Reading – Page 3 – Sarah Potter Writes

Review: The Elsewhen Gene by Gary Bullock

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I adore time travel romances, so was thrilled when Gary Bullock asked me to beta read his wonderful novel and write an honest review after the book’s publication.

The Elsewhen Gene is entrancing and brought many smiles to my face. It is one of those novels that has a real feel-good factor about it and reminded me that hope and beauty still exist, as well as innumerable mysteries on a cosmic scale. The writing flows with the same gentle forward momentum and intertwining of light and shade as a sun-mottled brook. The descriptions are vivid and the dialogue authentic to the characters, whom I adored.

Laura and Elijah are both science geniuses and soulmates since childhood. Elijah sees future events. Laura sees what she thinks are ghosts but are really people in another universe into which she can sidestep at will. A romance between two such unusual people is never going to run according to convention, when it involves multiple universes and alternate lives. But it is a story of enduring passion between them both, as well as their crusade to reunite another couple who have ended up in separate universes to each other.

The novel has a most satisfactory end, but I am hoping that the author has more adventures in store for Laura and Elijah in a possible sequel.

The Elsewhen Gene is available at any of the following links

Amazon (US) (Paperback and Kindle) & Amazon (UK) (Kindle only)
Next Century Publishing & GoRead (Paperback only)
Nook & Kobo (eBook)

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Gary Bullock was born and grew up in the hills of East Tennessee, then worked in New England, where he got his first film acting job, as Abraham Lincoln in a commercial for a Detroit radio station. He met his mate, Mil Nicholson there, and they were married in 1987 at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre on the set of The Importance of Being Earnest.

They moved to the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, where he won his first film role in Winter People. He has also toured with Poetry Alive!, performing poetry in schools all over the East. He has written and performed his own one-man show as Abraham Lincoln. He and Mil also worked in dinner theatre, and carried out an artist’s residency program in theatre in Western North Carolina schools.

Gary and Mil then moved to Los Angeles in 1992, just in time for the riots, the fires, the floods, and the Northridge earthquake, and a co-starring part in Twin Peaks –Fire Walk With Me. Some other notable film roles were in Lakota Woman and Terminal Velocity, and most recently, Racing Stripes. Gary was a member of Playwrights Kitchen Ensemble in Hollywood as an actor, then later became a writer/actor member of Playwrights 6, also in Hollywood. Two of his scripts and part of a third were developed there.

He began writing partly to preserve his sanity during slow times for acting work, and because there were stories he wanted to tell. He soon found that he loved it. He has written both in book and in screenplay form.

Gary and Mil returned to North Carolina in 2005, and are busy writing, recording audiobooks, raising apples, persimmons, paw-paws, a large organic garden, dogs (a Jack Russell and a Silken Windhound at present), and watching the wildlife.

Book Review: Enemies of the People by Sam Jordison

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is a first for me, getting political online. There are some books that you wish you’d read earlier rather than later, and Enemies of the People is one such book. Not that it was available prior to the Brexit vote, or the electing of a reality TV star as President of the US. It seems we’re victims of lies and manipulation; this book tells us who the culprits are, plus a great deal more.

In Enemies of the People, Sam Jordison doesn’t pretend objectivity and, by his own admission, wrote it quickly and in anger. On the front cover are the words “We’re all screwed and here’s who to blame”, and in his blurb he holds men responsible for the whole mess: mostly white men in a temper (not including himself, of course!).

Primarily, this is a history book written by somebody who can write “more than 140 characters at a time” and sees it as a “golden opportunity to snatch back the narrative and set the record straight”. The book does not go into great depth but is a series of snapshots of fifty people whom the author feels have had the greatest negative influence on our society. These include certain British prime ministers and US presidents, past and present; current members of parliament; deranged dictators; people on the Rich List (some skilful, some moronic); founders of religions, from the relatively sane, through to extremist sects, down to the plain screwy; royalty, with William the Conqueror thrown in for good measure, and a closing chapter dedicated to a medical charlatan/founder of a commercial radio station, who almost became governor of Kansas in the 1930s and could be seen as a metaphor for our times.

Of the fifty people mentioned, not all of them are wholly bad or lacking in areas of brilliance, but I’m hazarding a guess that a fair percentage of them suffer from narcissistic personality disorders (or have suffered, because they’re now dead). A few have meant well, but power has corrupted them, filling them with greed, or they’ve just lost their way.

As the author points out, by the time this book went into print it was probably out of date in some respects. Certainly the chapter about Jeremy Corbyn needs updating, although, unlike the author, I had no issue with the Leader of the Opposition having “sloped off to his allotment association’s annual get together while most of his cabinet were busy resigning following the Brexit vote”. But then, as a keen allotmenteer myself, I can’t think of a better way to get away from it all and clear my head.

In summary, I enjoyed this book in a perverse way. It confirmed what I already suspected about those in charge of our society, with all the spin, lies, hypocrisy, greed, manipulation, and contradiction. This should have depressed me, but I felt oddly empowered by knowing my enemy better. Sam Jordison’s writing is pacey, entertaining, easy to read, and peppered with wry wit. He comes over as very passionate about truth, justice, and the betterment of society.

