Ghost
Love
Nelli
Rees
Genre: Romance (with a hint of the
paranormal)
Publisher: Phaze
Date of Publication: 20th January
2015
ISBN: ISBN-13 978-1-60659-849-8
ASIN: B00SNYRXH8
Number of pages: 332
Word Count: 90,000
Cover Artist: Niki Browning
In the madcap, chaotic days when
Communism crumbled in the USSR, Tonia meets and falls in love with Englishman,
Peter Monroe. Despite the protests of her family and the more strenuous
objections of the KGB Tonia agrees
to marry Peter only for him to mysteriously disappear.
Twenty years later a life-toughened
Toni must revisit these bitter-sweet memories when she finds herself and her
daughters endangered by the consequences of that love affair.
In her despair Toni comes to
realize that true love really does conquer all … even death.
Excerpt: Prologue
Present Day:
Dorset, England
Excitement being a
kindred spirit to fear, Toni was undecided as to whether it was a trickle of
fear she felt shivering down her spine or a trickle of excitement.
As she sat staring
at the screen of her laptop, the darkness shrouding the room seemed to draw in
on her: her head swam, her palms became clammy. Tears welled up in her eyes.
She blinked them away, hoping that by doing so the message on her screen would
disappear. It didn’t.
Peter Monroe wants
to be friends on Facebook
Hesitantly she
maneuvered the cursor over the ‘connect’ button and pressed ‘enter.’ The screen
mutated to show the Facebook page for ‘Peter Monroe.’ It was Peter! She
recognized the profile photograph instantly. She’d taken it. She remembered
posing him in front of the bandstand in Gorki Park on that spring day back in
1990, remembered laughing at the stupid faces he pulled, remembered the way his
long chestnut hair flopped over his forehead, remembered…
How could she
forget? He had been her one true love.
Love. A word made
empty by misuse…by overuse. She wondered how many had ever endured the touch of
real love, that soul-eviscerating sensation that comes when you know you have
found your soul-mate. Very few, she decided. Perhaps this was all for the good:
true love brought anguish in equal measure to joy. As the last twenty years had
taught her, finding true love was a bitter-sweet blessing. Her fingers trembled
as she typed.
Is it really you,
Peter?
The reply was
instantaneous.
Yes…I’ve missed
you, Tonia.
She couldn’t stop
herself: the tears flowed down her cheeks.
But…
She paused, terrified
that what she would type next might cause this marvelous mirage to vanish.
But I thought you
were dead.
The seconds ticked
by, then:
I am.
About
the Author:
FORBIDDEN LOVE, SOVIET STYLE
Privet! (That’s Russian for ‘Hi!’)
I’m Nelli Rees and my first novel, “Ghost Love”, is out now, published by Phaze, billed as a ‘romantic thriller with a flavoring of the supernatural’. “Ghost Love” has two intertwined stories set twenty years apart these following the adventures of a Russian girl, Tonia, as she discovers that true love really does conquer all … even death.
The ‘Forbidden Love’ plot device has been around since writers first put pen to papyrus so writers should treat it with care. Familiarity is, after all, first cousin to boredom and ripping off Romeo and Juliet isn’t seen as a great step towards announcing your creative originality. But …
“Ghost Love” takes the reader back to the world of Moscow circa 1989, then capital of Communist USSR, a USSR undergoing what I have come to call ‘the Second Russian Revolution’, the time when Communism was crumbling and the Iron Curtain was being torn down. Sure it was something of a ‘soft’ revolution – there wasn’t the fighting in the streets or the civil war that marked the revolution of 1917 – but in many ways it was just as profound. The move from a centrally-planned, authoritarian Communist state to one which was free-market and democratic (well, sort of democratic) was pretty traumatic and one the old Communist apparatchiks fought tooth-and-nail.
One of the things these apparatchiks were most terrified of was losing control of young people so they did everything in their power to keep them under their thumb. This is what Tonia’s professor intended when she announced that British exchange students were to join Tonia’s class (I know this because I took it from my diary written back in 1989):
‘I hope I do not need to make clear that you all must demonstrate vigilance during these classes, that you must not give in to any Capitalist incitements or succumb to their specious propaganda. Rather you must use these classes as an opportunity to prove to our British guests the superiority of the Soviet, socialist, way of life especially when compared to their rotting Capitalism. You must not accept any presents from them, not converse with them on any subject that might be construed as trivial or anti-socialist and above all, must not …’ Zoya Mikhailovna struggled with the nature of what she was about to suggest, ‘… enter into a personal relationship with them. To do so would be to put your place in this University at risk. Remember, you are ambassadors of your Socialist motherland and must justify the trust placed in you by the University’s Party organization.’
Now this, believe me, was no idle threat … if the Communist Party blackballed you there was absolutely NO chance of getting a decent job post-uni. These efforts to make sure you toed the line were backed up by the KGB who had an almost fanatical interest in monitoring and subverting any romantic attachments formed between Russians and Westerners. We were watched all the time and any digression from the Party line resulted in an interview with the KGB, a truly scary experience.
So, if there is anyone out there of the opinion that there’s no such thing as ‘forbidden love’ in the modern world, think again. What’s described in “Ghost Love” is the real deal. But thankfully, love does conquer all: my English husband and I have just celebrated twenty-five years together.
Nelli Rees, born in Moscow, trained
as a linguist and a musician. With her future husband Englishman Rod she worked
and travelled around Russia, finally coming to live in England in 1998. Nelli
has had several successful careers: recording a critically acclaimed nu-jazz
album “Jazz Noir”, becoming an award-winning jewellery maker, writing a book
“Glass Bead Jewelry Projects”, and doing all this whilst being a mother and a
wife. “Ghost Love” is Nelli’s first novel and draws heavily on her own
experiences as a young woman in Soviet Russia and the obstacles she and her
husband-to-be faced during those difficult times.
Video of Nelli performing
"Falling In Love Again":
Thank you for posting the "Ghost Love" stuff, really excited to be here! :)
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