*Blog Tour * ~ The Human Script by Johnny Rich

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting today's first stop on



The Human Script Blog Tour

and to welcome the author


Johnny Rich

Today Johnny is sharing with us how he found the inspiration for his novel.....

I’m going to tell you a lie. Forgive me. It’s in a good cause. The lie is that the inspiration for my novel, The Human Script, came to me in a dream.

It sounds credible enough. I certainly have come up with short stories in my sleep. But they are half-formed blobs of ideas. As I try to trap them in words, they slip through my fingers. The nonsenses and plot holes that never bother us in dreams mock me from the page. By the time such stories have been wrangled into readability, they look no more like their inspiration than a roast chicken resembles an egg.

Let’s try another lie. An anecdote. A boy of ten or thereabouts – me – sits, cross-legged, in school uniform shorts, homework done, tea eaten, in front of the wood-framed TV. On the screen, Tomorrow’s World, a show that popularised science through mind-blowing innovations like CDs and automatic doors. On this episode, they had a vivarium of toads, which, they claimed with rehearsed awe, were ‘clones’. This was long before Dolly the Sheep – identical amphibians were an earlier milestone in genetic experimentation.

One toad was stretching up the side as if trying to escape. Another sat grumpily watching. A third was scraping at the gravel. As the presenter explained the marvels of their similarity, I was struck only by how differently they behaved. If they are identical, I thought, why aren’t they all doing the same thing? Maybe, I wondered, the simple difference was that they couldn’t be in the same place at the same time. That small difference made all the difference.

From such things thoughts are sparked. Thoughts grow into ideas. Ideas beg for expression and sprout stories. This is such stuff as novels are made of.

The curious musings of a boy were themselves the small difference that sparked a fuse of thought that ended in a novel that asks about how one thing causes another. Where the movie Sliding Doors asks, ‘what if?’, The Human Script asks, ‘Could it ever have been otherwise?’

One more lie: there was no inspiration, no cause. Just imagination. I made it up, conjured it, out of nothing. Stare blankly out of a window long enough and your mind will start to travel down paths of barely connected thought. Capture that butterfly of thought at the right moment and you will not crush its wings. Like a hurricane caused by the butterfly flapping, or like a universe sprung from a big bang of pure energy, a fictional world can grow from a scintilla.

But can that be true? Can something come from nothing? Surely, there had to be something to put the butterfly there in the first place? A caterpillar, of course, but what was before that? We’re back to chickens and eggs.

The truth is I cannot say what my inspiration was. Like all fiction, my lies are just my efforts to be truer than the truth.

There was no single event that set my ideas in motion. My whole life (and indeed those of countless generations before me) conspired to make The Human Script the story that I wanted to tell. That is not to say all creation existed for this purpose, merely that I and my novel are by-products of existence.

As it dawned on me that I had made the decision to write it (a realisation that emerged, rather than a moment of revelation), I then needed to take hold of the reins of my inspiration. I researched, spent time with geneticists, a Calvinist minister. I even pretended to be homeless one night. New inspirations sprang on me.

It was an adventure, but I can’t honestly say when it started, where, when or how. Nor if it’s over.

Have you ever felt like that yourself? Not entirely in control. Not exactly reeling, but unsure why you do stuff? Why stuff happened? Not imprisoned, but not free either. Like the world might be your oyster, but you’re stuck inside its shell.

If so, The Human Script is a story that will explain why you feel like that. I guarantee it will change your life, but only because everything does, however small.

©Johnny Rich

Johnny Rich is the author of TheHuman Script, published by Red Button Publishing, available now in paperback (£9.99) and eBook (£2.99) formats. 

To celebrate the launch of the paperback the author will be reading extracts from the novel followed by a Q&A on 17 November 2015 at the Betsey Trotwood, 56 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3BL. 

To find out more and to book tickets, visit: http://bit.ly/humanscriptlaunch

Please take a look at the other blog tour stops


The Human Script


19th - 23rd October 2015

My thanks to Johnny for his guest post and to Karen at Red Button Publishing for the invitation to join in with this fun event.

My thoughts about The Human Script

I was bit out of my comfort zone with this novel and for a time it took me a while to feel really comfortable with the story. That's not to say the book is badly written, far from it, it's really very cleverly put together, it's more that my involvement in the story took a while to develop.

Chris Putnam is a scientist working on the Human Genome Project. On the surface he seems an average young man but he is troubled by indecision and feels that his life is drifting aimlessly. He fears the loss of stability which is further compounded by the ending of a relationship and the loss of his father. Changes in circumstance force Chris into making some difficult decisions.

This is a slow burner of a novel which takes a while to really get going but I'm glad I stuck with the story and commend the author on an original and highly innovative novel.

