E. J. Dawson 
I don’t know what is more enticing, this beautiful cover or the plot? Check out Behind the Veil by E.J. Dawson!
Behind the Veil
Publication Date: October 1st, 2021
Genre: Gothic Noir/ Paranormal Suspense
Can she keep the secrets of her past to rescue a girl tormented by a ghost?
In 1920s Los Angeles, Letitia Hawking reads the veil between life and death. A scrying bowl allows her to experience the final moments of the deceased. She brings closure to grief-stricken war widows and mourning families.
For Letitia, it is a penance. She knows no such peace.
For Alasdair Driscoll, it may be the only way to save his niece, Finola, from her growing night terrors. But when Letitia sees a shadowy figure attached to the household, it rouses old fears of her unspeakable past in England.
When a man comes to her about his missing daughter, the third…
View original post 834 more words
Book Details
Format: E-Book, 252 pages
Publication: October 1, 2021 by Literary Wanderlust
Synopsis: Can she keep the secrets of her past to rescue a girl tormented by a ghost?
In 1920s Los Angeles, Letitia Hawking reads the veil between life and death. A scrying bowl allows her to experience the final moments of the deceased. She brings closure to grief-stricken war widows and mourning families.
For Letitia, it is a penance. She knows no such peace.
For Alasdair Driscoll, it may be the only way to save his niece, Finola, from her growing night terrors. But when Letitia sees a shadowy figure attached to the household, it rouses old fears of her unspeakable past in England.
When a man comes to her about his missing daughter, the third girl to go missing in as many months, Letitia can’t help him when she can’t see who’s taken…
View original post 353 more words
Think on the words, not how many of them you have. EJDawson.com
When you hear the terms of Nano it’s becomes a math game;
50,000
30 days in November
1666 words per day
Easy, right? Here is a small achievable goal you can manage every day. It sounds very reasonable, until you have a few days in a row where commitments don’t let you get to your computer, you can’t find the writing time and so when it comes to trying to play catch up you can feel hopelessly overwhelmed!
STOP.
You don’t *have* to write every day. You have to pick a way that works for you. You can do it in chunks.
I said I’d give you 30 tips for November but today I’m doing a bunch of them. There’s two up there, we’re on the six day of November here – I am going to do future Ejay a favour and build up a couple more for the next few days.
If you need convincing to sit and write when you have the time and don’t want to, I can’t stress enough how having an honest conversation with yourself (no, not one of those creepy, in the mirror, serial killer monologue vibes- look, fine, if that’s what works for you), can hep convince yourself to do it now. Do it because you know you’re going to have more days like that and you don’t want to feel like this later in the month. If at all again. It’s a horrible guilt trip.
So how to get past it.
You’ve got the time and energy so here is a blog post I wrote a few ways back that can be summed up as thus;
- Writing Sprints; time yourself and do nothing but write in that time slot
- Name Generators; use these beauties to find a name you can change later
- Description; put an X or [ description ] and move on!
- Don’t edit; I mean it. You’ll have time for that later
- Write; yeah, a cop out, but you do just have to sit and write
And you might be stroking your chin in cunning supposition and think; which tip are we up to? Did she just cheat and slide in 5 more tips?
*gasps* Did I?
Yeah you bet your writers butt I did.
When I first started doing Nano it infuriated me when people cheated. They started early, they used chunks of already existing scripts, they were using it to finish a novel they started months ago! And it was all, when you got right down to it, perfectly reasonable.
Nano is about challenging yourself. About writing as much as you can. Getting into good writing habits, and finishing that story. It doesn’t matter the path, only that you do walk it.
While we’re getting all philosophical, and not worry about how many words we’ve written, just like we aren’t worry about how many tips I’m up to. Because all that really matters is getting the words down.
So now you are thusly armed, go write, and wreck havoc on those novels!
Nano is here and if you don’t know what it is, its basically a competition against yourself to write fifty thousand words on a new book.
Many people use this as a chance to just finish a novel, get one started, developing great writing habits, and you can do all of those things. This year I’m not competing but I am writing for the whole months of November and I’m sharing 30 tips on writing in mini blog posts.
Today’s post is about name generators. Name generators are great for finding placeholders for names when you come stuck. A lot of writers haven’t done much planning and getting stuck looking for a name can suck up valuable writing time. I have a list of all my favourite generators here, but if you have others you like, feel free to post in the comments!
The best thing about them is you can quickly look up an appropriate prop name, which will make find and replace so much easier later, when you’ve got more time to think about something a little more in suiting with your script.
Good luck with it, and remember this isn’t about a final goal, is all about developing good writing habits!
A stunning and heartwarming review of Behind the Veil!
