Review of Veiled in Shadows

Veiled in Shadows by Allan Russell

From Goodreads: 1937, Ebi Gausel is riding high as a member of Germany's elite guard, Hitler's SS. An unexpected romance arrives in Ebi's life in the form of the fiery Katharina. Even with Europe teetering on the brink of war their happiness seems assured. But Ebi's certainty comes crashing down as Katharina disappears, leaving hints of a dark secret. In a war fought in the shadows... those who live may do so at the cost of their humanity. Two lovers united by passion ...and divided by hate. As they fight for survival... their most ruthless foe might be one another.


I'll admit, I don't read war fiction. I don't watch war movies. I don't even like talking about war. Spree, I couldn't even watch the Feed The Children commercials in the 80s without bawling. It's not just because I'm a pacifist, because the best war stories aren't about the war, anyway. I'm not sure what it is about these stories that evokes deep sobs from my gut, but it happens every time.

It can be quite embarrassing in a movie theater, btw.

So, why did I read a novel set in WWII Germany? Just feeling masochistic? No. Because I like supporting our online writing community, and I wanted to read Al's work. It had been a long, long time since I had decided to read or watch anything war-related. I've matured (no, really, I have!). I thought it might not be so bad on the emotional level.

*ahem*

I was wrong. Russell's characters evoked emotions from me on several levels, often requiring me to lay the book down and savor my own tears. I enjoyed the ride through the characters' journey of love and war, and seeing multiple sides and viewpoints along the way.

The story is told in first person, though through several people, which can get confusing over time. The most central character, Katherina (or Victoria), seems to be the only person who doesn't make a narrative appearance, keeping her "veiled in shadow". One character gives his side of the story in present tense--a writing choice I didn't understand and which kind of bugged me, but that's a minor point.

Overall I enjoyed the story. It goes through several unexpected twists and turns, especially at the end. If you like period or war fiction and you're looking for an emotional ride, you should read this book.

Guest Post: Allan Russell

Hey everyone! The HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest is only days away now. Want to sign up? There's still time. Just click the link, put up a short story of 750 words (no more than 1000) on Wednesday, and then welcome the feedback from your fellow bloggers.

To celebrate, I'd like to welcome our last guest, Allan Russell, author of Veiled in Shadows. Al took a slightly different route to publication than our proposed short story route, but he has great suggestions on how to hone your work. And, so, without any further ado....
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First of all I would like to say thank you very much to Rosie and Charity for hosting this post.

In support of their Hone Your Skills Blogfest they are asking published authors to talk about their road to publication.

I guess in some ways my path to publishing my novel Veiled in Shadows is quite atypical and some (if not many) would say not at all the best way to go.

Absolutely ages ago (in fact it would be close to twenty years ago) I did what many young people do and sat down to write a novel. Unlike most I finished a first draft, in fact that was my first draft of Veiled in Shadows.

But life got in the way and my writing went on a shelf stored on a floppy disk.

Over the following decade or so I wrote hundreds of thousands of words. None of them fiction. The writing I did was in the form: of a couple of bachelor’s degrees; an academic thesis; and hundreds of reports and press releases in various work places. I didn’t really think about it but all this writing was having a positive effect on my writing ability.

A few years ago I had a bit of time on my hands and thought I would like to ‘write a book’. Then of course I remembered that I had in fact already ‘written one’ and hunted down that lost floppy. I was quite excited at the prospect of looking at it again, but I was bitterly disappointed. It was awful! The writing was really poor, the characters were cardboard 2D cut-outs, in short it was almost fit for nothing.

But, I still liked plot. I thought the themes could be developed into something meaningful and the characters could grow into credible beings. I began re-drafting from there. Most of Veiled has been redrafted three times since then with a few sections probably changing eight or ten times.

Following that I paid for a professional manuscript assessment. The report was good and indicated with some changes (including pruning sub-plots) I would have a marketable manuscript. I pretty much adopted all the recommended changes and did another redraft.

I then employed another editor to do a copy edit. She wasn’t paid for advice as such but essentially said wow! So by then I was pretty sure I had something worth querying.

I hated the query process (who doesn’t?). I took every rejection very personally (which you shouldn’t). This led me to consider self publication.

I did a lot of research and decided to give it a go. Almost still playing with the idea I began designing covers and formatting the text.

I’m lucky in that I have some skills with design, I produced a cover that I think not only looks good, but more importantly professional.

In terms of formatting, again I’ve had some experience with desktop publishing and the like for work and I did more research and looked at what works in published books. Where I lacked is in basic editing so I both paid for edits and had the luck to recruit a couple of friends/acquaintances to check the work over.