~***~

Blog Tour ~ Dead Star Island by Andrew Shantos

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of the

 Dead Star Island

Blog Tour

Introducing the author

Andrew Shantos

Andrew ~ welcome to Jaffareadstoo....tell us why you love your publisher .....

Why I love my publisher....

I interview a lot of people in my day job (by night I write fiction, by day I write code and look after a team of computer programmers). I really enjoy interviewing; not only am I allowed to be incredibly nosy, but people actually expect it. They earnestly answer questions I can’t even ask a close friend. How much do you earn? Why did you leave that job? Why are you here? What do you love? What do you wish you were better at?

But in their eagerness to give me persuasive (and hopefully honest) answers to those questions, there’s one thing that interviewees often forget. If they’re good, then the interview is as much about me selling the job to them as it is about them convincing me to give them it. Of course, you don’t want arrogance. You don’t want someone so conscious of their greatness it’s an honour to even have them turn up on time.

Ideally you have a perfectly even balance of power. This results in a nice chat, followed by a shake of hands, and either “We’re not quite right for each other,” or “When would you like to start”.

As a writer, I found myself on the other side of the desk. And in the world of writing, the power is most definitely in the hands of the publisher. (At least, it is from the perspective of the author; in the grander scheme of things, the publisher is little more than a few acres in the gargantuan rainforest that is Amazon.)

So my task, as a writer, and particularly as a debut novelist, was to somehow shift the balance, move it towards me. There’s a simple way to do this. Write an amazing story. Simple, but far from easy. And highly subjective, of course. But my plan was that if I managed to pull off this feat, then maybe, just maybe, I’d have a nice chat with a publisher (or agent), and if we both thought we could do business, we’d shake hands, sign a piece of paper and say “When do we start?”

This was my rather naïve take on it all, anyhow, after I’d finished my second round of submissions to literary agents, received polite refusals, and wondered what on earth I should do next. I went back to work, rewrote my book, improved it in as many ways and to as high a standard as I could, sought feedback and criticism from as many sources as possible. I remember picking up the Writers & Artists Yearbook (the Yellow Pages in the UK for finding a literary agent), standing in my kitchen, about to circle a few more names, when I made a decision: No. I don’t want this. I don’t want to be in limbo for month after month, waiting for someone to reply, who may not even read a single word of it. And even if they say yes, do I want to wait months more until it’s sold to a publisher, then go through layers of bureaucracy and half a dozen departments for a year or two until it’s finally launched, when I could just do it myself in a week, then move on and write something else?

A few days later I went for lunch with an old friend of mine. We were at school together, and we see each other once or twice a year. He asked me what I’d been up to. After some obligatory mumbling about the wife and kids, I hesitated.

“What is it?” he asked.

I told him I’d written a book. I rarely told anyone, always found it rather embarrassing. But, well, it was what I’d been up to, for several years at this point.

“Oh,” he said, “my wife’s parents’ best friends are publishers. I’ll get you their email address.”

However well an interview goes, however good a candidate seems, when you hire someone you’re taking a punt on them. You’re gambling that an hour or two of being in their company, being nosy about their hopes and motivations, is enough to decide on their suitability as a colleague for years to come. That hour or two isn’t enough. That’s why it’s a gamble.

How do you increase the odds? Well it’s great, when we’re advertising for a role, if someone else in the company says, “There’s this friend of mine… She’d be perfect.” When someone comes recommended, when they aren’t a complete stranger, it makes them much less of a punt. They’ll at least get an interview.

It seems the same is true in publishing. Literary agents and smaller publishers who receive hundreds of manuscripts each week surely have a brutal set of rules for sorting through the slush pile, while still serving their existing clients. Just as I have to be brutally efficient when I receive dozens of CVs for a role we’re advertising, while still getting through my normal workload. So if an agent or a publisher receives a manuscript from one of their clients, via a trusted friend, or through a fellow professional in the industry, well, at the very least they’ll read the submission properly.

So that’s how I found my publisher. Through a friend. It didn’t get me published; I had to write something good enough for that to happen.

But I sent them my manuscript, we met up, had a nice chat, decided we could be right for each other, and they offered me a deal. I thought long and hard. It was a big commitment. There was always the option of self publishing. I questioned them carefully about what they could do for me that I couldn’t do myself (plenty, they assured me. They were right; they put large amounts of time, money and effort into editing and proof reading the manuscript; they hired a publicist, got me great reviews in national newspapers, in magazines and numerous well respected blogs). But I didn’t know this at the time. I knew I would be taking as much of a gamble as they were. But one thing above all persuaded me: I didn’t want to go into business on my own. Writing is a solitary enough endeavour, without publishing and promoting a book without anyone on your side. Eventually, after a few weeks of wrangling over terms, we both signed a piece of paper and agreed to launch the book five months later.

