Book Launch Review:The 6th of November by Pablo Solares Acebal

It was the 6th of November 1939. The fog still blanketed Requejado. It was so intense that you could barely see anything. Among the aspens, some shadows could be seen, which could be the spirits who inhabited that same place not so long ago. They were still there, trying to find the hopeful light they saw, but they ignored it since they opted to continue fighting for their beliefs. The temperature lowered as you got into the heart of the forest, grief and feelings for deception could be felt there; a kind of bitterness, which unfortunately would be eternal.

In his first novel, Spanish author Pablo Solares Acebal deals with themes of love and life, death and dreams. Lyrical and occasionally poetic, this book is hauntingly atmospheric, reminiscent of intriguing overheard conversations.

Set in the village of Requejado in northern Spain, we start to explore the lives of people searching for meaning and struggling to cope with the implications of the past. Religion and class distinctions run like a thread through the book, which challenges novel writing conventions, raising unanswered questions in the mind of the reader and unresolved issues that leave you wanting more.

The Spanish edition was released in Spain and in selected South-American countries two years ago. I was fortunate to have an advance copy of the English language translation, to be published on March 9, 2014 in the UK and Austrailia and May 6, 2014 in the U.S. In the meantime, a Spanish edition is available on Amazon. Pablo Solares Acebal is currently working with director Daniel Cabrero in a film adaptation of The 6^th of November.

About the Author

Spanish Author Pablo Solares Acebal lives in Villaviciosa, Asturias, and worked at an emergent publisher in Spain. He has a degree in English Studies and Translation from the University of Oviedo and now works as a freelance English-Spanish translator. Pablo is on Twitter @solaresacebal and on Facebook

Book Launch Guest Post by Carol M. Cram, author of The Towers of Tuscany

Available Now on Amazon US and Amazon UK

Set amid the twisting streets and sunlit piazzas of medieval Italy, The Towers of Tuscany tells the story of a woman who dares to follow her own path in the all-male domain of the painter’s workshop. Sofia Barducci is born into a world where a woman is only as good as the man who cares for her, but she still claims the right to make her own mistakes. Trained in secret by her father to create the beautifully-crafted panels and altarpieces acclaimed today as masterpieces of late medieval art, Sofia’s desire for freedom from her father’s workshop leads her to betray her passion and sink into a life of loveless drudgery with a husband who despises her when she does not produce a son.

I never expected to launch a career as a writer of historical fiction. Fiction, yes. Historical fiction? Well . . . It’s true that I love history and I’ve certainly been known to pick up novels set in the past (most novels are when you come to think about it!), but surely to write historical fiction, I must need a Ph.D. and an office filled from floor to ceiling with musty tomes that I’d actually read.

It turns out that all I really needed was a spark and I found that spark one day while thinking about San Gimignano, a hill town in Italy that includes at least thirteen medieval towers and commanding views of the iconic Tuscan landscape. During its heyday in the fourteenth century, San Gimignano had over 70 towers. Why was I thinking about San Gimignano? I had visited the town a few times over the past two decades (I also love traveling) and I had fond memories of it. Why it popped into my head one day while I was trying to come up with a subject for a novel is anyone’s guess.

But what happened was that I got to wondering how the town of San Gimignano had looked with 70 towers crammed into the same space as the town occupies today. Had a painter from the period actually depicted them? The answer is no, so far as we know. Landscape painting was in its infancy in the 14^th century and highly stylized. I decided to invent a painter who departed from the usual religious iconography and painted a view of the towers of San Gimignano in the style of the time. My painter is a woman because I was also intrigued by the possibility that women must have painted in medieval times, even if they did not become known. Medieval painting was a family affair, so after consulting with experts in medieval art, I concluded that it was plausible that a painter could have trained his wife or daughter in the painter’s craft.

And then I got a sign that my novel was destined to be written.

While surfing the Web for sites on Tuscany, I stumbled upon the website for San Gimignano 1300, a museum in San Gimignano that includes a large scale model of how the town appeared in the year 1300. I couldn’t believe it! Two artists had painstakingly recreated the city complete with all seventy of its towers. As soon as I could, I caught a plane to Rome, the train to Florence, and the bus to San Gimignano. My morning spent at San Gimignano 1300 was one of the most productive of my writing career to date.

