Book Review: The Incidental Spy by Libby Fischer Hellmann

First, I must apologize to Ms. Hellmann for the lateness of this review. I can only plead work and conventions. And laundry.

When it comes to the plight of Jewish refugees during the Second World War, the focus tends to be on their escape or attempts to do so. In Ms. Hellmann’s new novella from The Red Herring Press, Lena Bentheim has reached safety in Chicago, but at the cost of the rest of her family and her beloved Josef. Through a combination of luck and determination, she lands a job as a secretary in the U. of Chicago physics department, falls in love and has a son.

The department has taken on a new top-secret project, and Lena’s husband is in the front row of scientists working on it. Then, Karl dies in a traffic accident, and Lena must return to work. The department welcomes her back. Life is a struggle, but she’ll do what she must for her son, Max.

Until the night Max goes missing. Suddenly, Lena is forced to spy on her coworkers, supplying the Nazi regime with information on the experiments in atomic fission that will become known as the Manhattan Project.

It’s impossible not to want to jump in and help Lena. A stranger in a country where her religion and her country of origin are suspect, where she has no one she can trust or turn to, and where the life of her child hangs on choices she must make against her will and her conscience, she is a character one can embrace without a qualm. Ms. Hellmann places her in a seemingly impossible situation where she must either find the courage to battle her blackmailers or accept the treason they demand she perform for them. The suspense in this superb novella is more truly in that internal struggle than in the outer one of spies and traitors.

The Incidental Spy is available in print and, shortly, in ebook on Amazon. I received an advance review copy from Ms. Hellmann for review purposes. I’m delighted I did.

Some Facts about Small Presses

There is a good deal of misinformation on the internet these days about publishing. Much of it focuses on on-demand printing and ebooks, both of which are the foundation of the Zumaya Publications business model. In hope of not having to endlessly repeat myself, I will list some facts that will save both of us time.

1. The publisher is not your enemy. To listen to some people, many of them self-published authors who either gave up after their book was rejected over and over and/or decided they’d make more money doing it themselves, publishers are all crooks who steal the bulk of the sales money and are determined to screw authors any way they can. This is a lie. Not that there aren’t crooked “publishers,” or (more often) people who thought they knew enough to start calling themselves publishers but end up tanking for lack of business skills. However, the publishers I know are in the business because they love books and want to help authors get published.

2. The publisher is not your friend. Since the early days of the independent ebook industry, circa 1996, it was repeated frequently how much more author-friendly they were than the major publishers. This mantra has led to a belief that a small press, whether print or ebook or both, is willing to let an author dictate such things as cover art and editing. Wrong. Publishing is a business, and the publisher is the final authority with regard to how that business operates. If you can’t accept that, then self-publishing is likely a better option.

3. Small presses are desperate for manuscripts, so you can ignore their guidelines. Oh, lordy, I wish. With the exception of ebook-only presses with large monthly publishing schedules, small presses almost always have more queries for submission than they can deal with. They also are nearly always run by a handful of people—sometimes only one person—so they are going to be particularly fussy about having those guidelines followed.

4. Small presses are more willing to accept first-time authors. True. However, that doesn’t mean you can type “the end” and send them your first draft. Or worse, send them the first three chapters of a work in progress. What—do you think they’re going to provide you with a free critique or editing service. Dream on. The standards at small presses are no different from the ones you would apply before approaching an agent or a traditional house. They expect well-written, professionally prepared manuscripts. That means either finding a good critique group or paying someone qualified to edit your work. Your high school English teacher may do a bang-up job correcting your spelling and grammar and punctuation, but unless he or she also teaches creative writing—and maybe not even then—he or she isn’t qualified to edit a manuscript.

5. You don’t need to know grammar and such to be a writer. Right. And you don’t need to go to medical school to be a doctor or take flying lessons to be a pilot. I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who think they can be the next best-selling author without ever mastering the tools and rules of the writing trade. Because it is a trade, people. It’s a job that requires very specific skills that must be learned the same way a musician learns to play the piano—practice. This bit of nonsense is usually accompanied by the belief that as long as the writer has a great story idea, the publisher will take care of editing it into shape. If I ever lay hands on the moron responsible for that misinformation, I will squash him/her between volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I may add to this list as life progresses, but based on my discussions with other publishers these are the top five. That is, the ones that will get your query or submission deleted or tossed without hesitation. Ignore them at your peril.