So really, you’d have to say that we found each other, me and my publisher. As for why I love them, well, I had to love my publisher in order to do business with them. Just as they had to love me.

Andrew, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and for giving us such a wonderful insight into the world of book publishing...

What's the book about?

Alliance Publishing Press
2015

WHAT IF Elvis, Marilyn and Jimi hadn’t died?

What if they had faked their deaths to escape celebrity life and now they’re living it up on a desert island?

This summer you are invited to take a once-in-a-lifetime trip to an extraordinary island paradise where sixteen supposedly dead exist in glorious anonymity – otherwise known as Dead Star Island.

Elvis is here, so are John, Diana, Keith and the parties are wild…

That is, until someone starts killing them off for real.

Now Greece’s former top cop Mario Gunzarbo is called in to solve the mystery of the Déjà vu Killer. But can the part-time tennis coach and full time alcoholic stop the killer in time to save the rest of the superstars?

Dead Star Island, published by APP, can be ordered through Amazon priced £4.99 for Kindle and £8.99 paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Star-Island-Andrew-Shantos/dp/0992811627

To get in touch visit him here….

w: andrewshantos.com

t: @andrewshantos

#deadstarisland

Fans can take a virtual tour of the island, meet its inhabitants and even apply for residency at andrewshantos.com. Dead Star Island video: https://youtu.be/8OL_PuG-asg

My thanks to Andrew and to Katy Weitz @GhostwriterBook for their kind invitation to join this exciting book tour.

Do visit the other blogs on the tour.

~***~

**Around the World Blog Tour with Trip Fiction and #Book Connectors** and Margaret Skea

TripFiction was created to make it easy to match a location with a book and help you select good literature that is most pertinent and relevant to your trip. A resource for armchair and actual travellers, it is a unique way of exploring a place through the eyes of an author. We blog, and chat books and travel across Social Media, and love to meet authors and bloggers as we take our literary journey.

Trip Fiction

Book Connectors  was created as a place on Facebook for Bloggers, Authors and small Publishers to share their news.

We encourage book promotions; information about competitions and giveaways; news of events, including launch events, signings, talks or courses. Talk about new signings, about film deals .... anything really.

Book Connectors is a friendly group, there are no rules or guidelines - just be polite and respectful to each other.

You can find Book Connectors on Facebook

 I am delighted to be part of this Around the World Blog Tour starting in 

Scotland

~And with huge pleasure I introduce my guest on the blog ~

Margaret Skea

Margaret has won or been placed in quite a number of short story competitions including Neil Gunn, Fish, Mslexia, Historical Novel Society. She now loves writing full length fiction and was thrilled to be awarded the Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time Author Award for her debut novel, Turn of the Tide. 

Turn of the Tide

Set in 16th Century Scotland Munro owes allegiance to the Cunninghames and to the Earl of Glencairn. Trapped in the 150-year-old feud between the Cunninghames and the Montgomeries, he escapes the bloody aftermath of an ambush, but he cannot escape the disdain of the wife he sought to protect, or his own internal conflict. He battles with his conscience and with divided loyalties and to age-old obligations, to his wife and children, and, most dangerous of all, to a growing friendship with the rival Montgomerie clan. Intervening to diffuse a quarrel that flares between a Cunninghame cousin and Hugh Montgomerie, he succeeds only in antagonizing William, the arrogant and vicious Cunninghame heir. And antagonizing William is a dangerous game to play...

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

A House Divided

The sequel to Turn of the Tide, it continues the story of the fictional Munro family, trapped in a notorious vendetta in 16th century Scotland.

Eleven years on from the Massacre of Annock, the Cunninghame / Montgomerie  truce is fragile. For the Munro family, living in hiding under assumed names, these are dangerous times.

While Munro risks his life daily in the service of the French King, the spectre of discovery by William Cunninghame haunts his wife Kate. Her fears for their children and her absent husband realized as William’s desire for revenge tears their world apart.

A sweeping tale of compassion and cruelty, treachery and sacrifice, set against the backdrop of feuding clans, a religious war, and the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597.

*****

I'm delighted that Margaret has chosen to share her love of Scotland with us .....

Confession time. Although my main focus at the moment is writing Scottish historical fiction, I’m not a Scot.  And despite having been married to a Scot for 36 years and having lived in Scotland for 33 of those 36, I’m still regarded as a ‘blow-in’ ie a foreigner.  (In case you’re counting, I was a child bride, well, close anyway).

But my love of Scotland goes much further back than my marriage – right back in fact to a caravanning holiday when I was 12. How could I forget my dad trying to negotiate Highland roads - single track with passing places almost long enough for the average car - while towing a caravan. Taking a wrong turn meant unhitching the caravan to turn it by hand while a stream of long-suffering locals built up behind us.

