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Book Spotlight: Voyage To The World’s End – by Malcolm Pate

Voyage To The World's End - by Malcolm Pate
The story is set in the seventeenth century, but not as you have seen it before. David Penhallion a young Cornish man, together with an experienced sea captain and a wealthy budding politician have a series of adventures culminating in a stormy sea voyage, to a hellish place, where no one has ever been. A terrific adventure set in Cornwall, London and the depths of the southern ocean. It is a tale of love lost and found, of storms, mutiny, murder, revenge and treachery. Throughout the story, a strange apparition of an old seafarer, although terrifying, saves David from a horrible death on several occasions. The ship was close to being overwhelmed by the raging sea, when David saw the apparition, pointing with his crooked finger... They discovered a small island, deep in the southern ocean, which was alive with strange creatures. He was running for his life, for he could hear the deathly clicking behind him...

Book Excerpt

Amazon Print Purchase Link
Amazon Kindle Purchase Link
Barnes and Noble Print Purchase Link

Author Malcolm Pate’s Websites
Book Promotional Site
Nautical Gift Site
Nautical Gift Site-UK
Oil Lamp Site

Cold Coffee Café Author Malcolm Pate
Cold Coffee Press Author Malcolm Pate

Author Spotlight Interview - Malcolm Pate

 
Quote from Author Malcolm Pate: “I have been married to my wife Sue for forty-five years and have a daughter Lorna, who is a Dr. of Genetics, doing research on Diabetes. I am 71 and have been the Managing Director of several companies. I am at present the Chairman of Shropshire Council and have been involved in Local Government for over thirty years. I also run some internet companies selling antique oil lamps and nautical items. My hobbies have included scuba diving, golf, the guitar and rock collecting. My main leisure interest over the last thirty or so years has been sailing. I have a yacht moored in Cherbourg France and sail all over the Channel Islands, Normandy and Brittany. I have done over 150 Channel crossings in all weathers, including gales and thunder storms.”
*************************Interview:  

What makes you proud to be a writer from Albrighton, Shropshire, England? I am proud to be a writer because it gives me the opportunity to create something that other people can enjoy.  

What or who inspired you to become a writer? Jules Verne, John Wyndham and Steven King.  

When did you begin writing with the intention of becoming published? I start serious writing about a year ago.  

Did your environment or upbringing play a major role in your writing and did you use it to your advantage? I found my sense of adventure and my many interests inspired me to write about them, especially my many sailing experiences.  

Do you come up with your title before or after you write the manuscript? The title was the first thing I thought about.  

Please introduce your genre and why you prefer to write in that genre? My first book is a fictitious sea adventure, inspired by my love of Cornwall, my sailing adventures and my involvement in local politics. My second book of some 92,000 words, which is written but not yet proofed is a horror story.  

How many published books do your have? I have one booked published ‘Voyage To The World's End’, which I am now trying to market and another "Jasper" ready to proof.  

What has been your most rewarding experience with your writing process? I love to create characters and situations. It gives me the ability to create entire life style environments.  

Have you had a negative experience in your writing career? If so please explain how it could have been avoided? No, if I did not enjoy writing I would stop doing it.  

What has been your most rewarding experience in your publishing journey? The publication of my first novel and seeing it in print. I also found it rewarding when people who read it, told me they enjoyed reading it.  

What one positive piece of advice would you give to other authors? If you feel you can do it, have a go.  

Who is your favorite author? John Wyndham Is there anything else that you would like to share with us? Over the years I had started to write several times, but never got past the first chapter, because of time constraints.  

Please add questions (and answers) that you think your readers would like answered.  
Describe your sailing adventures: I have been caught out crossing the English Channel in a severe gale 9 and experienced thirty foot waves and extremely high winds. I have sailed down the Alderney race to Guernsey in a gale 8, when all my crew were ill and my main sail ripped in half. I have travelled from Alderney to a Jersey in a full blown thunder storm.  

