for “The Smyrna Quay”, I stumbled upon a tragic event that took place in Smyrna in the spring of 1888. A Greek fabric merchant received a threatening letter signed by “The Gang of Seven”, demanding 100 pounds in exchange for his safety. When the merchant refused to pay, the extortionists killed him in broad daylight. In the days that followed, the same criminals, along with others, exploited the residents’ panic, sending numerous letters and demanding various sums of money to spare them from harm. This climate of fear lasted for nearly two months, with several extortion attempts leading to farcical situations.

A brief account of the “Seven” was included in “The Smyrna Quay”, as some of the incidents took place in the area surrounding Smyrna’s port. However, the story had much more to offer, and I decided to explore it in greater depth through a novel, weaving together fact and fiction.

I began writing “The Gang of Seven” in the autumn of 2017, while Achilleas and I were completing “The Quay of Smyrna”. Three years later, in September 2020, the first draft was finished. Around that time, I began working on a new major project inspired by the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. The individual I planned to collaborate with on this project, having already benefited from my assistance in completing their own novel, offered to edit mine in return, and I accepted. Shortly thereafter, I submitted “The Gang of Seven” to one of Greece’s largest publishing houses for evaluation, and it was accepted for publication.

However, after months of delays, when the time finally came to sign the contract in the autumn of 2021, I was offered a remarkable author’s fee of 0% – yes, zero percent – of the retail price for the first 1,000 copies sold. Having already had negative experiences with similar arrangements, I declined the offer. As a result, the publication of “The Gang of Seven” did not proceed at that time. Two further submissions to other major publishers in early 2022 were rejected, which is not uncommon for relatively unknown authors like myself in the fiction genre.

A disagreement then arose with the individual I had been collaborating with on my other, parallel project about the Asia Minor Catastrophe. This not only left that project incomplete but also led to my being denied the use of the editing work that was done on “The Gang of Seven” in early 2021. Consequently, I was forced to revert to the novel’s original version, which still required significant work. In hindsight, though, this proved to be a blessing in disguise, as this individual’s intrusiveness had been so excessive that it had even distorted the personalities of my novel’s characters. This overreach was, in fact, the primary cause of our conflict on the other project, ultimately resulting in its cancellation, at least for the time being.

The years 2022 and 2023 were particularly demanding, as my schedule was packed with contributions to collective works commemorating the 1922 centenary, invitations to speak at conferences in Greece and abroad, and extensive efforts to update “The Smyrna Quay”. This included creating an “Addendum” that presented new material Achilleas and I had gathered since 2018. It wasn’t until 2024 that I was able to turn my attention back to “The Gang of Seven”, completing another draft of the novel in the autumn of that year.

For some time, I had been contemplating the idea of self-publishing, having been disillusioned by my previous experiences with traditional fiction publishers.
I even decided to go one step further by translating “The Gang of Seven” into English to reach a broader audience. Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence, specifically the digital assistant ChatGPT, were invaluable during the translation process. Through my interaction with this digital assistant and with support from my family, I managed to translate “The Gang of Seven” almost as if English were my native language – or at least, that’s what I’d like to believe. :-) Finally, through Amazon’s KDP publishing platform, I formatted the book in both traditional paperback and electronic (eBook) versions (Kindle and Adobe EPUB).