Passing Place

As an adult I appreciate the grandeur of the mountains and the fabulous scenery. As a child it was the silence that captivated me: the eerie atmosphere of the remote valleys, the dark lochs lying silent and undisturbed brooded over by ruinous castles that set my imagination aflame and sent me scurrying to my local library to devour every book I could find, both fiction and non- fiction, that focused on Scotland. From Mary Queen of Scots to Montrose, from the Highland Clearances to the Massacre of Glencoe, from Macbeth to Bonnie Prince Charlie, heroes and villains, I loved them all.

Loch Awe

But neither of my novels – Turn of the Tide and its forthcoming sequel  A House Divided feature kilted highlanders, or indeed any of the iconic figures of Scottish history. Instead I have chosen to focus on a period and people and places that most readers won’t have heard of before. How I came to focus on the ‘Ayrshire Vendetta’, a 150 year feud between two families in South-West Scotland, is another story, one which has its roots in Ulster, not Scotland, but to a large extent it is the setting of the Scottish Borders that inspires and informs my writing.

My main character, Munro, is a minor laird, and it wasn’t hard to find a prototype for his house, for the area in which I live is littered with tower houses – rather gaunt and forbidding dwellings, built more for defence than comfort and generally in inaccessible positions. Munro’s home is an amalgam of the two closest to me – Greenknowe, though ruinous, retains enough of the walls to provide an interesting exterior - it is the basis for the cover of my second book.

Greenknowe

                               

Smailholm is complete and allowed me to experience what it would be like to sit by the fireside in the hall, or peer out through the narrow window slits; how much breath it takes to climb up the slope to the tower, or to run up the spiral stair. It gave me the length and breadth and particularly the height of rooms, a sense both of the narrowness of their existence and the pleasure that the rare opportunity to sit at leisure within the shelter of the barmkin on a sunny day might provide.

A major feature of the history of our area is the legacy of the reivers – this panel, part of the Great Tapestry of Scotland, which I was privileged to help stitch -  illustrates a core feature of their lifestyle. Violent men for whom family and loyalty were all important, they rode out on wild, windy nights to steal sheep and rustle cattle from their neighbours … and worse. Suffice it to say the words ‘bereave’ and ‘blackmail’ have their origins in the reivers’ activities.

Reivers from the Great Tapestry of Scotland

Nowadays each town has a festival centred around rideouts to out-lying villages and places of particular significance. Large numbers of riders, in some cases as many as 400, take part and those elected as festival principals must lead all the rides. One of my earliest memories of moving to the Borders is of standing in a field on the edge of a village, hearing the distant thunder of hooves and watching as around 130 horses and riders appeared over the brow of the hill, heading straight for us. Hardly surprising then that, although the majority of my characters are historical, Munro, my fictional main character, rode into my head one day on his mare, Sweet Briar, almost a character in her own right.

Common Riding

The landscape of the Borders is just as beautiful and as wild as the Highlands, though on a smaller scale.

Our hills are rolling, punctured by outcrops of rock, smothered in spring and summer by a riot of colour as first gorse and then heather springs into bloom. The moors are bleak, lonely places, criss-crossed by hidden streams and boggy ground making it treacherous underfoot for travellers whether on horse or foot.

While I was training for a charity walk on the Great Wall of China I spent many days walking the Eildons, rough terrain that gave me a real feel for what travel in the 16^th century  would have been like.

Gorse

Eildons

Some of the action in both my novels takes place in Edinburgh and I’m fortunate that it is only just over an hour’s drive from me. Some of my most enjoyable research involved wandering up and down the Royal Mile, where if I closed my eyes I could imagine the street lined with luckenbooths*  and hear the stall-holders crying their wares. And if I needed a little extra help in that I could visit Mary King’s Close– part of the medieval city, buried under the existing town, and Gladstone’s Land – a merchant’s house of the period. It was in Gladstone’s Land that I found a medieval baby-walker, almost identical to the one I had for my own children, except that it was wooden rather than metal. That was a detail that I just had to fit into my story somehow!

*Luckenbooths are covered booths or stalls which can be locked.

Mary King's Close

One of the tasks of an historical novelist when writing about people who actually existed is to find out as much information from the historical records as possible about them. In my first novel I broke that rule when writing about one character about whom I knew very little, yet instinctively making him one of my primary villains. Imagine my excitement when, during the editing process, I went to his home, Newark  castle, to check what could be seen from the windows of the Great Hall,  and discovered that in real life he was much more villainous than I had painted him, having gained notoriety as a wife-beater. That really was a ‘eukeka’ moment.