*************************
Voyage To The World's End - by Malcolm Pate
The story is set in the seventeenth century, but not as you have seen it before. David Penhallion a young Cornish man, together with an experienced sea captain and a wealthy budding politician have a series of adventures culminating in a stormy sea voyage, to a hellish place, where no one has ever been. A terrific adventure set in Cornwall, London and the depths of the southern ocean. It is a tale of love lost and found, of storms, mutiny, murder, revenge and treachery. Throughout the story, a strange apparition of an old seafarer, although terrifying, saves David from a horrible death on several occasions. The ship was close to being overwhelmed by the raging sea, when David saw the apparition, pointing with his crooked finger... They discovered a small island, deep in the southern ocean, which was alive with strange creatures. He was running for his life, for he could hear the deathly clicking behind him...
Genre: Fiction, Drama, Sea Adventure
Book Excerpt

Amazon Print Purchase Link
Amazon Kindle Purchase Link
Barnes and Noble Print Purchase Link

Author Malcolm Pate’s Websites
Book Promotional Site
Nautical Gift Site
Nautical Gift Site-UK
Oil Lamp Site

Cold Coffee Café Author Malcolm Pate
Cold Coffee Press Author Malcolm Pate

Book Spotlight: Managing Your Inner A**Hole: An Unusual Education In The Fundamentals Of Emotional Intelligence – by B. W. Prescott

 
"Have you ever let your emotions get the better of you? Have you ever felt like events, or circumstances, or other people were controlling you—instead of you being in control of you? Have you ever acted in a way that you later regretted because you were caught off guard, or were tired, or angry, or hurt, or frustrated, or didn’t really know what to do, or just didn’t have the time you needed to think through how you should respond to something or someone before you actually did? Have you ever hated yourself afterward, or wondered how you could be so dumb?
Have you ever wondered why nobody ever wrote down a practical set of step-by-step, bulletproof guidelines for developing and maintaining a healthy relationship? Or have you ever wondered why, if there really is a God and He really is the Creator of the universe, why He didn’t bother to take the time to leave us a simple list of instructions for dealing with the biggest emotional challenges of our lives?
If you’ve ever asked yourself any of these questions, then this book is for you! That list of bulletproof instructions not only exists, God wrote them. Managing Your Inner A**hole is an unvarnished, unconventional look at the greatest practical advice the Bible has to offer without a hint of preaching, pretense, or posturing. Imminently logical without the guilt-trip, compassionate and humble without judgment or condemnation, this is a story of acceptance and empowerment about what it means to really love, what you have to do to really grow, and the surprisingly simple steps you can take right now to manage your own Inner A**hole and build a happier, healthier life and network of relationships than you ever dreamed possible."
Genre: Self-Help  

Book Excerpt/Preview  

Amazon Customer Reviews  
More Customer Reviews  

Amazon Print Purchase Link  
Amazon Kindle Purchase Link  
Nook Purchase Link  

Join The Movement  
Purchase ‘Managing You’re A**Hole’ Tee Shirt  
Send An A-Mail  

Author B. W. Prescott’s Website and Blog  
http://www.managingyourinnerahole.com/  
http://www.managingyourinnerahole.com/blog/  