Over the next year, I immersed myself in the fascinating history of the period. It turns out that I already had the main pre-requisites for an author of historical fiction—I was curious and I could read. I also have a graduate degree in Drama with a major in History so I guess I’m not totally devoid of background, but I learned early on that researching a period to add flavor and verisimilitude to a work of fiction is not nearly as onerous (or dull) as academic research. I could pick and choose what I needed to include and I had experts to call on when I got stuck. I carefully avoided including “info dumps” in my novel and only snuck in the results of my research when needed for the story. I’m now hooked on writing historical fiction.

The Towers of Tuscany is my first historical novel with an “arts twist.” I have dipped my toe in most of the arts over the years and my goal is to combine my love of the arts with my love of history to produce novels that celebrate an individual’s journey with his or her art during a particular era. My next novel, tentatively titled “Nocturnes” tells the story of a concert pianist in Vienna in the 1820s—shortly after the death of Beethoven and during the last year of Schubert’s life. I plan to release that novel in the fall of 2014. And the next one is about an actress embroiled in the “Old Price” riots of 1809 in Covent Garden Theatre in London. History and the arts are full of great stories! A sequel to The Towers of Tuscany is also not out of the question.

The Towers of Tuscany is appealing to people who are fascinated by fourteenth century Italy and by Tuscany, particularly the towns of San Gimignano and Siena, where the action of the novel takes place. Readers interested in the glorious art of the period and in workings of a medieval painter’s workshop are also enjoying the novel.

But most of all, people are enjoying The Towers of Tuscany because of Sofia Carelli, my spirited, talented, kick ass heroine who never gives up her passion for painting or her search for love, even in the face of almost insurmountable limitations. I was recently honored to receive a review of The Towers of Tuscany by bestselling SciFi author Spider Robinson who happens to live on the same rain-soaked island as I do. Spider calls my Sofia “one of the most endearing protagonists in years” and the novel itself a “startlingly first-rate piece of historical fiction.” Another reviewer gave the novel “six stars out of five” and called it a “beautifully crafted masterpiece of historical fiction.”

For an author, nothing beats knowing that someone who does not even know you has read your work and enjoyed it.

# # #

About the Author

Carol M. Cram has enjoyed a wonderful career as an educator, teaching at Capilano University in North Vancouver for over twenty years and authoring forty-plus bestselling textbooks on business communications and software applications for Cengage Learning. She holds an MA in Drama from the University of Toronto and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Carol is currently focusing as much of her attention as she can spare between walks in the woods on writing historical novels with an arts twist. She and her husband, painter Gregg Simpson, share a life on beautiful Bowen Island near Vancouver, Canada, where Carol is also very active in the local arts council. Visit her online at www.carolcram.com and find Carol on Twitter @carolcram.

Book Review ~ The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport

St. Martin's Press Pub Date Jun 3 2014

Also on Amazon US and Amazon UK

There have been many accounts of the story tragic story of the Romanov family, yet Helen Rappaport's new book brings an additional depth of perspective. Painstaking research, including translation of rarely seen personal letters, allows their lives to slowly unfold in fascinating detail.

The stories of public extravagance contrasts starkly with their private economies. The four girls (who for the first time don't simply blur into one) make their own toys and hand down their dresses and shoes as they grow out of them.

Helen's account leaves me undecided about the often sinister figure of Grigori Rasputin. He was clearly a great help to the family yet his association also did their reputation inestimable harm. Whatever the truth, he seems a poor choice as the girls 'moral guardian.' Another ambivalent character is their maternal great grandmother. Queen Victoria, who seems to keep them at a distance and considers Russia to be 'a savage superstitious country.' 

I was touched to read how the Romanov sisters, who had previously led such sheltered lives, dedicated themselves to nursing the sick and wounded victims of the war. Helen Rapport deals with the appalling end of their story with great sensitivity, making this book a fitting memorial to four very special sisters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.

  

About the Author:

Helen Rappaport  lives in Oxford and studied Russian at Leeds University. A specialist in Russian and nineteenth-century women’s history, she has appeared on British TV and in films until the early 1990s, when she abandoned acting and embraced her second love - history and with it the insecurities of a writer’s life.

Helen is a fluent Russian speaker and her great passion is to winkle out lost stories from the footnotes and breathe new life and new perspectives into old subjects. In 2010 she was talking head on a Mystery Files documentary about the Murder of the Romanovs for National Geographic channel.

Vist Helen's website at http://www.helenrappaport.com/.

New Book Launch: Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott

How far would you go to hold on to the people you love? 