The bottom line is if you want to have professional looking work pay professionals for anything where you don’t have the skills.

In terms of printing I’ve gone for POD and am using LightingSource. They are a printing company, they just print. You have to look after everything else. But as a subsidiary of Ingram you will get listed with Amazon and the Book Depository automatically and any retailer who wishes can order your book direct from Ingram.

What did it cost? My biggest single cost component has been editing, around $1500 in total. The cover cost me about $100 (mostly the licence for a photo I used as a basis of my cover). LightningSource charged about $80 to set up my print ready files and list internationally.

The up side - this is pretty much all my work and that gives me a lot of pride.

The down side any problems are my fault I can’t blame any one else.

I’ve had some brilliant reviews, for example by British biographer Kathleen Jones.

How is it going?
Well sales are slow but essentially that is because I have not had time to put some marketing ideas into action.

Although as I said it’s already on Amazon (including Kindle)and when I checked the other night they were discounting the paperback at $8.05.

Anyone want to buy a book? ;-)

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Thanks again, Al, for coming to share your story.

I got Al's book for Christmas, and once I can actually GET to it, I'll be posting a review (though, unfortunately, it might be May at the rate I'm going).

Be sure to stop by over the next couple of days for my several blogfest posts, including my entry for the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest. Come join in the fun :)

An Award :)

First, if you haven't heard yet or you're still on the fence, please join me and Charity for the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest on March 16th. It's a chance to try your hand at a short story, get feedback from fellow writer-bloggers, and encouragement to try and publish it. We'd love to have you, so just click the link above or on the sidebar to join.
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Last week, I was given an award from Allan Russell at Publish or Perish AND from Michelle at Perfecting the Craft...

UPDATE: I also just received this award from Kristina at KayKay's Corner. Man, am I feeling the love or WHAT?

Kristina also gave me this award:

Thank you so much, Al, Michelle, and Kristina!

For those of you who don't know Al, he is the author of Veiled in Shadows, the beautiful cover of which is staring at me from the top of my to-read pile. Then again, maybe I'm just a sucker for the big blue eye :)

(On a side note, stop by on Monday for a guest post by Al.)

According to the rules of the award, I should tell you seven things about myself and then pass it on. Here's a random assortment of things you may not yet know about me. I'll limit myself to non-writing things this time. For other random Rosie facts, you can check out these other posts: from here, here (the the truth behind it), here, and one more.

1. As a recovering linguist, I'm a language junkie. I'm not fluent in any language (I sometimes contend that I'm not even fluent in English), though my husband likes to argue this point with me. Anyway, over the few decades of my life, I've studied (in no particular order) Spanish, French, German, Russian, Polish, Macedonian, and Welsh officially. If I have a dictionary, I can usually read Czech, Slovak, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian well enough. I also know lots of random syntax facts about Icelandic, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Dogon (my friend is currently working on a Dogon grammar).
2. I'm a graduate student in my last semester of coursework. There exists about a 2% chance that I will write a dissertation (with a 3% margin of error).
3. If I were ever to write a dissertation, I would write it on Polish syntax and the reflexive particle się. (I promise, it's a little more interesting than Wikipedia makes it out to be.) Last summer I got to meet Norbert Hornstein, whose most recent syntactic framework is called MOVE! (yes, with the exclamation point), and talk to him about my ideas using his framework. We argued a lot. We disagreed even more. It was fun and discouraging.
4. My graduate employment consisted of teaching Russian for only one year. I have never worked so hard. I taught in the 2007–2008 school year. Many of my former students were freshmen that year, and so are seniors now. I occasionally run into them on campus, and sometimes they even invite me out for a drink to catch up. :)
5. My current GA employment is working as the Managing Editor of the for Journal of Slavic Linguistics for Slavica Publishers. I prepare journals and books for publication. In addition to the journal, which I have worked on since 2006, I am currently preparing a book on Macedonian. It should be finish in the next month and be published by summer.
6. I have never published anything regarding linguistics. I've only edited other people's work. This doesn't bother me, though my colleagues think it should.
7. I had no intention of this turning into a Rosie's-grad-school-life post. Just to mix it up, I'll tell you that I got new glasses last week. They've got the Transitions lenses, too. I can't begin to tell you how excited they make me :)

Okay, now for passing on the love.

Carol at ArtziCarol Ramblings
Jan at Crazy Jane
Sallee at The Highly Educated Housewife
Medeia at Sharif Writes
Charity at My Writing Journey
Dezmond at Hollywood Spy

Thanks again to Al, Michelle, and Kristina for the award. :) Have a great Wednesday!