Newark Castle

I have travelled to many of the locations in my novels, scrambling up to stumps of castles, driving the routes that my characters take as the action unfolds, stopping wherever and whenever I can to take pictures to pin up on my notice board to refresh my memory as I write. But landscape isn’t a static thing and  many features change over time: river courses alter, deepen in some places, silt up in others, so an additional challenge is to try to understand what a landscape might have looked like all those years ago. In my second novel my main character hides in a cave system beside a river, but these are now some 12 metres above the water due to the excavation of the gorge by the river.

 Though nothing can beat visiting the locations in my books, it isn’t always possible and when I can’t get to a particular location I spend hours pouring over maps, both modern and ancient – particular favourites are those drawn by Timothy Pont, many of which survive in the National Library of Scotland. It is Pont’s map of Ayrshire that forms the basis for the maps in the front of both my novels, and I’m grateful to the NLS for giving their permission.

Living in such an atmospheric and lovely environment, perhaps it’s not surprising that the part of writing I most enjoy is description, even of weather – and in Scotland we certainly get plenty of that!

All photographs by kind permission ©Margaret Skea

*****

I first discovered Margaret's excellent historical novel Turn of the Tide when in November 2011, I watched the Alan Titchmarsh show, always a favourite programme of mine in the afternoons, and I learned about Margaret's involvement in the People's Novelist Competition, in which she was a finalist in the historical fiction category.

Turn of the Tide appealed to my love of historical fiction , firstly because of its Scottish setting, but also because it was about a set of warring families living within a harsh environment and with their own unique moral code. The story is evocative and atmospheric and really brings to life the inherent danger of living within the Scottish clan system of the mid part of the sixteenth century. Based on the true, and it must be said, violent feud between the Cunninghame's and the Montgomeries, the story literally abounds with skulduggery, political conflict and a real sense of rivalry between two stubbornly fierce adversaries.

It's beautifully descriptive, with a real sense of history and conjures sixteenth century Scotland in a such a glorious way that allows time and place to truly come alive in your imagination..

You can find Margaret on her website
Follow her on Facebook
Twitter @margaretskea1



Huge  thanks to Margaret for sharing her love of Scotland so eloquently and to #BookConnectors and @Trip fiction for the invitation to join this exciting Blog Tour around Scotland.

Do follow #BookConnectors on Twitter to discover more authors sharing their love of all things Scottish

~***~

Blog Tour: Higher Ed by Tessa McWatt ( and Giveaway)

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of this exciting Blog Tour

Higher Ed

by 

Tessa McWatt

TESSA McWATT was born in Guyana, grew up in Canada, and has been living and working in London for nearly two decades. She is the author of five earlier novels; her second, Dragons Cry, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the City of Toronto Book Awards. Her most recent novel, Vital Signs, was nominated for the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She developed and leads the MA in Writing: Imaginative Practice at the University of East London.

 

Published 27 August 

Scribe Publications

London. Now. And here come the new Londoners.

Francine would prefer to be thinner, but is happy enough to suffer her boss' manhandling of her ample hips if it helps her survive the next cull in Quality Assurance. She just wishes she could get the dead biker's crushed face out of her mind's eye.

Robin is having a baby with the wrong woman, wishes he were with the perfect Polish waitress instead, leans hard on Deleuze for understanding, and wonders if his work in film will continue to be valued by the university management.

Olivia is angry — angry with her layabout mother, with her too-casual BFF, and with her own timidity and anxiety. Perhaps the wisest of her lecturers will help? Knowledge is power, right? And she's beautiful when she's angry.

Ed wishes he’d never gone back to Guyana to help his rass brother as it lost him his mini-Marilyn wife and the possibility of watching his only child grow up — until someone surprising crops up at the crematorium.

Katrin is starting not to miss Gdansk or Mamunia so much, and starting to understand London living. But if she works and hopes harder, maybe she’ll secure a full British future for herself and her mother with the Good Englishman.

The five of them cross paths and cross swords to bring London living unforgettably to life. Real London lives.



My thoughts about Higher Ed

This is an interesting novel about the unpredictability of modern life, all brought together by the unique perspective of five very different people, all with complex stories to tell.

Their individual stories are told in short and snappy chapters. We get to know them as people and learn about what makes them act in the way they do. Some of them are not always very likeable, but their collective stories really make you think about the vagaries of modern lives. Inevitably, they are all connected in some way, the reasons why they are linked becomes apparent as the story progresses.

Initially, I felt that the story got off to a bit of a slow start and I found that I needed to pay particular attention on who was who, which for a time spoiled my enjoyment, but then about a third of the way into the novel, and as I became more comfortable with the characters, I started to become more involved in the story itself. In many ways, it's a story about London and about how it functions as a city and of how it works as a huge melting pot for people from so many different backgrounds. And yet, it is also a story about the complexities of human nature, and of the tenuous ties that bind us together, and also of the wretched situations that people can find themselves caught up in.