Available on Amazon US and Amazon UK

When Olivia Brookes calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. She has reason to fear the worst; this isn’t the first tragedy that Olivia has experienced. Now, two years later, Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas is called in to investigate this family again, but this time it’s Olivia who has disappeared. All the evidence suggests that she was here, in the family home, that morning. 

But her car is in the garage, and her purse is in her handbag – on the kitchen table. The police want to issue an appeal, but for some reason every single picture of this family has been removed from albums, from phones, from computers. 

And then they find the blood… 

Has the past caught up with Olivia? 

Sleep Tight – if you can. You never know who’s watching. 

Praise for Rachel Abbott: 

"Rachel Abbott will keep you guessing long into the night and just as soon as you’ve figured it out...think again!”- Suspense Magazine 

"It is one of those books that holds you hostage and is hard to put down until the end" – Confessions of a Reader 

“Abbott creates a tangled web of deception, secrets, and red herrings” – Booklist 

“Pure Genius: A Masterclass in the Perfect Thriller!!” – Love Books 

Visit the author's website at http://www.rachel-abbott.com/

Guest Post: The Accidental Courier, by Robert Darke

The Accidental Courier available now as a paperback, or eBook, from Amazon US and Amazon UK

Short Stories

I was tidying my office the other day and found an old diary entry from 15 Jan 1984 that read, "This afternoon I started writing..." I must be one of the world's worst procrastinators because it took nearly 30 years to turn the dream into a reality. After my early attempts, I treated writing as a craft that had to be learned and attended all sorts of workshops and residential courses in the ensuing years.

Before embarking on a novel, for some reason, I needed to prove to myself that I was capable of writing to a 'publishable' standard. So I tried my hand at short stories and had loads of rejections before, finally, getting a twist-end story accepted by the national UK magazine, Best, who printed 'Sunday Love Songs' in their Autumn Special of 1999. It was great being in the Autumn Special because, unlike the weekly edition, it was on the shelves of every newsagent and supermarket in the land for a whole season! I thought I'd arrived but was soon brought back down to earth when my next few follow-up submissions were all rejected.

Well, I may be a procrastinator but I'm also tenacious and persistent! I convinced myself that if it happened once it could happen again - and it did. A couple of years later Best accepted another and then another and, suddenly, I was invited to by-pass the 'slush pile' and submit my stories directly to the editor via email. I'm eternally grateful to the then editor, Pat Richardson, who is now retired, for her faith in my work. I went on to have several short stories published in other nationals and small press 'literary' magazines as well as winning some competition prizes. So I told myself it was the right time to start the novel.

My First Novel

It took me 3 years to write my first novel. It was meant to be a thriller about smuggling and murder in Pembrokeshire (a county I love) and there was a bit of love interest too - just the sort of thing I enjoyed reading. I showed it to a few trusted friends and their feedback was that it was somewhere between a thriller, a romance and a travel guide but sadly didn't quite meet the full requirements of any of those genres. They said some kind things but all I heard was the criticism - and it hurt! But after retreating into my cave to lick my wounds I could see why they were right. I couldn't face rewriting it all over again and so I put it in my bottom drawer and started another novel ...but after a few chapters I got bored and figured the reader would be too.

So I took a break from writing and concentrated on my career.

NaNoWriMo Success

  

It wasn't until ill health forced me to take time off work that I stumbled across National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It sounded like a bit of a gimmick but being thoroughly bored with daytime TV by then I decided to take the challenge. The aim was to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. Half way through that month, I was well enough to return to work but I ploughed on in my lunch hours because, as I said above, once I do eventually start something, I'm very determined. I hit the word count target but the novel still wasn't finished.

It didn't matter: I was back in the writing habit and thoroughly enjoying it. A couple of months later, the first draft of The Accidental Courier was finished. It took another 18 months of polishing, editing and rewriting before, finally, I felt confident enough to self-publish last October. Unlike my first attempt at a novel, this time the feedback has been 100% positive so far and, for me, that has been incredibly gratifying and made it all worthwhile. I'm now busy working on the next novel which takes as its central character, Detective Inspector Cannard who first appears in The Accidental Courier and it will also feature some of my other favourite characters from that book.

