Running fast to stand still

Just over a year ago I posted about my WIP. At that point I was saying my word count had crept past 100,000.

A year on and I have shared my WIP with a couple of readers.

I cut it from one book into two (which left me with two incomplete books)

Now the first half has grown until it is just over 100,000 words again.

I am enjoying the writing but boy does it seem to inch along sometimes (my day job seems all consuming much of the time).
I feel like the end is in sight but I have been here before.

With the change to two separate books, I suspect I will dump the title. Or rather I will swap it.
My working title has been Veiled in Storms, which followed on from my first book Veiled in Shadows.
The third book in the series was to be Veil of Iron. But the second half of the WIP fits better with Storms.
So I suspect I will have to borrow the third title for number two. So my WIP is now wearing the working title of Veil of Iron.

Which kind of fits because of the subject matter and 1946 (when Churchill made his Iron Curtain speech) falls squarely in the book’s chronology.

Now because I don’t want to disappoint, a piccie of the day

Abandoned Railway Trestle Bridge, Gippsland, Victoria

What is it Wednesday? + a Whine and a Thankyou

It seems recently every time I post I whine about how busy I am at work. Well nothing has changed on the busyness stakes.

I will try not to whine about it though.

Where it has been impacting is on this blog, I just don't have the energy when I get home to put together a post. I have just managed 'What is it Wednesday?' recently and little else.
The other place it has been impacting has been on my writing time. As I have said frequently I commute over an hour each way on the train. Usually this time is my writing time, it gives me a couple of hours a day to write (this post was mostly composed on the train). Recently though because of my long hours I have either fallen asleep on the train (=no writing) OR WORSE used my writing time to do work.

Enough whining!

I mentioned a while ago that I had finished another draft of my second novel Veiled in Storms. Well I have had it with a couple of readers. One of them is Misha who also writes and has a blog My First Book. Another is Cheryl who did some editing on my first novel Veiled in Shadows. I think poor Cheryl is even busier than I am at the moment so will take a little while to get back to me.

Misha has completed her reading and given me a lot of food for thought. Firstly she said she likes the story (always a relief). Second she has suggested I divide the book into two separate novels.
So first of all, thank you Misha!

Now, about half of Veiled in Storms (as it currently stands) takes place in Russia during WWII. The second half takes place in Russia, Germany, Israel and the USA in about eight years after WWII.

I did briefly think of dividing it in to two halves called War and Peace but decided not even I could be that facetious about a novel set in Russia! So now I am thinking (more than working) around the possibility of dividing my baby.

It causes me a couple of problems with my plans for novels 3 and 4. Part of 3 would have to join the second half of 2 to make a whole. But then I only have part of 3?
So I have a fun bit of time working it out. I just need to find time to spend on it!

Now it is Wednesday so What on Earth do you think this is?

Potography Hiatus, Writing Bonanza

Well this one was too hard for people.
I guessed when I posted this that people would think "railroad sign".
Like a railroad sign it is a warning sign, but in a very different place.

This is a channel marker in Port Phillip Bay. I took this at the Bellarine Peninsula on the far south-west side of the bay. The Bellarine is near the mouth of the bay close to the city of Geelong.
Melbourne is about 100 km (62 miles) to the north where the Yarra River flows into the bay.
The mountain in the distance is on the far side near Dromana and has the lovely name (I think) Arthur's Seat.

I have taken very few photographs over the past few weeks (the ones of Lilli being the few exceptions)
I have kept my eye out for waterfalls and took this at the Murrindindi river in the central highlands.The semi-hiatus in photography is probably due largely to my putting a lot of creative effort into my writing.

I have finished the next draft of Veiled in Storms. I mentioned a while ago I had read the previous draft to Deb (she liked it).

This week I have been jumping forwards and plotting out books 3 and 4 in the series. Till now they have been very rough ideas, now 3 (working title Veil of Iron) is starting to look like a proper outline.

Well I have given a copy of the current draft Of Veiled in Storms to a friend to read (Cheryl did some copy edits on the first book Veiled in Shadows).

Once I get feedback from her I will put a bit of effort into tidying errors up and then in a month or two probably look for a couple more readers for opinions.

Anyone interested?

A neglected Subject.

Unless I am very wrong I have not posted about my writing and my WIP since mid July.

That seems unbelievable. This work is so much part of my life, yet I haven’t shared it.

Yet in some ways I have not done much that I could really talk about. My last news was that I had completed a first draft and was sorting the sections into the order they will remain.

OK I can say I’ve completed that.

Having said that I have to admit the past couple of months have not been very productive with the WIP.

To be fair to myself I have been plugging along fairly steadily at it. Most days I would be spending an hour or an hour and a half on rewriting.

I have also written a few sections from scratch (when I put the whole together there seemed to be a few gaps). But until last week I have to say I really felt like I was going round in circles.

I was actually beginning to wonder if the whole work was missing something. I like the characters, I like the overall story, but it felt like it was not working.

Then over the past week, I am not quite sure why, I felt much more positive. I made some changes in a few chapters which led me to write a couple more “filler” sections. Now I feel like I am back on track.