Cold Coffee Café Author B. W. Prescott Cold Coffee Press Author B. W. Prescott

Author Spotlight – B. W. Prescott

 
Author B. W. Prescott is the public persona of an anonymous, 57-year-old, white male who has spent his entire life contending with serious mental illness and addictions within his birth family. The problems caused by these mental illnesses and addictions have included medical issues and extended hospitalizations, civil litigation, arrests and criminal prosecution, terminations of employment, financial hardships, life-threatening physical violence, and social ostracization. Compounding these issues was the culture of Ben's puritanical, ultra-conservative, and social climbing extended family that denied any suggestion that either a mental illness or addiction existed, and rigidly enforced a code of silence so as not to tarnish their public image.
When a series of catastrophic events unfolded in 1974 that were so severe that they could no longer be silenced or ignored and which publicly revealed the full magnitude of the problem, Ben, in a mixture or despair, rebellion, and an attempt to anesthetize himself from the pain, buried himself in school and work, and went on an eight-year drug and alcohol fueled bender that nearly ruined him. After hitting rock bottom, and after experiencing a life-changing, not-of-this-world encounter that he can only attribute to Devine intervention, Ben began the process of rebuilding his life and pursuing the path towards emotional intelligence that has become the basis of this book. Over the next thirty years, Ben remarried and raised a family; became a successful entrepreneur; buried half his family; stood by others as they battled cancer; suffered his own life-changing injury; became a multimillionaire--and then lost most of that fortune after 9/11. Along the way he discovered what life is about and realized what he's supposed to do with the life he has been given.
Today, he is a "C" level executive, management consultant, and author with extensive expertise in the healthcare and technology industries. Ben has been a member of the executive teams of three very successful technology companies taking each from the earliest stages, through multiple financing rounds and rapid growth, to exits through either an initial public offering or acquisition by a larger publicly traded company. In 2000 a company that Ben co-founded and served as President and Chief Operating Officer was honored by the Smithsonian Institution as being one of the ten most innovative technologies on the planet out of field of nearly 4,000 global nominees. He has been a trusted advisor to the senior executives of companies such as Hewlett-Packard, W.R. Grace, Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, MetLife, United Healthcare, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, and many other Fortune 500 clients. He currently coaches and advises entrepreneurs and CEOs of early to late stage technology companies and serves as the Managing Director of the knowledge management, advanced analytics, and big data practice for a technology accelerator and venture fund based in California.
Driven by his life experience and a burning need to ensure that others do not have to silently suffer with the twin issues of mental illness and addiction with which he has so long contended, Ben has made these issues a focus of his personal and professional existence. He has authored several articles and book chapters on the application of technology for managing the delivery of clinical services and the administration of public health and patient navigation initiatives. He has edited three books on patient and family journeys through addiction and mental illness. He has been a featured speaker and presenter at several national and international healthcare and technology conferences. He has spent decades working with various Children's Hospitals and National Alliance on Mental Illness chapters across the United States on outpatient and community outreach programs designed to mentor and serve the physical and emotional needs of patients and families dealing with abuse, addiction and mental illness. In other volunteer efforts he has worked with Big Brothers and Big Sisters, the Boy Scouts of America, and several school districts on mentoring programs to educate and equip at-risk children and adolescents.

He is a former Big Four CPA and Consultant. He pursued his doctorate in Organization Behavior and earned his MBA from programs that were rated in the top five in the nation. He holds bachelor degrees in Economics and Psychology from the University of California. Ben has been married for over 27 years to an educator and parent coach who has dedicated her professional and personal life to the nurture and development of children. Together they are the proud parents of two grown children, a son and a daughter, who carried on the family tradition of swimming, water polo, and lifeguarding. Their son is an Eagle Scout. Their daughter was in the Assistance League and volunteered her time to help homeless families and children of abuse. Both kids are recent college graduates who now work in the software and healthcare industries. Ben maintains his sanity by surfing and hiking the coastal hills and valleys of his native California.

Mission:To improve the Emotional Intelligence of America,To speed the Recovery of those who've suffered the effects of Abuse, Addiction & Mental Illness.To build awareness of the fact that Recovery is a Choice,To give people the tools they need to make the Best Choices (Recoveries) possible, andTo have a few laughs (and not take ourselves too seriously) along the way.
 