The Accidental Courier is available as a paperback, or eBook, from Amazon US and Amazon UK

# # #

About The Author

Robert Darke was born and raised in Cardiff but then moved around the UK with his job in HM Customs and Excise before eventually returning to settle back in his home town. He left Customs to provide IT Security and Audit services for several major organisations in the private and public sectors.  In 2013 he took early retirement from his job as Head of Corporate Communication for a large government agency to allow more time to concentrate on his writing. He is also a keen photographer, hospital radio presenter and proud new member of the Harley-Davidson Owners Group (HOG) Great Western Chapter.

For more information please visit:

www.robertdarke.com

www.facebook.com/robertdarkewriter

www.twitter.com/robertdarke

www.robdarke.wordpress.com 

Book Launch Guest Post ~ The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price by C.L. Schneider

To save the realms and those he cares for, Ian Troy must embrace the one thing he fears most: his own power.

The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price

Available now on Amazon US and Amazon UK

As the youngest child in a house of readers, I was never want for a wide variety of books. My mom liked a good mystery or biography. My dad always had a paperback western in his hand. Horror grabbed my sister’s attention, and my brother was the comic-book, sci-fi, and fantasy buff. The classics were all there too. We were a multi-genre household and that exposure set the stage for me at an early age.  Somewhere between “Gone with the Wind” and “The Mists of Avalon”, the cowboys and outlaws, the detectives, the monsters and the heroes, I realized: I want to do this.  I can do this.

Starting to write
  

So, I sat down at a typewriter in my parents' living room and went to work, creating worlds very different from the small, Kansas town where I was born. High school ended, life happened, and I was forced to put my writing aside many times over the years. I devoured books written by others, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I would pick up my writing and start again. Some stories I finished. Some are still no more than scribbled down ideas, settings, and names; skeletons of future novels, waiting patiently in a notebook for me to flesh them out.

All about the characters

I've dabbled in various genres. With a lifelong interest in the Middle Ages, and all things supernatural and unexplained, I feel most at home with fantasy. Yet, writing, for me, has never been about the genre so much, as it is about the characters. That’s where I start a new project. Defining their motivations, their fears, likes, dislikes, and then throwing curve balls at them to see how they’ll react.  People’s imperfections, their secrets and lies, what they can endure and what they’re capable of—I believe that’s where the stories are.   

Crown of Stones

Those overflowing bookshelves in my parents' house still influence me today. Ian Troy, my protagonist in The Crown of Stones is a little bit cowboy and outlaw, a detective when he needs to be, a monster when he can’t help it, and a hero even when he tries not to be.

Born of the Shinree, a fallen race reviled for their inherent addiction to magic, Ian Troy is no stranger to scorn.  His people bred and sold as slaves for hundreds of years, Ian was conscripted into the Rellan army and made to fight in their longstanding conflict with the ruthless Langorian invaders. In an attempt to end the war, he wields the Crown of Stones, an ancient Shinree relic of untold power—and pays a terrible price.  

A decade later, still tortured by the aftermath of that day, Ian lives in self-imposed exile. Having renounced his magical heritage, he curbs his obsession with a steady stream of wine and regret. He struggles to put it all behind him.  Until a fateful encounter with a pretty assassin brings Ian’s past crashing into the present.  Now, targeted by enemies old and new, Ian is forced to use magic again, awakening his deadly addiction. 

C.L. Schneider

# # #   

About the Author

Originally from Atchison in Kansas, C.L.Schneider now lives in upstate New York with her husband and two sons. The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price is her first published novel and she is now working on the two follow-up books that will conclude Ian’s story.  You can find out more on her Facebook Page, follow her on Twitter @cl_schneider and and follow her journey as a new author on her Goodreads blog, "Heading Down The Yellow Brick Road".   

Book Review ~ The Forgotten Pioneer: A family story set in East Africa

I was a child in Kenya when the country gained independence, so was fascinated to read this very personal account by Anthea Ramsay. Drawing from her grandparents’ diaries and photographs, as well as her own memories as a child, this sometimes harrowing book describes what it was like to live in East Africa for the first white settlers.  We then follow the adventures of Anthea’s family right through to the present day.

Taking real dangers in their stride, from wild animals to lawless Mau Mau rebels, this family lived through an era that could easily be forgotten.  There was the constant threat of malaria or the dreaded black water fever, with only the most basic medical care. It is recalled as a happy time, however, with amazing extremes of wealth and poverty.

The Forgotten Pioneer is a very readable book and shines a light on a period of history which is often overlooked.  Thanks to Anthea Ramsay at least the men and women who helped to make Kenya what it is today will no longer be forgotten.

Now available on Amazon UK  and Amazon US