Sea Changes by Gail Graham

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Gail Graham’s previous novel, CROSSFIRE, won the Buxtehude Bulle, a prestigious German literary award. CROSSFIRE has been translated into German, French, Danish, Finnish and Swedish. Three of Gail’s other books were NY Times Book of the Year recommendations. Gail lived in Australia for 32 years, where she owned and operated a community newspaper and published several other books, including A COOL WIND BLOWING (a biography of Mao Zedong) STAYING ALIVE and A LONG SEASON IN HELL. She returned to the United States in 2002, and now lives in Tucson, Arizona.

You can visit Gail online at http://www.gailgraham.net/.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

When Sarah’s husband dies suddenly, she is left with no anchor and no focus.Grief is an ever-present companion and counseling a weekly chore with minimal results, but when Sarah decides to end her life her suicide attempt takes her to an underwater world where she finds comfort and friendship. Afterwards, back on the beach she wonders – Was it a dream? Was I hallucinating? Or am I going mad?

Her efforts to make sense of the experience lead to Sarah’s becoming a suspect in the alleged kidnapping of a young heiress. Now her worlds are colliding – and the people she trusts are backing away, not believing a word she says. She must decide what is real and what is not. Her life depends on it.

Here's a look at a portion of her book:

She doesn’t have to get up if she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t have to do anything. Propped against the pillows, she watches the changing patterns of light filter through the branches of the tree outside her window. She could lie here until Friday and nobody would know or care. But that would be giving up. You’re not supposed to give up. You’re supposed to keep trying, whether you feel like it or not. If you keep going through the motions, sooner or later, something will kick in.
So she gets up and dresses, even though she’s not going anywhere. She puts on clean underwear and clean, pressed clothes. Her appointment with Kahn isn’t until Friday, but that’s not the point. You can’t spend the day in your nightgown.
There’s nothing much in the newspaper. There rarely is. It’s Australia, only eighteen million people in the whole country. Sitting at the kitchen table with a second mug of coffee, Sarah tackles the crossword puzzle. It was years before she mastered Australian crossword puzzles, which contain fewer words than their American counterparts and are shaped differently, more like skeletons than grids. The spellings are different too.
She hasn’t eaten since yesterday and she ought to be hungry, but isn’t. French women don’t get fat because they don’t eat unless they’re hungry. Sarah looks in the refrigerator, but nothing tempts her. She needs to go shopping. Later, perhaps, when it’s not so hot. She wishes she had a ceiling fan, or better still, central air conditioning. Nobody in Sydney has air conditioning. They don’t think it’s necessary, not with the beach so close. Nobody has central heating, either. They say it doesn’t get cold enough, but it does.
Sarah picks up a novel from the library and tries to concentrate. It’s not a very good novel, although it’s supposed to be a bestseller. That doesn’t mean anything, these days. Everything’s a bestseller. The protagonist has left his wife, is having an affair, has just learned he’s got cancer. He’ll probably die at the end. Sarah thinks he deserves to die and dozes off on the couch. When she opens her eyes, damp and sticky with the perspiration of an afternoon nap, it’s already getting dark.
The telephone rings. Nobody calls her, except telemarketers and sometimes Kahn, when he needs to cancel a session. If it rings five times, the machine will answer it. Five, six, seven. maybe she’s forgotten to turn the machine on.

The Pyewiz and the Amazing Mobile Phone by Herbert Howard Jones

About the Author:

Herbert Howard Jones was born in London in 1955, and went to Eccles Hall, a boarding school in Norfolk. He left after a couple of years and attended IIford County High School in Barkingside where he where he met Bram Tovey, now conductor of the Vancouver Symphony orchestra, and pianist Derek Smith who later played with the Johhny Dankworth ensemble. They inspired Jones to take up music, which he still practices today.

Jones attended Lisburn college in Ireland and then worked in a wide variety of occupations. These included in law, as a porter at the BBC, in jewellery manufacture, publishing, and commercial art. As a BBC porter he was required to hump equipment between studios and could be spotted riding shotgun around London in the old green BBC vans of that time. He was eventually sacked for lateness!