It might sound odd, but I am just about to begin reading it aloud to Deb. That is a step I took with my first novel Veiled in Shadows, just before I sent it out to other readers.

I find reading aloud really positive. It let’s me pick a lot of stupid errors. And as a bonus I get my first external perspective. If it passes muster with Deb I am then game to share it with others.

Then I can start thinking about finding Beta-readers.

Gratuitous Waterfall shot.Next: Can you handle more waterfalls?

Al Rambles

I mentioned the other day that I had plots worked out for a couple of extra novels, one of which was a YA piece. I find it very odd to be thinking about writing YA, I've never wanted to write anything for young people before. Although I must say when my girls bought books I always queued up to have my turn reading them. Sometimes my imagination gets even more active than usual and this is one of the things that popped out.

I don't dare do more than a rough outline or I might get carried away from what I am currently writing.

On the subject of the WIP, I've taken a slightly different tack with writing this one.
Both the WIP and my first book are written from multiple points of view. The narrative is broken up so we get differing perspectives on many of the events in the plot.

With Veiled in Shadows I began at the start and wrote to the end. Generally, I switched perspective as I came to the section I was writing. So I mainly wrote from start to finish for most drafts, although I did leave sections when I got ‘stuck’.

With my WIP I am (mostly) writing one character's perspective at a time right through the whole stream of the book. Then I move back to the start for the next character. But it is all written in chunks that will be pasted together at the end.

I think this has a huge advantage in terms of keeping with the flow of each character.

But there is a downside. Because characters are not present in each scene writing the over arching narrative seems more disjointed. Also I will have to be extra careful about continuity when it comes to bringing it all back together.

What do you think - would you prefer to write from beginning to end, or would you prefer to explore characters one at a time?

Do you enjoy reading stories that are from multiple POV?

Finally two piccies from my archive. A snowy mountain road as a reminder it is winter down this way.And that relative of the platypus an echidna or spiny ant eater. These guys, like platypus, are egg-laying mammals.

Two Speed Al

This is a long weekend down in Oz. We have ‘the Queen’s Birthday Holliday’ tomorrow. Normally I see myself as a republican, but I guess I’ll celebrate the good Queen’s day if it means a day off from work :-)

For those of you who don’t know, Oz is still a monarchy! We have not entirely cut our ties with the British Empire and Queen Elizabeth II is still our queen Downunder.

Now on to the two speed Al.

Work on my WIP has slowed to a crawl over the past few days.
I’ve recently been knocking over around 500 – 1,000 words a day. Over the past week this has slowed to around 200 – 300 words. Two of my characters have been fencing with each other over romance and misunderstanding. To add to the complications the sister of one has been interfering, with best intentions of course!

But it has meant that I have been delicately feeling my way rather than powering ahead. So things are slow.

However, I suspect I may have solved a bottle neck with a bit of early hours insomnia. I think I have sorted the conflict and will be able to move ahead.

Now that said I am probably a little unfair with my characters as I’ve probably been distracting myself as well. Over the past few days I have worked through not one but two rough outlines for possible future writing projects!

One is a sci-fi/fantasy piece for adults that involves time travel and is set in both the ancient world and present day.
The second is a YA piece that is also sci-fi/fantasy that take place between our world and another.
Both have taken a lot of thought, particularly the YA book because I haven’t written with a YA audience in mind before.

I like both ideas a great deal. Oh for more time to write!

I mean that pretty seriously. I have a lot of writing planned out now!

As you may know my WIP is the second in a series that goes with my first book Veiled in Shadows. At the moment I have two more planned to go with those. Each is a stand alone story (I hate “to be continued” endings) but they all feature some of the same characters and explore the events of the 20th century from different perspectives.

So if I add these projects to my “To Be Written” list I have years of writing ahead of me!

Now in the spirit of being two speed, two photos with very different themes. First Lilli, who is already very much a member of our family. She has been with us for a week tomorrow and is a ball of energy.

Second, a rainforest stream in Mount Field National Park, Tasmania.I saw a wild platypus for only the second ever time in my whole life just downstream of these rocks. They are common, but very shy so hard to spot. Alas my camera was safely tucked in its bag so no photo (sorry Susan). A magical experience nonetheless.

So dear friends a question, does your imagination ever get in the way of the task you have at hand?

Target

I should never set myself targets in my writing. I posted a month ago about finishing my first draft of Veiled in Shadows in ‘a month or two’. A month further on and I had expected to have knocked over another 20,000 words or so.

Well I got more than half way toward that target. To be precise I have written 13,515 since that post. Now before you assume I have been beating myself up about a failure - I haven’t.

I write for the enjoyment of it.

The enjoyment of it.

Aren’t those four lovely words?

And I have been enjoying my writing. To be sure my inner sadist has been making some of my characters go through hell (don’t worry Valentina is still in happy mode) but I have been writing some bittersweet scenes over the past few days.

And it is fun!

