The Valley of the Shadow is available at Amazon. 

The Valley of the Shadow

In November, 1938, Leni Riefenstahl brings her Olympic film to New York, just as Kristallnacht – the night in which the full force of Nazi persecution is unleashed against the German Jews – makes her the most prominent German who is available to the American media. Stung by the discrepancy between her own assessment of herself as an independent artist, and the assumption of the media that she is a spokesperson for the Nazi government, she makes the New York visit the frame for a review of her entire inner-life.

 

The Making of The Valley of the Shadow

This journal records my reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

 

Planning The Valley of the Shadow

During the writing of the novel, I kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

 

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the eighth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which I am exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download.