He then found a job in a Hatton Garden jewellery firm in London. As an apprentice jeweller he was required to assemble twenty-two 14 carat gold gate bracelets a day. In the two years he spent in the business he had personally made nearly 12000 bracelets, which was quite a feat, but was mind numbing work, and not something he wanted to do with the rest of his life. At this stage he didn’t know what avenue to go down next.

But the clue lay in his early life. As a young boy, he showed an early interest in the arts, particularly writing, musical composition and painting, and has pursued them as interests ever since. At this time he met the daughter of the captain of the Titanic, which sank in 1912, and consequently became obsessed with the myth which surrounded the subject. Jones remembers handling Titantic artifacts in the lady’s cottage country, and thinking that they made beautiful art ornaments! They inspired Jones to start creating collages using old bric-a brac, attaching small objects to canvas and applying paint to them.

In his teens, Jones lived with the family of author Julian Branston, whose mother was a close confidant of British comic Kenneth Williams. They introduced Jones to writer and poet John Pudney, famed as the author of wartime poem ‘For Johnny’. As busy as he was, Pudney would give kindly critiques of Jones’ earlier writings, urging Jones to say ‘more with less’. Jones described his writing efforts at this time as pretentious and undisciplined, and was frankly lucky, that ‘Pudney gave him the time of day,’

Jones found John Pudney fascinating as, among other things, he knew Pablo Picasso personally, having met him as a reporter during the war. To the aspiring and awe struck Jones, this was all glamorous grist for this artistic mill. At this time he became fascinated by celebrity, which was hardly surprising considering that his benefactors frequently had prominent people down to dinner, including the Bishop of Liverpool and others.

When Jones worked for a firm of ‘showbiz’ solicitors in London, he ran errands for screen star John Mills, and composer Tony Hatch, but felt that life as a London commuter just wasn’t for him, and so he ‘dropped’ out and went to live in Deptford. Jones justified this to himself by saying this was his ‘down and out in Paris and London period’.

Jones moved around South London and finally settled in some lodgings in Lewisham which were also being occupied by the now international artist David Mabb, presently Head of Masters at Goldsmith’s college, from whom he acquired wonderful discarded art pieces. Mabb’s charismatic and confident personality had an inspiring effect on Jones who began to look at art in a new light. In Jones’ eyes, David Mabb was ‘one of the solid group of British artists who are exponents of a new kind of socially responsible art, which is dynamic and very much at the cutting edge.’ In Jones’ view, Mabb’s art not only succeeds powerfully as a room decoration, but it invokes a strong visceral response in the viewer. If Jones was going to paint, he wanted his art to be as eloquent as Mabb’s! At the time of writing, Jones is still struggling to achieve this goal. Jones cites US artist Ron English, as his other influence.

Meeting well known people and those active in the arts and entertainment industries had the effect of shaping Jones’ view of the world, and he vowed that one day, he too would make a contribution. It was only in his fifties thatJones has seriously sought publication. The Pyewiz and The Amazing Mobile Phone is his first book.

At the present time Jones is busily writing his second book and is painting. He hopes to have his first exhibition of art in London in the near future.

Jones’ most thrilling life moment: ‘being six feet away from Frank Sinatra when he came to the London Palladium!’

You can visit his website at www.science-fiction-fantasy.com.

About the Book:

Journey to a frozen planet to find a long lost twin. An amazing crystal phone with incredible powers. A cunning old pirate wizard who must be stopped.

Schoolboy Terry Mctrain thinks the new tenant in his parent's guesthouse is strange. Stranger still is the reason why she is here. Then Terry learns about a twin brother he never knew he had, kidnapped by a pirate wizard years ago. Baffled by all this, Terry realizes there's a mystery to be solved, and a secret to be uncovered. But when he discovers that the fate of the world is also in his hands, he wonders..

Could this turn into the adventure of a lifetime?

Perhaps, but unless Terry and his friend Will travel to the other side of the solar system to solve this puzzle, there's a danger that the world would be destroyed, and his twin brother lost forever.