You may know my first novel Veiled in Shadows was written from multiple perspectives. Shadows is a complete story on its own, but it is also part of a series. Veiled in Storms (my WIP) is also a complete story and while it is not exactly a sequel it is related to the first novel. Some of the minor characters in Shadows are major characters in Storms and vice versa. So Ronnie (that is Valentina’s Ronnie) for example is only mentioned by name in the first novel and is a significant player in the second. While his sister Penelope is a major character in the first and a bit player in the second.

So what have I been writing over the past day or two? I won’t say too much, but for those (few) of you who have read Shadows there is a reunion in the final scenes. So I am revisiting that reunion from another character’s point of view. Only for that character it does not come at the end of the story. It is both a sad and happy moment.

And fun to write.

Now a little news. I am hoping to post again on Friday, but from Saturday I will be away on leave for a week. So it is possible there will be no posts until I get back.

A photo from my archive

Rainbow Lorikeets

A Miscellany

I was looking out the window of the train a fair bit this morning. I usually have my eyes pretty much glued to the screen of my computer to work on my WIP Veiled in Storms. But this morning was cold, close to as cold as it gets in Melbourne. We had our first frost of the season, I had to clean ice off my windscreen so I could drive to the station.

My journey to work starts with a ten minute drive to our nearest station at Hurstbridge. My next hour or so is spent on the train into the heart of Melbourne. On the way in I always get a seat because Hurstbridge is the first station (or last depending which way you are going) on the line.

Normally I write the whole way, with the occasional glance at the other passengers or at the passing scenery. For roughly the first half of the trip the line meanders along one of green areas we are privileged to have in Melbourne. In this case the Diamond Creek Valley (isn’t that an amazing name?). Normally, although the scenery is worth watching I don’t look because writing is more important to me than trees and fields I have seen hundreds of times.

This morning was different the valley was covered with thick white frost and enveloped in mist. So the routine had become almost a different place. Very beautiful and very distracting.

But of course the writerly side of me took over and I began imagining the frost was snow and the mist was a Russian Blizzard. I was half expecting Zhukov’s Siberian troops to come bursting out of the mist riding their tanks as they fought to save Moscow in December 1941. (Anyone want to guess what I am writing about at the moment)

That of course made me think about place. Place is very important in fiction. I’ve never been to Russia or experienced a blizzard so how do I write with authenticity about places and times I have never been to?

I guess there are a number of solutions. One is to take advantage of places you have been. So in my novel Veiled in Shadows I chose to set a scene at a university in Oxford in the UK rather than in Cambridge. I’ve walked the streets in Oxford, I never quite made it to Cambridge. Similarly I’ve seen country around the Black Forest in Germany where another section of the novel is set.

But I’ve never been to Russia, and most of Veiled in Storms takes place there. So in my case it comes down to research. I watch every piece of video of the time and place I can get my hands on. I look at maps (period if possible) and Google Earth and I read. Usually biography from the place and time is great. In translation I most definitely do not read Russian, I can pretend with German or French (OK I’m lying but at least the alphabet is the same). Fiction written in the place and time is also really useful even if it isn’t what you’d normally read. But be careful, translators can lead you astray, I am fairly sure that Russians in the 1940s did not use the term “motherfuckers”. Yes, something equally derogatory but probably not that term.

So if you are a writer what do you do? Do you stick to what you ‘know’ or do you venture further afield?
And how important is it to be authentic?

Now finally, and in a completely different vein. I got my new camera on Friday night (Yay!) It is proving more difficult to learn then I thought. It is so different to my rather basic previous model. However I am getting some good piccies from it already .

A random sample of what I have taken since Saturday (most of these are worth clicking to enlarge).
The Yarra River.A long exposure taken without a tripod, image stabilizers are brilliant!

Some tiny flowers (I have no idea what they are, but a succulent and so not native)

Some tiny baby ‘spitfire caterpillars’ Actually they are not caterpillars at all. They are sawfly larvae. If you think they are ugly now imagine them two inches long, covered in bristles and vomiting a sticky mess of eucalyptus oil at you. But they are native so I love them and they are very sociable (to each other).

Autumn leaves.Great colour saturation with this camera!

And finally as appropriate for the end of a post. The sunset last night.

A Sadist and a Saint?

My WIP Veiled in Storms keeps rolling on.
I am writing what I have found the most difficult sections of the story at the moment.

In a plot development truly the brainchild of my Inner Sadist one of my main characters is arrested and sent to Siberia. To be more precise she is sentenced to 25 years in Stalin’s GULAG system. Some of you may know something of the GULAGs as reams have been written about them, most famously Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn’s books The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, essentially they were a forced labour camps of the Soviet Union.

The majority of people sent to the GULAGs were there on trumped up charges. Some were never charged but were sentenced because of the “actions” of friends or relatives. Depending on when a person was arrested and where a person was sent in the system things varied from very hard to being worked and starved to death.

The problem for me as an author (even one who consults an inner sadist) is experiences in the system were quite simply terrible. Entry into the system typically involved interrogation by the NKVD. The NKVD routinely used torture, both psychological and physical. As if that wasn’t bad enough, women (my character is female) were frequently raped as part of the process of breaking them.