Overall, I think that Higher Ed was a well written and intelligently thought out novel. It's a slow burner rather than all action but it's nicely observed and certainly kept me entertained whilst at the same time made me look at things in an different way.

My thanks to the author and  to Molly at Scribe Publications for inviting Jaffareadstoo to be part of this exciting blog tour 

and for offering the chance for one lucky UK winner to have their own copy of Higher ED in this fabulous Giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blog Tour : The Art of Baking Blind by Sarah Vaughan

Jaffa and I are delighted to host today's stop

 on 

The Art of Baking Blind Blog Tour

Sarah Vaughan

There are many reasons to bake: to feed; to create; to impress; to nourish; to define ourselves; and, sometimes, it has to be said, to perfect. But often we bake to fill a hunger that would be better filled by a simple gesture from a dear one. We bake to love and be loved.

Hodder
13 August 2015

In 1966, Kathleen Eaden, cookery writer and wife of a supermarket magnate, published The Art of Baking, her guide to nurturing a family by creating the most exquisite pastries, biscuits and cakes.

Now, five amateur bakers are competing to become the New Mrs Eaden. There's Jenny, facing an empty nest now her family has flown; Claire, who has sacrificed her dreams for her daughter; Mike, trying to parent his two kids after his wife's death; Vicki, who has dropped everything to be at home with her baby boy; and Karen, perfect Karen, who knows what it's like to have nothing and is determined her façade shouldn't slip.

As unlikely alliances are forged and secrets rise to the surface, making the choicest choux bun seems the least of the contestants' problems. For they will learn - as Mrs Eaden did before them - that while perfection is possible in the kitchen, it's very much harder in life.

My review :-

The slither of succulent raisins, the piquant allure of spicy gingerbread and the textured bouquet of fresh vanilla pods, infuse this novel with the scents and aromas of exquisite baking. All five candidates who answer the call to find Britain’s Best Baker are adept at grappling with biscuits, they excel at blind baking and their crème pâtissière is enough to make angels weep and yet, their private lives, when held up to scrutiny leave much to be desired. Even the divine Mrs Eaden, the inspiration and legendary face of the competition, had hidden secrets of her own.

The story takes us through the various stages of the baking competition and introduces us to each of the characters. We get to know them all in intimate detail, their lives unfold before us and we begin to realise just how important winning the competition would be to each of them, and yes, dare I say it, we begin to have favourites. In fact, I had to stop myself from flicking through to the end of the story in order to find out who was the winner, as there was one person, for sure, who I didn’t think was worthy to be the new Mrs Eaden.

The story flows deliciously; it wraps around you and enfolds you in a rosy haze of warmth and as the pages fly by, and believe me they really do fly, you find yourself imagining a culinary feast of the most delicious chocolate fondants, exquisite confections of millefeuille and plump and mischievous Chelsea buns.

And yet, beneath the bravado of baking, The Art of Baking Blind is really a story about people. It's about the minutiae of their lives, about their hopes and dreams and of all the reasons why life has sometimes been unkind to them. It's beautifully descriptive and confidently written and a real joy to read from beginning to end.

I loved it and can't wait to see what this talented author comes up with next.

Now where did I put my recipe for ....Tarte Tatin.

Follow Sarah on Twitter @SVaughanAuthor
#ArtofBaking

Find her on Facebook 

Amazon UK

There are still more stops on the Blog Tour....do visit the other blog hosts to learn more about this delightful novel.

My thanks to Emma at Hodder and Sarah for inviting Jaffareadstoo to be part of this exciting blog tour.

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Blog Tour : The 3rd Woman by Jonathan Freedland

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be today's blog tour host

Author Photograph is courtesy of Philippa Gedge

Jonathan Freedland is perhaps better known as Sam Bourne.

With The 3rd Woman he has come out from behind his pseudonym to enthrall us with a fast paced thriller which grips from the very beginning.

#The3rdWoman
Published 2nd July 2015
Harper Fiction

SHE CAN’T SAVE HER SISTER

Journalist Madison Webb is obsessed with exposing lies and corruption. But she never thought she would be investigating her own sister’s murder.

SHE CAN’T TRUST THE POLICE

Madison refuses to accept the official line that Abigail’s death was an isolated crime. She uncovers evidence that suggests Abi was the third victim in a series of killings hushed up as part of a major conspiracy.