*************************Interview:
 
What makes you proud to be a writer from Orange County, CA? I take no particular pride in being an author from the OC, other than to provide evidence that not everyone who lives here is a shallow, vacuous, materialistic idiot.
What or who inspired you to become a writer? I have been involved with mentoring kids and families struggling with abuse, addiction, and mental illness for about ten years. I first got involved in that work because I grew up in a family ravaged by addiction and mental illness. These conditions are insidious in their ability to undermine and cripple the development of healthy human relationship. I just got to the point where I couldn’t stay silent any longer. If sharing any part of what I had gone through could help someone coming down the road behind me, then I had to do it.
When did you begin writing with the intention of becoming published? Although I had started writing Managing Your Inner A**hole beforehand, it was only about a year and a half ago, following a string of deaths of old friends and colleagues, that I decided to try to get it published.
Did your environment or upbringing play a major role in your writing and did you use it to your advantage? Absolutely, as I said above my family history is the motivation for this work.
Did you come up with your title before or after you wrote the manuscript? The title actually came well before the manuscript. I threw it out in a conversation with my son about ten years ago as a joke about the obvious—we all have an Inner A**hole and we all struggle to manage it—only the truly frightening or delusional fail to recognize and/or admit this fact.
Please introduce your genre and why you prefer to write in that genre? Emotional intelligence and the development thereof. I prefer this genre because I think it has been so poorly covered in the past and because I believe it is so desperately lacking in our society.
What has been your most rewarding experience with your writing process? Clarifying and articulating for myself what I have learned. You never learn material like when you attempt to teach it.
Have you had a negative experience in your writing career? If so please explain how it could have been avoided? Actually no. I guess I’ve been lucky in this regard.
What has been your most rewarding experience in your publishing journey? The ability to connect with people like you and share stories about what we’ve learned. I truly believe that people are our bottom line. The greatest gift of my life has been the people I’ve met along the way. People are my wealth and my joy. The anticipation of sharing and connecting with the untold number of wonderful friends--whom I have simply yet to meet--is a real motivator for me.
What one positive piece of advice would you give to other authors? Write from your heart.
Who is your favorite author? Henry Adams
Is there anything else that you would like to share with us? The power to shape and change our individual and collective future lies within our hands. We each have the power of choice, but too often we either fail to recognize that fact or fail to exercise that power. We need to become increasingly mindful of that power and to hold our selves (and others) accountable for the choices we make.
How many published books do your have? One under this pseudonym.
Why did you write under a pseudonym? Because some of the stories I share in the book deal with some horrific examples of abuse, addiction, and mental illness. Several of the people victimized by these events are still living. To publicly identify myself now would subject them to undo trauma and heartache by digging up old wounds. When they are all gone, I will step forward with my real name.
Which book title would you like featured in this interview? Managing Your Inner A**hole: An Unusual Education in the Fundamentals of Emotional Intelligence.
What would you want people to know about this book? Don’t be put off by the title. The book is probably not what you think it is. This is a serious story told in a completely unconventional way.

*************************   
Managing Your Inner A**Hole: An Unusual Education
In The Fundamentals Of Emotional Intelligence – by B. W. Prescott  
"Have you ever let your emotions get the better of you? Have you ever felt like events, or circumstances, or other people were controlling you—instead of you being in control of you? Have you ever acted in a way that you later regretted because you were caught off guard, or were tired, or angry, or hurt, or frustrated, or didn’t really know what to do, or just didn’t have the time you needed to think through how you should respond to something or someone before you actually did? Have you ever hated yourself afterward, or wondered how you could be so dumb?
Have you ever wondered why nobody ever wrote down a practical set of step-by-step, bulletproof guidelines for developing and maintaining a healthy relationship? Or have you ever wondered why, if there really is a God and He really is the Creator of the universe, why He didn’t bother to take the time to leave us a simple list of instructions for dealing with the biggest emotional challenges of our lives?
If you’ve ever asked yourself any of these questions, then this book is for you! That list of bulletproof instructions not only exists, God wrote them. Managing Your Inner A**hole is an unvarnished, unconventional look at the greatest practical advice the Bible has to offer without a hint of preaching, pretense, or posturing. Imminently logical without the guilt-trip, compassionate and humble without judgment or condemnation, this is a story of acceptance and empowerment about what it means to really love, what you have to do to really grow, and the surprisingly simple steps you can take right now to manage your own Inner A**hole and build a happier, healthier life and network of relationships than you ever dreamed possible."
Genre: Self-Help  

Book Excerpt/Preview  

Amazon Customer Reviews  
More Customer Reviews  

Amazon Print Purchase Link  
Amazon Kindle Purchase Link  
Nook Purchase Link  

Join The Movement  
Purchase ‘Managing You’re A**Hole’ Tee Shirt  
Send An A-Mail  

Author B. W. Prescott’s Website and Blog  
http://www.managingyourinnerahole.com/  
http://www.managingyourinnerahole.com/blog/  

Cold Coffee Café Author B. W. Prescott 
Cold Coffee Press Author B. W. Prescott 

Book Spotlight - The Save Your Planet Show – by John Klawitter

The Save Your Planet Show - by John Klawitter
A group of elderly people quietly living out their lives in a retirement home in Southern California are contacted by a slick stranger who claims to be an alien being from another world. They are worried because of the extreme unlikeliness that this might be true, and by the fact that their retirement home has an Alzheimer’s Ward and a director who is aggressive in his efforts to fill it. It seems unbelievable that an alien would contact them, of all people – particularly when this odd fellow reveals that he is enlisting them to save their planet. The stranger reveals his name is DoubleSpin (named after a sub-molecular particle that goes around twice to complete one 360-degree spin), and that Earth has been selected as a contestant in the Save-Your-Planet Show, a galactic charity event beamed to all sentient corners of the Milky Way. Even as the group of dubious humans, who dub themselves “The Old Bunch,” begin to believe they are not imagining things, religiously motivated anarchists in Nigeria are carrying out plans to ship a nuclear device half way around the world and into Los Angeles harbor. And just when it seems they will accomplish their mission, DoubleSpin is jerked from the galactic survival show and the Old Bunch can no longer rely on his somewhat sketchy powers to help them save the planet.  