Once in the camps there is also plenty of options for my Inner Sadist to throw at my poor character. Work details, starvation, violence of all kinds from prisoners and guards. According to Solzhenitsyn the worst curse possible was to be not only a woman but an attractive woman in the camps. My poor character ticks both boxes.

So somehow I have to explore surviving the impossible with my character. I have had experience with writing difficult material, a component of my first book Veiled in Shadows is the Holocaust. I don’t pull too many punches in that book, but I think I managed to find a balance between telling a harrowing story and keeping it light enough to read. As a by the by I think my reviewers agree with me.

You can find reviews here:
(Kathleen Jones' Review - Reviews on Amazon - Reviews on Book Depository).

So the trick is to tell a story that is realistic (even dismally so) but to find a way to balance the hard with the not quite so bad.

I guess that is where my Inner Saint comes into play. To avoid giving too much of my plot away I’ll quote from Anne Applebaum’s book Gulag: A History. “Certainly many women survivors are convinced there were great advantages to being female within the camp system. Women were better at taking care of themselves…better able to subsist on low amounts of food... They formed powerful friendships and helped each other in ways that male prisoners did not.”

So my Inner Sadist might throw the intolerable at my poor character. At the same time my Inner Saint will throw some lifelines. How many she catches along the way… well you will have to wait and see.

Oh by the way - my Inner Saint wants me to tell any concerned readers of Valentina’s extracts that the character who goes to GULAG is not her. Do you believe me?

The Wonders of Commuting.

Well I am still going into the city by train everyday.

An hour on the train each way seemed pretty daunting at the start. But if you remember I got myself a Netbook and now I write on the train.
Now to be sure Melbourne’s train system is old and falling apart at the seams. Last week my 1 hour trip turned into 2½ hours on the train due to a signal fault. Normally I’d be steamed about such a delay but I just took it in my stride and thought “More writing time.”

All this time on the train is doing wonders for my WIP Veiled in Storms. As well as the sections I have posted about Valentina and Ronnie I have written tens of thousands of other words.

I am now past 80,000 words on my first draft which is about two thirds of my target. Most days I am adding 600 – 1,000 words. If I keep steaming at my current rate I will finish my first draft in another month or two!

Now a first draft is a long way from a finished novel, but this feels amazing. I’m working full time, getting out and about on the weekends and blogging (although I must say I don’t spend nearly enough time visiting other blogs) and the book is progressing!

The only hole in all of this is I have been largely neglecting promotion of my first novel Veiled in Shadows, and with me being my marketing campaign nothing is happening. Ah well you can’t have it all.

SO how about you. How is your writing going? How do you manage to fit it all in?


Now a photo from my archive: Wilson's Promontory after the 2009 bush fires

Several Small Points

A few readers didn’t think grey headed flying foxes are cute.

I submit this piccie of rescued baby flying-foxes I found on Wikipedia.
I think these guys are adorable, surely I can sway those hard hearts out there? ;-)

Also,

I have finally posted Chapter Eleven of my book Veiled in Shadows over on my Veiled in Shadows blog.

For those few of you who have been reading Shadows this way I apologise it has taken me so long to get it up.

If you are interested in reading the first part of Veiled in Shadows click HERE.

My Weekend and Charlie

We had an uneventful weekend, and unusually I didn’t take a single photo. As you know I spent a bit of time sorting out a second blog.
I have been wondering how to proceed on promoting Veiled in Shadows, I have few ideas forming which I think might just work, but they are going to take some time to get together and time is the problem.
In the meantime I guess I’ll just go one day at a time.

Valentina has let me go for the moment, but only because I am distracted by another sideline in the WIP.
I need a feed in for a narrator who wouldn’t normally tell her tale and I am trying to find a way to get her to speak. Charlie Bykov might just be the catalyst to get her talking.
This distraction has taken me two generations and to another war. But my character shares similarities with Valentina. Charlie is also distraught and on the edge. I seem to be caught up in characters who are desperate and haunted at the moment.
Ahh well it is all good writing practice.
Once again this is a first draft, I need to read this again and probably re-write it a few times to see if it as promising as it seemed at first.
I give you Charlie:

Charlotte Bykov 2005
I looked for Mom in the crowd as I came trough the arrivals gate. Courtesy of the airline I was in a wheelchair. I had fought it but I had to check my crutches in Germany, some battles you can’t win.
‘Charlie, Chaaaarlie!’
My name, who… at the back of the crowd, ‘Melissa!’
The chick from the airline checked her nails as Mel hugged and kissed me. At first there was no awkwardness, in the excitement of welcoming me Mel left off the questions that always came.
Or didn’t come, but were there anyway.
Of course the awkwardness was mine as much as it was anyone else’s.
I felt disconnected from my life. Melissa looked so fresh and young, as pretty as ever. I was only gone two years, yet I felt ages older. Grief and pain leave their mark.