Can she keep the secrets of her past to rescue a girl tormented by a ghost?
In 1920s Los Angeles, Letitia Hawking reads the veil between life and death. A scrying bowl allows her to experience the final moments of the deceased. She brings closure to grief-stricken war widows and mourning families.
For Letitia, it is a penance. She knows no such peace.For Alasdair Driscoll, it may be the only way to save his niece, Finola, from her growing night terrors. But when Letitia sees a shadowy figure attached to the household, it rouses old fears of her unspeakable past in England.
When a man comes to her about his missing daughter, the third girl to go missing in as many months, Letitia can’t help him when she can’t see who’s taken them.
As a…
View original post 1,214 more words
Behind the Veil —
Can she keep the secrets of her past to rescue a girl tormented by a ghost?
In 1920s Los Angeles, Letitia Hawking reads the veil between life and death. A scrying bowl allows her to experience the final moments of the deceased. She brings closure to grief-stricken war widows and mourning families.
For Letitia, it is a penance. She knows no such peace.
For Alasdair Driscoll, it may be the only way to save his niece, Finola, from her growing night terrors. But when Letitia sees a shadowy figure attached to the household, it rouses old fears of her unspeakable past in England.
When a man comes to her about his missing daughter, the third girl to go missing in as many months, Letitia can’t help him when she can’t see who’s taken them.
As a darkness haunts Letitia’s vision, she may not be given a…
View original post 181 more words
Visiting Meghan’s Haunted blog today for the launch of Behind the Veil!
Behind the Veil
Chapter 3
It was cold when they kicked him out of the pub. Joseph only wanted to buy a bottle to take home. They hadn’t sold it to him after he vomited in the gentlemen’s. But tonight, of all nights, he needed it.
Just like every other night, really.
The rain drenched him, but he didn’t care.
All he wanted was a drink.
He didn’t want to see his family, sitting around the table praising his brother John for the promotion at the bank. Declining the inner invitation, Joseph had made excuses before John’s mocking laughter caught him at the door.
“Let him go, mother, he’s tight already.”
Joseph had proven to himself that his level of sobriety was nigh on angelic then, compared to what he was now. The world swam, and he struggled even to see in the dreary night.
He was lost.
The streets…
View original post 2,788 more words
Today is publication day and Behind the Veil is live and available!
This has been a long journey three years in the making.
From a random idea inspired by dark gifts and Penny Dreadful – to a book on the shelf.
I couldn’t have done this without the help of so many, most importantly is Sharon from Literary Wanderlust. My wonderful editor has poured over these pages with me to make this story everything I wanted it to be and couldn’t have done it without her.
To Hart, the lady who in her very quiet voice that rings with thunder that this was not a short story. Her gentle encouragement and flat out no nonsense has guided me many a time.
And to my mother, who read aloud to us from infants to teenagers, who’s voice I still hear whenever I read Lord of the Rings, and who never denied us a single book.
You can find Behind the Veil on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Depository, and through Literary Wanderlust.
Come join us – in an hour I’ll be meeting with Veronica Patton for a talk and a few secrets too!
Can she keep the secrets of her past to rescue a girl tormented by a ghost?
In 1920s Los Angeles, Letitia Hawking reads the veil between life and death. A scrying bowl allows her to experience the final moments of the deceased. She brings closure to grief-stricken war widows and mourning families.
For Letitia, it is a penance. She knows no such peace.
For Alasdair Driscoll, it may be the only way to save his niece, Finola, from her growing night terrors. But when Letitia sees a shadowy figure attached to the household, it rouses old fears of her unspeakable past in England.
When a man comes to her about his missing daughter, the third girl to go missing in as many months, Letitia can’t help him when she can’t see who’s taken them.
As a darkness haunts Letitia’s vision, she may not be given a choice in helping the determined Mr Driscoll, or stop herself falling in love with him. But to do so risks a part of herself she locked away, and to release it may cost Letitia her sanity and her heart.
COME MEET THE AUTHOR!
Kindly hosted by the lovely V. E. Patton, I’m inviting you to an online event to come meet me, talk about Behind the Veil, but also get this exceptional swag pack for one lucky winner! Click here to sign up for an invitation.
Minus the champagne – it will still be a bit early for that in Australia – but a chance for both those of you who’ve been on this crazy journey since the start, and for those of you I am meeting for the first time to come hear about how this book came to be.
We may be lucky and have my darling editor there too to share some insights about the book and how it came to be in the hands of Literary Wanderlust. I look forward to seeing you and celebrating the launch of my Behind the Veil!
“A tormented medium takes on a difficult case in this supernatural novel.