Here's a look at the first page:

"Ouch!" Terry McTrain screwed up his face in agony. The sharp 　point of the other boy's cutlass nicked his shoulder, and blood oozed through the jagged tear in his shirt.　 His mum would go crazy!
　　　　　　　
The boy he was fighting was a good swordsman. If Terry wasn't careful he would end up with another wound.
　　　　　　　
He swished his own weapon ambitiously through the air, but missed his opponent by a mile.　 It gave the strangely familiar boy a chance to jab him in the belly, and this time it really hurt.　 Terry dropped his own cutlass in shock. More blood, even redder than before, oozed through his shirt.
　　　　　　　
Shaking, he reached down to unbutton it, but found himself grabbing the edge of the blanket instead. With a start he sat up in bed and looked round. He had been dreaming!
　　　　　　　
Still shaking slightly, he let out a long slow relieved breath and glanced over at the clock on the desk by his bed. It was nearly seven, time to get up. Then almost against his will, his eyes came to rest on the mess of papers next to the computer.　Homework! Tons of it and his form master wanted it handed in today.
　　　　　　　
But this was simply not possible, unless he did it on the bus. Unfortunately the journey to school only took twenty minutes, which was hardly enough time to think about the homework, let alone do it. Terry got out of bed, his mind pondering. He would just have to think of an excuse.

Gone Away Into The Land by Jeffrey Allen

Join Jeffrey Allen, author of the philisophical inspirational novel Gone Away Into the Land (Sage Publishing, LLC, July 2008), as he virtually tours the blogosphere in June on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion!

Allen studied art at Bloomsburg University for two years before attending Boston University where he majored in history and minored in set design and fine arts. A one year hiatus, in the form a hitchhiking trip, served only to heighten his restless and inquisitive nature. Allen attributes those early journeys to laying the foundations for his views about politics and religion and the relationship they share with historical perspective.

Later, he traveled through Europe and Mexico where his compulsive curiosity with historical myth and legend intensified, especially for the interpretations that obscure the truths underlying foreign and American cultures. Allen was fascinated by the way events are twisted and misconstrued within historical writings because of religious beliefs or political power brokering. Those years of learning, searching, and questioning have contributed greatly to the philosophical depth of his writing. Allen continues to this day to study, research, and philosophize about the positive and negative effects on our culture due to an over abundance of historical and religious misconceptions.

Jeffrey Allen graduated from Millersville State University in architectural design and taught for two years while also working toward his Masters degree at Temple University in Philadelphia. After a brief teaching career, he created his own architectural woodworking firm in 1980.

By 1982, Allen was owner and president of Artistic Furnishings Incorporated, a design house and manufacturer of custom architectural millwork. The company employed designers, artisans and support staff. His work can be seen throughout eastern Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey in private residences and businesses. Today, Allen resides in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where he still works in the field of interior space planning, although most of his time is devoted to writing.

For more information about this author and his work visit: http://www.jeffreyballen.com/

This ambitious yarn follows twelve-year old John Greber who, along with his mother Ellie, is the object of abuse at the hands of John’s father whom he names “The Beast.”

One day, “The Beast” abandons John and his mother while at the same time snatching away John’s six-year old sister Marny. John vows to seek revenge, confront his repulsive father, and rescue his sister Marny. As we discover, all of this transpires during a time where John and his mother will be indirectly involved in a Civil War that has far reaching repercussions that may lead to the destruction of the world.Tagging along with John and his mother, Allen cleverly uses his mind-boggling world as a vehicle in understanding what life is all about and the human condition. This is particularly in evidence as we witness John’s challenge of making the transition from childhood to adulthood as he self-examines the big questions in life as well as the nature of good and evil, the meaning of life and the quest to understand himself.

What I found quite striking about Gone Away Into the Land is Allen’s skillful narrative pacing in revealing bit-by-bit the various themes to the reader and permitting him or her to slowly discover it. Another plus is that Allen does not resort to some kind of magic wherein here lies on the fantasy aspect in order to enable John to break out of a thorny situation by manufacturing a super-duper miraculous spell that the reader never even knew about.

With its deftly constructed plot, episodic structure, a lovable hero,interesting secondary characters, and a dash of suspense, Allen’s fascinating debut novel is a haunting tale that jolts along at its own pace. Moreover, Allen’s writing is extremely powerful particularly his imagery and masterful descriptions such as when John meets up with“The Beast.” And when all is said and done, we have a novel that is not only amazingly fitting for our times, but one that is rich and rewarding for anyone, young or old, wishing to ponder over insightful questions pertaining to our existence and journey through life.