‘Mom?’
Mel tried, Mel always tried. ‘She has work, she would have come, if she could.’
Mel left me with the airline chick while she went to find a cab.
I wiped a tear aside. I was a big girl now, I had the scars to prove it and big girls don’t cry for their mama. I don’t know why I was disappointed Mom wasn’t there. Mom was never there.

The house was as I left it in ’98. The army was my way out. I was never going back.
Yet here I was.
Leaning on my crutches I traced my fingers over the photos in the hall. Me as a little girl sitting on Mom’s lap, I was there but her eyes were for Derek, my stepfather as she laughed up at him.
A newer pic the unsure teenage me, blonde curls and blue eyes standing on one side of a family portrait: Mom with arms wrapped around Derek and black-haired Mel and Tony. Me, with them but alone.
Always alone.
Then photos I could barely look at:
Me lacing up shoes at track and field;
Me in cheerleader uniform;
Charlie Bykov, beautiful, hot and sexy, young and fit.
Most of all whole.

Mel, lovely Mel, tried to distract me with coffee and cookies. But no amount of coffee and cookies will grow a girl a new leg.
‘I have to head back to school soon, but I can wait for Mom or Dad.’
‘Do you think the gimp needs her hand held?’
‘You know Charlotte you can be a real bitch sometimes.’
She left me alone, staring at the door.

A New Blog and Chapter Nine

My post tonight is going to be very quick.

I’ve been busy putting up a new blog to showcase extracts of my Book Veiled in shadows.
It’s called Veiled in Shadows
You can find it here http://veiledinshadows.blogspot.com/

At the moment I am using almost the same template as for this blog. I may change that later.

I’m looking for feedback on the new blog, especially if you think its layout works.

I’m putting it up tonight, no doubt there are errors, if you see any glaring ones perhaps you can let me know.

So if you have a moment pop over and have a look and let me know what you think.

Also for those (probably few) of you who may have been reading the extracts I have posted, Chapter Nine has gone up over there tonight.

In Chapter Nine, Ebi has finally managed to save enough money to get over to England to hunt for Katharina…

Mutiny in the Ranks!

Another quick post tonight.
I am still feverishly working on my WIP, doing a good couple of hours most work days. Words are flowing freely and I am enjoying it immensely.

But there is a problem. I have posted extracts featuring Valentina before, and she is meant to be a secondary character. But she is well and truly demanding to be heard. I have written nothing other than about her for the past two weeks. I don’t know if she will win in the end, but if she does it will be at the expense of some of my other characters and leave my outline in tatters.
I am planning to post more chapters of my completed novel Veiled in Shadows but I have to work out where. Blogger has a limit on the number of pages I can have up on Tabs.
Hmmm maybe a secondary blog just for posting sections of book? What do you think?

Now an extract of my WIP Veiled in Storms because Valentina won’t be quiet any longer.
This was typed today on my way home, so it is once again entirely unedited…

Last time Valentina was quivering under-fire. This time her problems are (at least partly) more personal.


Valentina Meshcova Berlin 1945
It was children who saved me. Children in the ruins.
We were near Hoppegarten outside Berlin when the surrender came. The jubilation in the army had to be felt to be understood. All the terror lifted, the lid taken off years of pent up emotion.
But for several days we were kept working nearly as hard. Though now the women medics like me had to have an escort. The rape and pillage that had been a feature of our advance into Germany exploded as soldiers consumed the city's stocks of alcohol. Being in a Red army uniform was usually enough, but a few of the girls in our regiment were raped. A drunken army with little discipline in place is a frightening thing.

For the next days we continued recovering the wounded from the stinking ruins of Berlin. The mix changed, fewer Russians, a lot of German civilians and even German soldiers came through our hospital. Only days before German wounded would have been shot out of hand, even civilians would more than likely have been turned away.

Then, suddenly, within twenty four hours, most of my work was gone. Yes the hospital continued working, but now the panic of battle was gone it was the sick we were treating.
Our commander organised some tour groups into the heart of the city. We had the privilege of entering as conquerors. After all we had been through it was delicious to stand in the ruins of the Chancellery and the Reichstag. Revenge was sweet.

But then anti-climax, the emptiness I had dreaded. Not enough hours filled with anything meaningful and an empty futile future stretching in front of me.
I sat one night cleaning and re-cleaning my carbine.

Luckily no one offered me vodka that night, If they had I would have found the courage to do what I wanted and put the barrel in my mouth and squeeze the trigger.
There were a surprising number of suicides in those first weeks after victory; I was not the only one who did not know how to go on.

Then one day I rode one of our big American trucks to take a number of wounded to the station. A little girl sitting on a pile of rubble alongside the road caught my eye. I don't know why I noticed her, perhaps her blond hair stood out against the mountains of debris. I didn't think much of it, but as we drove back she was still there. I wondered about her all the way back.

When I finished my duty I took my carbine and strolled back. It was already a lot safer for a Russian woman on her own. Discipline was being re-established, some of the worst offenders had been shot and the officers were bringing the army back in line.
But you never knew and the gun was just in case.