In 1920s Los Angeles, the spiritualist movement is in full swing. Parents and widows of soldiers who died in World War I are still looking for closure, and medium Letitia Hawking is there to deliver it. Letitia uses her “scrying bowl” to view the deathbed moments of the deceased, offering accounts of their final thoughts to the bereaved and bringing them the peace she cannot find for herself. She wears a black veil during her readings to increase the sense of mystery—and to hide her identity from anyone who might recognize her from her past in London. When she’s approached by the wealthy lawyer Alasdair Driscoll about a case involving his still living young niece, Finola, the medium initially declines. Driscoll wants Letitia to sign a confidentiality agreement before they begin, and she can sense a shadow looming behind him. “She didn’t need the Driscolls’ ghosts,” she thinks. “She had enough of her own.” Then Letitia learns just what’s wrong with Finola: The girl is haunted by phantoms, and if she isn’t helped, she will end up in an asylum. Letitia takes pity on the girl—whose condition has much in common with the medium’s own—and begins to have feelings for Driscoll as well. But can Letitia help the living without someone ending up dead? Dawson’s prose is measured and suspenseful as she slowly unspools the tale: “Finola’s breathing was labored, her eyes twitching beneath her lids and forehead clammy, with threads of auburn hair sticking to her skin….There was no darkness attached to the girl, though the room’s low light gave too many shadows for Letitia’s liking. Ever wary of self-protection, she took hesitant footsteps closer.” The author is adept at selling not only the novel’s supernatural elements, but the historical era as well. She takes her time building the characters and the world around them, which pays dividends once the really spooky stuff starts to happen. Like all good ghost stories, the true horrors aren’t entirely spectral: The characters are haunted by personal traumas and secrets as frightening as any spirit. An old-fashioned ghost story told with inventiveness and style.” – Kirkus Reviews
I spent months dreading this review, and couldn’t be more delighted how wrong my fears were. Of waiting with nail biting terror for what Kirkus would say about my book. On a day to day basis we shouldn’t care what other people think about us, but this was so different. I wanted my book to be well received. On a deep level I knew I’d written a good story – but I can’t change someone else’s opinion. I was so stunned by their review I asked several professionals if I was reading it correctly and then promptly burst into the happiest of tears.
This Kirkus review is why I’m glad I’m a writer. But so are all the other reviews I’ve been receiving on Goodreads and Netgalley, and I’m thrilled to be able to share them with you;
“This has me hooked from the first page! It literally jumps in with a haunting tale.” – Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars
“I had a ton of fun reading this. The writing was atmospheric and gothic and I really loved our main character. The cover caught my eye scrolling through Netgalley, and after reading the synopsis thought to give it a try and I’m SO GLAD I did.” – Netgalley Reviewer, 4 stars
“I ADORED this. My favourite books are typically fantasy or sci-fi, but I was thrilled with Behind the Veil for everything it is. As a work of historical fiction it was insightful, the setting felt real and immersive, but it was Mr Driscoll and Ms Hawking’s growing affections that kept me glued to the pages.” – Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars
“If you do like supernatural horror and hadn’t seen a well done spirit/medium horror novel in a while, this one is for you!” – Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars
“Suspense, mystery, thrills, horror, supernatural. The writing is wonderfully gothic and atmospheric, drawing the reader in instantly. It’s a beautiful tale of darkness and exactly what I wanted for this time of year. 4.5 chilling stars!” – Netgalley Reviewer, 4 stars
“This story…..wow. I really enjoyed the story. Such intricacy with the characters, the descriptions of, not only the settings but what was happening “behind the veil.” Letitia herself is a complex person with flaws and insecurities, about her past and her abilities. Alasdair starts out a rude and seemingly demanding man, yet over the chapters turns out to be more than that.” – Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars
“The story… take(s) the reader on a terrifying journey to the other side to catch a villainous murderer while our physic’s life is always in great jeopardy. This was a really good book. It was much more involved then I thought it would be and kept me reading until the late hours. Strongly recommend to anyone who is interested in Spiritualism, psychic mediums or just likes a really good ghost story. 5 stars!” – Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars
“As a horror story, the book does very well and balances atmosphere with action, and is suitable for newbie horror readers. The author didn’t opt for explicit gore even though she could have done it. I appreciate this move and it made the book a better read.” – Netgalley Reviewer, 4 stars.
There are many more I could add but mostly I want to say thank you. I was not expecting so many people stating this was the kind of horror story they were longing for, that they loved the characters, and they got what they wanted out of the story. That it gave them everything I wanted to give to the readers.
If you’d like to get your hands on it, we still have a few weeks to the launch but you can find your preferred reviewing service or bookshop through my website, so please pre-order a copy today!
E. J. Dawson 