I now challenge him to write a book titled “Friends of the People”…

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Sam Jordison is co-director of an Indy publisher Galley Beggar Press in Norwich (www.galleybeggar.co.uk) and editor of Crap Towns. He’s a journalist for The Guardian and writes regular articles about books and publishing on their website (www.theguardian.com/profile/samjordison). He also runs the online book club The Reading Group (www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/reading-group) and the annual Not The Booker Prize.

Enemies of the People is available from all good bookshops in the UK, as well as from Hive, Waterstones , Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Book review: The Writer and the Rake by Shehanne Moore

The Writer and the Rake by Shehanne Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I totally loved everything about this time-travel romance and would give it ten stars if I could.

Brittany Carter is an author, who drinks, smokes, and parties too much. After a surreal encounter with a character called Morte, she’s transported to the Georgian era and meets bad boy Mitchell Killgower, who is locked into an inheritance dispute with some hateful relatives of his deceased wife. When Brittany materialises out of nowhere, he hopes she can prove useful by pretending to be his obedient and mousy wife for long enough to hoodwink those who hold the purse strings and stop his son getting the inheritance. The only trouble is that the feisty Brittany is incapable of fitting into this role and Mitchell has truly met his match on the impossible person’s front.

I don’t want to give too much away, as this will spoil readers’ fun; and the novel is such great fun, in a quirky sense of the word, always sustaining a great forward momentum with wonderfully entertaining dialogue. Come to think of it, I don’t recall the author using any dialogue tags at all and, if she did, they weren’t intrusive.

Brittany is often insufferable, but also pretty cool in a chaotic way. Mitchell is a Mr Darcy type: dark, handsome, brooding, stubborn, hard to impress, and master of his heart, but decidedly sexier than the original. His relationship with Brittany is meant as a short-term arrangement of convenience and nothing more. And the feeling is mutual …until it isn’t.

Speaking of the raunchy scenes, Shehanne Moore knows how to write about sex in a way that’s humorous, playful, erotic and, at times, intense. It’s never explicit, because it doesn’t need to be; the subtle interplay of all the human senses is sufficient.

On the hilarity front, the crowning moment for me is when Mitchell rifles through Brittany’s bag and puzzles over its contents from the future, and then questions her about one of the items in particular.

If you haven’t already guessed, I fell in love with Mitchell and felt really sorry for him when Brittany kept appearing and disappearing. A rake like Mitchell does not give his heart easily to a woman, preferring the casual company of floosies when needs dictate.

The Writer and the Rake can be read as a standalone novel, even though it’s the second part of a series. One reviewer has suggested that, in order to understand the time mutants better, it’s an idea to read the series in the right order, starting with The Viking and the Courtesan.

As you can imagine, Time Mutants #1 is near the top of my reading list, as I can’t get enough of Shehanne Moore’s writing and am delighted to have discovered someone with such a fresh and original voice.

A highly recommended read.

View all my reviews

Hear Ye Hear Ye! New Kindle Owners in the UK & US

If Santa has given you a Kindle for Christmas (or any other device upon which you can download the Kindle app) and your library is looking rather bare, here’s a bargain book that would look just wonderful on your virtual shelves.

From 25th December – 1st January, in the United Kingdom and United States, the Kindle edition of my children’s crossover fantasy adventure, Noah Padgett and the Dog-People, will be on sale at the discounted price of £0.99 ($0.99). Please note that purchasers of the Kindle edition are also entitled to download its Audiobook version for a knockdown price.

Here’s the short link to my book on Amazon http://getBook.at/Zyx

Wishing you peace, joy, and happiness over the festive season 🙂

A Free Book Promotion, plus Other Bits and Bobs…

From today until this Friday, 25th November, those of you in the US and the UK can download for free the kindle version of my YA crossover science fiction/urban fantasy novel, Desiccation [Universal short link: http://myBook.to/QuirkyLit ]. Sorry to disappoint any bloggers who live outside of the US or UK, but the logistics of creating a worldwide free book promotion are rather complicated and can go totally wrong. It involves authors going to their accounts at KDP on Amazon and individually adjusting the prices down to zero in the different marketplaces. I’ve heard that if you time this wrongly, you can mess up the promotion.

I know that a few of my fellow bloggers have already purchased either the kindle or paperback version of Desiccation. Please, if you enjoyed reading it, could you tell your friends about the free promo, as personal recommendation is still the best way to help spread the word about books you’ve enjoyed and authors you like (hopefully!).

With regard to the audiobook version of my children’s crossover fantasy adventure, Noah Padgett and the Dog-People, I have a limited number of free promo codes that will enable a few lucky people to listen to actress, Mil Nicholson’s wonderful narration of my novel in exchange for writing an honest review. If you’re interested in doing this, please go to my blog’s contact page and leave me a message. I’m afraid these codes will not work in the US, so my apologies to anyone who lives over the Pond. Please note, that anyone who has already purchased the Kindle version of this book, or intends to do so in the future, is entitled to download the audiobook at a discount, so that they can read and listen to it at the same time.

Lastly, I have set up a new Facebook page called Sarah Potter’s Quirky Novels. I decided to use the word “quirky”, because of the number of times that reviewers have used this word about my two books. Please do pop over to Facebook and “like” my page (but only if you do like it, of course!).

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