She was still there, a tiny thing maybe four years old, sitting almost motionless on a pile of broken bricks. Her eyes flicked up at me as I came closer and then fell again.
I stood for a long time and watched her, she was skin and bones, dressed in clothes that were warm enough but had obviously been cast-down innumerable times. A child of the war.

I slung my gun over my shoulder and held out my arms.
Her stick arms came up. I lifted her and held her to my chest. Her little arms wrapped themselves very tightly around my neck.

Wednesday Words (on Thursday again)

I had an early start this morning and wasn’t home until late.

So all my ideas for a post tonight have gone out the window.

So to keep things quick tonight I am going to put up two pieces of my work.

The first is Chapter Eight of my book Veiled in Shadows. If you want to read it please click on the tab above.

I took a break from my WIP over Christmas, but I am commuting again today and hence I was writing.

Here is a possible extract from my WIP Veiled in Storms. It is a piece written from the perspective of Valentina who is Ronnie’s flame earlier in the book. I say possible, because I literally wrote this on my way home tonight, and while I know events like this will happen to Valentina they may well disappear into “back story”. And to be honest I haven’t had time to properly reread this to decide if I can build a good second draft from it.

So in Valentina’s words:

Valentina Meshcova 1943: Baptism
Clinging to the ground like I once did to my mother's skirts I inched forward. Above my head whizzed German bullets. Bullets that were being very deliberately fired to kill me.
With my right hand I dragged myself forward, with my left I towed the straps of a medical bag and a machine-gun. My destination, a shell crater, lay only a few metres in front of me. I felt like screaming in terror, I had never been so frightened, but somehow I forced myself to keep inching forwards.
Finally, I reached the relative cover of the low bank of earth thrown up by the exploding shell. I rolled on to my side and looked up at the bank, even as I watched spurts of dirt were thrown up as bullets slammed into the top. I couldn't think of how to get over without being killed.
I looked back the way I had come, a shallow slope led back down to our trenches. Scattered across that slope lay eighteen bodies, in greenish-brown Russian uniforms. I had crept past many of them checking for signs of life on my tortuous way to where I now lay.
An hour and a half ago some idiot of an officer had ordered an attack on a German trench in front of me. Most of the boys had been cut down, a few had dragged themselves back wounded and one had been seen signalling for help from the crater.
I lay still and tried to remember Svetlana's arguments for why us girls should volunteer for the Red Army. None of them seemed to make any sense now, surely I would contribute more to the war by finishing my studies at medical school rather than getting myself killed here.
The shooting eased off and died away. I risked lifting my head a little and waving back in the direction of our trench. The sergeant there had promised that when I got near they would 'lay down covering fire'.
Whatever that meant.
Nothing happened, it was very quiet for a moment. I thought I could hear a mumbling voice beyond the bank inside the crater, someone was still alive. I waved again.
I found out what covering fire was.
Machine guns and rifles all suddenly began firing from the direction of our trenches. Again bullets screamed past, it didn't feel much better than the Germans shooting at me.
Hopefully it was worse for the Germans. Dragging my gear with me I hurled myself up and over the bank, sliding down into the hole beyond...

Now finally, and in case you think I am making up female Russian medics, a piccie of a real heroine from Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ which we in the West know as WWII.
Medics like this woman were common in the Red Army during the war, and many were highly decorated for saving men at great personal risk. However, many photos like this were staged, but in this one she looks more tired than 'patriotic,' so I guess it might be a genuine shot.

Oops!

I for got to hit publish on my posted chapter yesterday!
If you want to read Chapter 7 of Veiled in Shadows hit the tab above.

Veiled in Shadows Kindle Edition discounted + Words not on Wednesday

First up, following the advice of Christy Pinheiro, I have cut the price of my Kindle Edition of Veiled in Shadows, it’s now $2.99. By the way Christy has also added a review of the book on Amazon. Christine from Inwardly Digesting has posted a review on Good Reads.
Christy has two helpful blogs about self publishing, while Christine runs a lovely blog about writing and life in her patch of northern England.
Thank you both!

I’m going to have to stop calling this regular post ‘Words on Wednesday’ because once again it isn’t Wednesday.
Maybe ‘Tales on Thursday’?

I have been planning to post something more from my family history, but I just haven’t had time to think about writing something down. I am writing on the train every day, but I am jealously guarding that time for my WIP.

Once again I have posted a chapter of Veiled in Shadows (click the tab for Chapter 7 above). For those of you reading along as I post here you will find that Ebi has been making enquiries about what has happened to Katharina.

Another habit I am indulging in is to post a taste from my WIP. Last week I posted a strong passage about Stepan and Ksenia, I have been working on their part of the story all week, but while I know where they are going I’m not happy about posting any of that tonight.

The bit I am posting tonight was originally a piece I had as a provisional prologue. But it won’t fulfil that function now, I think it will make it into the final version but I will have to redraft it.

By the way those few of you who have read Veiled in Shadows may recognise this scene, only from a different perspective.
How’s that for a tease? You really are going to have to buy Veiled in Shadows aren’t you?

Now I have finished the sales pitch for tonight.