SHE CAN EXPOSE THE TRUTH

In a United States that now bows to China, corruption is rife – the government dictates what the ‘truth’ is. With her life on the line, Madison must give up her quest for justice, or face the consequences…

My review :

In a world of lies only one woman can expose the truth

Under the pen name of Sam Bourne, Jonathan Freedland has already established himself as a talented and worthy author of suspenseful fiction. In The 3^rd Woman, he has forgone the security blanket of publishing under his successful pseudonym, and has produced a really high octane thriller which takes as its starting point the sudden death of Abigail Webb, a young woman of flawless reputation. Madison Webb, a feisty and determined reporter, and Abigail’s older sister, will stop at nothing to find out why her sister died. When Madison discovers that two other young women have died in similar tragic circumstances she is determined, more than ever, to uncover the truth. However, as Madison delves deeper and deeper into this web of lies, her powers of observation are stretched to breaking point, and the discovery of scandalous behaviour at the highest level, will put her in grave danger.

Setting the story in a time when the United States has defaulted on its national debt, and has been usurped as a super power by China, adds an interesting dystopian element, and the otherworldly atmosphere which exists throughout feels frighteningly realistic. The short and concise chapters help maintain the snappiness of the suspense and allow the story to evolve in a believable and exciting way. The story line, as it develops, is tense, with elements of danger and there are some nasty situations which occur for Madison and her friends, all of which, had me turning the pages faster and faster, in order to see what happened next. I thought the ending was cleverly contrived and entirely convincing.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story. There are more than enough twists and turns in the plot to keep you guessing, and I am sure that the legions of Sam Bourne fans will be delighted with this author's venture into writing under his own name.

My thanks to Hayley at Harper Fiction for my invitation to be part of this exciting blog tour

and to Killer Reads for introducing me to this book and author.

You can listen to Claudia Winkleman on BBC Radio 2
talking about The 3rd Woman start listening at 1:28

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05zzyzp#auto 

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You, Me and Other People Blog Tour...

 Jaffa and I are delighted to be part of the blog tour 

for

You, Me and Other People by Fionnuala Kearney

THEY SAY EVERY FAMILY HAS SKELETONS IN THEIR CLOSET . . .

But what happens when you open the door and they won’t stop tumbling out?

For Adam and Beth the first secret wasn’t the last, it was just the beginning.

You think you can imagine the worst thing that could happen to your family, but there are some secrets that change everything.

And then the question is, how can you piece together a future when your past is being rewritten?

You, Me and Other People was published by Harper on the 

18 June 2015

I'm delighted to be able to share a tantalizing taster of You, Me and Other People...


Chapter Two

I stare at the small screen. Call ended. She hung up on me. Again . . . And she swore at me. Beth knows how much I hate her potty mouth. Two weeks since I left and she still won’t talk without swearing.

Through the open door to the kitchen, I see Emma bend down to reach the lower shelf of the dishwasher. Clad in a figure-hugging black dress, the sight makes my head reel; images of Emma naked, Beth naked, cloud my fuzzy brain. I breathe deeply, filling my anxious lungs as quietly as I can.

‘I know you’re staring.’ Emma looks over her left shoulder and catches my eye. In one swift movement, she crosses her hands, grabs the hem of her dress and pulls it over her head. She’s wearing stockings. No knickers, just hold-ups, a tiny bra, and I feel immediate stirrings as she walks towards me. Some instinct tells me to back away from her, raise my palms in the air, say, ‘No, Emma, no,’ but it’s way too late for that. If I’d been a better man, I’d have said that months ago. So, I let my more primal instincts rule, the ones that make me want to take her here on her white Amtico kitchen floor. Before I know it, she’s on her knees, unzipping me. I squeeze my eyes shut. With one hand, I steady myself on the doorway, with the other I hold her head, just at the nape of her neck, my fingers lacing her long blonde hair.

I knew I was in trouble the moment I met her. It had started out a simple evening with a group from work in the restaurant where she works. She flirted with me. Private winks, smiles. At first I thought I was imagining it, until Matt, my business partner, cornered me outside the loo.

‘Don’t do it, mate,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Don’t go there. You’re so flattered some blonde totty fancies you, you’ve been twirling your wedding ring under the table all night.’

‘I have not.’

‘Don’t be such a tosser, Adam. You and Beth have a good thing.’

But by the time I shared a taxi home with Emma, my ring was in my pocket, my choice made. I thought of Beth, my gorgeous, loyal, talented wife; the woman who made me laugh at least once a day; the woman I loved, the woman I would have died for, still would. I did think of her, but only briefly.

Emma was the most forward woman I’d ever met, launching herself on me in the back of the taxi, cupping my balls with long manicured fingers. I was weak, powerless. And months later, I’m still a weak forty-three-year-old man who has hurt his wife so much he doesn’t know how to fix it, so chooses to ignore it and indulge in copious amounts of fantastic, life-affirming sex with a new and younger woman.