Genre: Science Fiction, Action Thriller  

Amazon Print Purchase Link  
Amazon Kindle Purchase Link  
Barnes & Nobles Purchase Link  

A Selection Of Author John Michael Klawitter’s Published Works  
Codes & Decodes  
Crazyhead  
Devils  
Foul  
Headslap  
Hollywood Havoc: The Trouble with Fat Boy – (Episode One)  
Hollywood Havoc: The Llama Goes Up (Episode Two)  
TANS: The TANS Collection, Volume I  
The Book Of Deacon: The Wit and Wisdom Of Deacon Jones  
The Devildogs Of Old Sauk Trail And Other Tales Of Hope & Horror  
The Freight Train Of Love  
The Heart Of Desire  
The Rogue Pirates Bible Heretical  
The Save Your Planet Show  
Tinsel Wilderness  
Vidmaker 101  

Enjoy Reading Some Free Short Stories – by John Michael Klawitter  
The Short Stories:  
Home Free  
True Patriot  
Hard Sell  
The Dancing Nazi  
Three On A Match  
The Moon Air Boys  
The Adventures Of Jack Cheese  

Author John Michael Klawitter’s Website and Blog  
http://www.johnklawitter.com  
http://www.johnklawitter.blogspot.com/  
http://www.amazon.com/John-Klawitter/e/B001K8FQJ6/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1405030550&sr=1-2-ent  
Cold Coffee Café Author John Michael Klawitter  
Cold Coffee Press Author John Michael Klawitter

Cold Coffee Spotlight Interview With Author John Michael Klawitter

 
John Klawitter has produced documentaries and TV Specials for network and cable television. He currently writes novels, books and screenplays and develops projects for television and cinema release through his Indy Company, Dancing Bear Enterprises. He also produces two or three books a year through his DoubleSpin Publishing Company. He has won numerous awards, including an EMMY, a CINE Golden Eagle, and The Hemingway Short Story Contest. Tinsel Wilderness won an EPIC Author’s award for Best Non-Fiction, and Hollywood Havoc for Best Action Thriller. He lives and works in Southern California where he frequently adapts his novels into screenplays and pitches them around town.  
*************************Interview:  

What makes you proud to be a writer from Hollywood? Being a writer in Hollywood isn't a high station. Ask any producer. Or, ask any New York agent. We are not authors, per se...we are scribblers. The pride, I suppose, comes from surviving.  

What or who inspired you to become a writer? I think mostly Hemingway. I figured if he could get away with run-on sentences like he did, it couldn’t be that hard.  

When did you begin writing with the intention of becoming published? I became serious about writing after I came back from Vietnam. Of course, by that time I was working as a copywriter on Kellogg’s and Nestles. Most ad biz writers start at the bottom, writing catalog copy. I lucked into a job at the bottom of the top, cub copywriter, writing TV ads for national accounts. Six months back from Vietnam and my cubicle was filled with cardboard cut-out planets, chocolate villages and dancing chickens.  

Did your environment or upbringing play a major role in your writing and did you use it to your advantage? Yes, probably. I was one of those over-educated people with no inclination toward the popular professions such as lawyering, doctoring or politics. As I used to apologize to my long-suffering mother, 'I have descended by slow degrees to the semi-profession of advertising.'  

Do you come up with your title before or after you write the manuscript? Usually before, and then I change it during and maybe again after. This plays hell with my computer storage because drafts are often misplaced under some forgotten title.  

Please introduce your genre and why you prefer to write in that genre? I usually write a story and then figure out the genre after. Most of my earlier novels are action/thrillers or mystery/suspense, but lately they have been more mainstream or crossovers. My novel The Freight Train of Love is a ' ...classic War Romance, action thriller, suspense, murder mystery, sort of...'  