I give you David in Veiled in Shadows, my WIP:


Loved Ones: Poland - October 1940
David Schiller
‘David, that engine is smaller than the one you are going on.’
I squatted down next to my little brother Benjamin, anything to divert my attention from Mama's grief, ‘Are you sure?’
His five year old face creased with concentration, ‘Yes, silly,’ he pointed, ‘Yours is longer and it has more wheels.’
Despite my efforts Mama was not to be avoided, ‘David, you make sure you write to us every week, and be careful of those communists.’
Papa intervened, ‘David will write when he can.’
There was an uncomfortable moment, the guard's whistle blew.
Papa wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, releasing me he took my hand and shook it. I was surprised, Papa had never shaken my hand before.
He tried to smile but I could see he was close to tears. ‘Take care of yourself, none of us will be happy until you come home.’
I gave Mama a kiss and a hug. Then I hugged my sister Jena before climbing onto the train. The engine's whistle blew and the train lurched before slowly moving along the platform. ‘David!’
It was Jena, at fifteen she was only three years younger than me. Yet, with her blonde plaits bouncing on her shoulders, as she ran alongside the train, she looked much younger. She came to the end of the platform and stopped her eyes streaming with tears as she shouted after me, ‘David, don't forget me.’
I leant out shouting back to her, ‘How could I ever forget my only sister? I'll write, and I'll be back before you know it.’
I waved until I could no longer see her.
I pulled my head in and sat back, ‘First time away from home?’
The question came from an old lady sitting opposite. I nodded, ‘I am going to Moscow.’

Words but NOT on Wednesday: WIP and a Chapter.

Obviously it isn't Wedneday, this post was meant for last night but I ran out of steam.

I’ve posted a chapter of Veiled in Shadows again tonight. In Chapter Six Peter is having some terrible problems with fog. While Ebi is trying to cope with some strange behaviour from Katharina and then her mysterious disappearance. If you want to have a look click on the tab above.

Writing on the train is still progressing well. I am knocking of 500 to 800 words most days. It’s all very rough and at best a first draft. But I am happy it is progressing faster than it has for sooo long.

Veiled in Shadows is written with multiple narrators and I am using the same approach with my WIP. Usually I find myself writing one section featuring one character in a session and then jumping somewhere else on the next.

This morning though I continued with a section I started last night, I worked on it again this morning and finished on my way home. It features two characters I have not mentioned before. Stepan who was a medical student before the war, but who now finds himself in the NKVD and Ksenia a young nurse and a deserter.
It is as before a first draft (although I have read through it and fixed the most glaring errors) but I have a feeling this one will make it into my final work, albeit probably reworked. It is quite long and makes up most of a chapter in the first half of the book.

Stepan narrates, although he talks about himself in the third person.
Warning: it’s not cheery.



Ksenia: Russia - September 1942
Stepan Avelin
'Lieutenant'
Stepan groans and rolls over, 'What do you want?'
'This one is different. I don't know what to do.'
The speaker is Ilyin one of Stepan's Corporals. His mind is still thick with sleep as he struggles to pull on his boots. Lieutenant, how strange that sounds.
The Red Army is again in retreat, falling back in the face of the second German summer offensive. Stepan has done nothing to earn promotion. Nothing that is but what he has done since the previous autumn, organising checkpoint after checkpoint. Yet the NKVD are often the last to leave a battlefield, so his regiment has taken casualties. Significant casualties, hence his promotion to take the place of a lieutenant trapped and killed by German tanks in the last retreat.
The benefits of rank: a warm bed, if there is one to be had; someone to clean his boots; and more pay, useless unless he ever gets leave. The negatives: a feeling of responsibility when one of his men is killed; and rather than simply following orders he is the one who decides who will live, or more realistically who will die. Such choices deepen the darkness of his soul.

Following Ilyin, Stepan enters the kitchen of the little house he has made his headquarters. Two uniformed figures stand with their faces against the wall. Another of Stepan's men, Gavrilivich, stands by the back door covering them with a submachine-gun.
Faceless though the prisoners are, Stepan can see instantly what has disconcerted his men. The baggy uniforms do not conceal that the shorter of the two has the slight, but curved figure of a woman.

A woman! Stepan is momentarily alarmed, what should he do? A woman, but she stands before him in a Red Army uniform, should he not treat her in the same manner as any other? Should it not simply be a bullet after a cursory inspection of papers? It perhaps should be, but it is not so simple, some taboo rears its head. Instinct perhaps? Or is it rather a learned response, nice boys don't hurt girls.
Stepan is both surprised and a little pleased at his response. Perhaps if he can recognise a taboo there is still a trace of human dignity to be found somewhere within himself. Still though there is the fiction to be maintained for his men, he is a cold heartless officer. 'What orders do the prisoners have?'
'None, however they are from a field hospital.'
'Do they have papers?'
The man half turned, 'We have...'
'Quiet unless the Lieutenant addresses you!' Shouts Gavrilivich.
Ilyin hands over the pay books taken from the prisoners. Stepan no more than glances at the man's, not looking at his name, it is better if they remain nameless, instead he looks at the rank and for any reason to not simply dispose of the problem.
Stepan can see no reason, other than common humanity, to spare the him and common humanity is a scarce commodity in 1942.