I leave the office early, exit the underground car park to a beautiful September evening, the sun still quite high in the sky. Just across the river to my right, I see the shape of the London Eye, its capsules laden with carefree tourists. It’s Friday and normally I’d be heading across the river and down the A3 towards home, after staying the week in town. Eight months ago, Beth and I decided to ‘borrow’ my brother Ben’s flat while he’s abroad for a year. Both parties have a good deal. We pay a lot less than market rent, covering his mortgage, and he knows his tenants. The plan was we’d stay there during the week, cut out the commute for me, and Beth could enjoy London and write her songs. A new environment, new inspirations – that was the plan.

I turn the car east towards the highway, heading to Docklands, to the one-bedroom flat near the river, intent on staying in this evening. Tonight’s plan is for an Emma-free zone; give myself some head-space with a takeaway and Sky Plus footie on the telly. Why then do I keep driving east along the A13, towards the M25, taking a long route towards the house I used to call home?

I call ahead on the hands-free. She’ll kill me if I just turn up. I can imagine dying on the spot in the power of her penetrating stare. But I feel the need to see her, to try and explain. I have no words, just the will to try, because I can’t bear her hating me. The phone rings out and I hear her voice.

‘You have reached Adam and Beth Hall. Sorry we can’t get to the phone – leave a message. We’ll get back to you.’

Only she hasn’t got back to me yet. I dial another number, hoping the other person I’ve hurt is still talking to me.

‘Hey, Dad,’ she says, picking up on the third ring.

‘Hey, Meg.’ I resist using my pet name of Pumpkin for her. ‘You all right?’ I can hear my heartbeat.

‘As all right as I possibly can be with an arsehole for a father . . . ’

I sigh – an audible, slow sigh. ‘I deserve that. I’m sorry.’

‘You do and somehow sorry doesn’t quite cut it. Are you still with her?’

Straight for the jugular – she may have my eyes, my long legs and the hair colour that Beth calls conker, directly from my gene pool, but when it comes down to it, Meg is Beth’s daughter. She doesn’t believe in wasting words.

So I respond in the same vein. ‘Yes.’

‘Right . . . Why did you call?’

‘You’re my daughter, Meg. I’d like to see you. Please?’

‘And what? Introduce me to your bitch totty so we can play dysfunctional families?’

I flinch at her words. And blame Beth. My daughter has a potty mouth too.

‘I—’

‘Look, Dad. It’s too soon. Too raw. You’re not the man I thought you were. The man I respected.’ I can imagine her shaking her head as she continues. ‘You’re just not that man.’

I bite my lower lip, feel it tremble. She’s right. I’m not that man, but then, I never have been. ‘I’m sorry,’ I offer lamely.

‘Blah, blah, blah.’ She hangs up.

I pull over to the hard shoulder. The contents of my stomach heave onto the edge of the A13. I have managed to pebble-dash the door of my beloved Lexus. Words of my long-dead mother echo in my ears: ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself, Adam.’ I wipe my mouth with my shirtsleeve, stare across three lanes of fast-flowing traffic and look up to the sky. Meg hates me. I have screwed up. I have really screwed up large.

© Fionnula Kearney

   

More about Fionnula can be found on her website

Follow her on Twitter @fionnulatweets

My thanks to Harper for their generous invitation to be part of this exciting blog tour.

Please take a look at the other blogs taking part in this tour for more exciting content, fabulous giveaways and snappy interviews and reviews.

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My thoughts about You, Me and Other People.

There are so many skeletons tumbling out of Adam Hall's closet that it’s difficult to keep up with the amount of self-destruct buttons he seems to have at his disposal. His marriage to Beth is imploding on a grand scale and whilst the majority of sympathy must lie with Beth, the wronged wife, I couldn't help but feel an inordinate amount of sympathy for Adam. And that's really where the strength of the novel lies, in the nitty -gritty of ordinary lives which have gone spectacularly wrong, and in generating compassion for a man who has hurt, lied, cheated and done irreparable wrong to so many people.

I was engrossed in the story of You, Me and Other People from the very beginning. It very quickly became one of those books I wanted to carry with me so could sneak in a few more pages whenever I had the chance. I both hated and loved Adam, I wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled and then ultimately, I sobbed, because when all is said and done, his story just feels so realistic. I really loved Beth - she is smart and sassy, brave as a lion and as a vulnerable as a kitten and I so wanted to be her, especially when she had the fling of her life,  I mean, well...who wouldn't!

But it's not just in Adam and Beth where the strength of the story lies, it is also about a whole cast of other people who add both light and shade, and some genuinely funny moments that had me laughing out loud, and some heartrendingly sad, throat gulping moments that had me reaching for a hanky and a restorative cup of tea.

Ultimately, I think that this story resonates because it could be about you, me or other people and that's what makes it so irresistible.

Read it.

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