Here's a look at the first page:

His name was Danny Greber - Daniel Johannes Greber - but I named him the beast. I loathed my father, so I found it perfectly sensible to have named him for the way I perceived him.

A mass of pure muscle, my father's body was topped off by a rock-like skull that leaned forward of his hunched shoulders and was covered by black, curly hair. His eyes, nose, and mouth were tightly clustered within prickly stubble that extended from below his shirt collar to just above his cheekbones. There wasn't much hairless flesh on my father.

The beast had a habit of rolling his sleeves to their maximum, which made his muscles appear under explosive pressure. And his short powerful legs were bowed outward at the knee, a deformity that caused him to sway from side to side as he walked. I named it "the gorilla walk." When the beast was angry, which was most of the time, the gorilla walk became more pronounced. So whenever I observed him from a distance I could predict the severity of his foul mood.

That advantage gave my mother and me precious time to prepare ourselves for the abusive madness about to be heaped upon us.

Lizzie's Rake by Hazel Statham

About the Author:


Hazel Statham lives in Staffordshire, England. She started writing at fifteen and has written on and off ever since. She has always been fascinated by history and writes mainly in the Regency and Georgian eras, although she has had a short medieval story published. When she was a child, she often told herself stories and this just progressed to committing them to paper to entertain family and friends. There have however, been gaps in her writing years where marriage and employment intervened, but now that she no longer works, she is able to return to her first love and devote her time to writing. She had her first two novels published in 2005.

She has been married to her husband Terry since 1969 and they have a grown daughter and beautiful grandson. Apart from reading and writing historical novels, her other ruling passion is animals and until recently, she was treasurer for an organization that raised money for animal charities. She currently shares her home with two lovely yellow Labradors named Lucy and Mollie, who are her constant companions. They are real sweeties, but it’s not always easy working at the computer with a large Labrador trying to get on your knee!

You can visit Hazel online at www.hazel-statham.co.uk.

About the Book:

Can a rake reform his ways and truly love?

Lizzie's head tells her one thing, her heart another.Infamous rake and Corinthian, Maxim Beaufort, Earl of St. Ive, finding himself in possession of a property in Yorkshire, is unprepared for the changes it will bring into his life.

Irresistibly drawn to Elizabeth Granger, the former owner’s daughter, he attempts to help the family, finding himself filling the role of benefactor.

When the house is razed to the ground, he arranges for temporary accommodation for Elizabeth and her siblings on his estate and when Elizabeth rejects his proposal of marriage, he is nonetheless determined to win her over.

However, events and his reputation conspire to thwart his efforts and his course is one fraught with dangers.

Trust does not come easily and determined to protect her heart, Elizabeth struggles to resist her own longings. At times, their difficulties appear insurmountable but the earl is widely known as ‘The Indomitable’ and the name was not lightly earned.

Here is a little taste of what you can expect if you read this book:

“Indeed you have, my dear,” he said earnestly, and she raised her eyes quickly to his face. He moved away as if the look discomfited him and there existed a silence between them, only the stamping of the horses’ hooves as they moved restlessly in the stalls invading the moment.

Suddenly turning and coming to stand before her, St. Ive asked quietly, “Do you still think of me as an intruder, Elizabeth? Am I still not welcome in your home?”

“Maxim…” she began, and would have turned away, but immediately his arm detained her, drawing her back to face him.

For a long moment his searching gaze devoured her face until, tilting back her chin with his free hand, he bowed his head and kissed her. As the gentle kiss turned more demanding and he drew her tightly to his chest, he became aware that her soft lips remained frozen beneath his and she held her delicate frame rigid within his embrace. The fear in her eyes cut through him and immediately he released her from his arms.

“Why?” she demanded, the instant she was set free, bewilderment heavy in her voice.

“Why?” he repeated softly, almost as if he spoke to himself, a slight smile on his lips, and after the briefest hesitation he said flippantly, “Because you have rain on your face, my dear.”

“Odious, detestable man,” she cried angrily, running out into the night, not even pausing to take up her lantern.

He stood watching as the dark downpour devoured her.