Stepan throws the first pay book on the table and looks at that of the girl. He reads aloud 'Ksenia Kitzova'. She turns around: she is young, no more than maybe nineteen or twenty; Stepan can see she is pretty even though she is dirty and dishevelled,
more than that though she has a presence. It is as if somehow she is more alive than the others in the room. Stepan hides it as best he can, but he is dismayed, how can he possibly rob such a person of life.
Her pay book is no different from her comrade's, she is like him an army private. Stepan can see no reason to exempt her from the fate of so many others.
'What is your role in your regiment?'
'I am a surgical theatre assistant, Comrade Lieutenant.'
A more rear echelon role there cannot be, is it enough to let her live? But Stepan must be careful, being too lenient is dangerous. Too big a mistake on his part could lead to his own death.

He will take the risk. If the worst happens he will tell his captain he was simply waiting for instruction. Stepan points, 'Kitzova sit on that chair. Do not move.'
He spins on heel to face the other, he jerks his thumb towards the door, 'This one outside, shoot him.'
Stepan hears a desperate, breathless, 'No!' from the girl behind him. He ignores her, focusing on his victim. The man slumps submitting quietly as so many do. A minority cry or beg, a tiny number resist violently but most go quietly like this one. Stepan has often wondered if it is a Russian stoicism, or if all people would behave so.

Stepan turns back to the girl, he bites back a startled exclamation. She is livid with rage, her eyes bore into his with an unconcealed malevolence. She sits at the kitchen table her fingers interlaced, one hand gripping the other so hard the knuckles are going white. Stepan feels empty he sits slowly down on the Chair opposite the girl. He should bury his head in shame but somehow he meets her eyes.
They are beautiful eyes he thinks, dark, almost as dark as Svetlana's. But filled with such hate, Stepan is sure he has never felt anything with the intensity with which this girl hates him.
His eyes were still held by hers when the sound of a single rifle shot ripped through the room. The girl jumped, her eyes involuntarily snapped to the direction of the sound.

When her eyes returned to Stepan's they were spilling with grief. For an instant she shared her agony, but her hate flared up anew, she spat her words at him, 'You monster.'
Stepan held the word up and examined it, as a connoisseur might hold a glass of wine before the light, 'Monster? Monster? I don't know. Immoral weakling probably, coward yes definitely. But I am no monster.'
'You bastard you killed him.'
'I have no power in this. I am ordered to execute all traitors who have deserted their posts. I may have killed myself by sparing you this long.'

Tonight some brilliant news!

I last posted about Kathleen Jones because she gave me a copy of her new biography, Katherine Mansfield: The Story Teller.As I have said before Kathleen has one of my favourite blogs, A Writer’s life.

Kathleen has been reading a copy of my book Veiled in shadows. Anyway a couple of weeks ago she sent me some interview questions about my writing. Well she has posted my responses. Check it out.

But it gets better still! Kathleen has also reviewed my book Veiled in Shadows and she has posted her brilliant review on her book blog. To say I am chuffed is a major understatement. Thank you Kathleen!

Words on Wednesday: Progress on my WIP

Once again I have posted a chapter of Veiled in Shadows.
In this chapter Katharina argues with her father over her love affair with Ebi. Also an engagement is announced.

Now to what I am going to talk about tonight…

I said last Wednesday that Deb surprised me with a new Netbook.

My time on the train has suddenly become amazingly productive. On my way into the city my station is the first on the line so I always get a seat. I put on my headphones to block out the World and I write (or think) for a solid hour before I have to get off at my stop.

On the way home mine is the fourth city stop so the train is usually full when I get on. Standing room only! But somewhere between a third and a half of the way home enough people get of to allow me a seat. So there is another precious 30 or 40 minutes to work.

This is simply bliss. My WIP (Veiled in Storms) has been languishing while I have been getting Veiled ready for publication. Now suddenly it is full steam ahead again.
You’ll have to forgive my nautical metaphor, but I’m writing about Ronnie my Royal Navy character at the moment.

Now a sample of what I wrote today. Please bear in mind that this is very much a first draft. I’ve done nothing to it (not even a rough edit this is literally just pasted out of my “scribble” file) and the way I write this scene may never make it into the book. It could easily end up just as ‘back story’.

With out further ado I give you Ronnie somewhere in the North Atlantic:

The light on the destroyer's bridge flashed and stuttered so fast that I couldn't keep up. I turned to Rogers, my signalman, 'He makes '"Goodbye and good luck", sir.'
'Respond, "At least we shan't have to put up with any more haggis" '.
Rogers grinned, and began frantically clattering on the shutter of our signal lamp. I stared at the wake of the departing destroyer. She was escorting the battered convoy of merchant ships that we had helped shepherd on our way north, back to Loch Ewe in Scotland.
They were going south, but I was returning to Russian waters in my tiny ship. I had ninety men on my little vessel, but suddenly I felt more lonely than ever before.