What has been your most rewarding experience with your writing process? There have been some moments of triumph, figuring out various formats...commercials, documentaries, short stories, short films, screenplays, novellas, novels, biographies. And the awards are nice. I won an EMMY in 1969 and two EPIC Authors awards in 2009 and lots I forget in between.  

Have you had a negative experience in your writing career? If so please explain how it could have been avoided? Many books are not published for the exact reasons they were written. I don’t believe there is any one way to avoid this. The best thing to do – and it’s not foolproof – is to proceed with what you believe to be a good idea for a story, write it as true as you can, and then evaluate your finished manuscript and try to analyze where to send it and who to send it to. For instance, I wrote a sports bio, HEADSLAP: The Life & Times of Deacon Jones. I wrote it because Deacon was one of those brave black pioneers who pushed their way into the NFL back when it wasn't allowed, and I thought it was important and interesting social history. Here we've got a player of immense talent and he has to room with other black guys or he can't play. Well, I burned out two agents, one in NY and one here in LA, but all publishers wanted to hear about was booze, broads and drugs. In a way, the same was true of Crazyhead, my first novel. The publishers didn't want fiction based on reality, they wanted anti-war crap. Not just one or two publishers...two dozen, if we can believe my agent at that time, the legendary Olga Weiser. I tell how I finally managed to personally get Crazyhead published in my book Tinsel Wilderness.  

What has been your most rewarding experience in your publishing journey? Paying the mortgage, keeping my kids in good schools, doing work I find interesting.  

Have you had a negative experience in your publishing journey? If so please explain how it could have been avoided? After my first novel (Crazyhead) was published by Random House/Ivy Press in 1990, my editor felt my work wasn’t anti-war enough, and tried to convince me in the popular direction of that time. I wasn’t able to avoid the parting of the ways that followed, though if I was a different person, I might today still be in their stable of acclaimed authors.  

What one positive piece of advice would you give to other authors? When you write for money, do it their way. When you write spec, do it your way.  

Who is your favorite author? Hemingway and Leonard, both for clarity of voice.  

Is there anything else that you would like to share with us? Read Elmore Leonard, Janet Evonavich, Ann Tyler, Anne Proeulx, Robert B. Parker, Dick Francis, early Stephen King. Read the poets, the philosophers, the social thinkers. Read history, anthropology, archeology, cosmology. Read of other cultures, other places, other times. Think a lot. Then write your first sentence.  

Please add questions (and answers) that you think your readers would like answered. Which books of yours would be of value to young storytellers? Tinsel Wilderness is a decent bunch of stories of what it is like to start out and then to survive as a creative person, and Vidmaker 101 is a good how-to guide to the process of creating short storytelling videos.

*************************
The Save Your Planet Show - by John Klawitter
A group of elderly people quietly living out their lives in a retirement home in Southern California are contacted by a slick stranger who claims to be an alien being from another world. They are worried because of the extreme unlikeliness that this might be true, and by the fact that their retirement home has an Alzheimer’s Ward and a director who is aggressive in his efforts to fill it. It seems unbelievable that an alien would contact them, of all people – particularly when this odd fellow reveals that he is enlisting them to save their planet. The stranger reveals his name is DoubleSpin (named after a sub-molecular particle that goes around twice to complete one 360-degree spin), and that Earth has been selected as a contestant in the Save-Your-Planet Show, a galactic charity event beamed to all sentient corners of the Milky Way. Even as the group of dubious humans, who dub themselves “The Old Bunch,” begin to believe they are not imagining things, religiously motivated anarchists in Nigeria are carrying out plans to ship a nuclear device half way around the world and into Los Angeles harbor. And just when it seems they will accomplish their mission, DoubleSpin is jerked from the galactic survival show and the Old Bunch can no longer rely on his somewhat sketchy powers to help them save the planet.

Genre: Science Fiction, Action Thriller  

Amazon Print Purchase Link  
Amazon Kindle Purchase Link  
Barnes & Nobles Purchase Link  

A Selection Of Author John Michael Klawitter’s Published Works  
Codes & Decodes  
Crazyhead  
Devils  
Foul  
Headslap  
Hollywood Havoc: The Trouble with Fat Boy – (Episode One)  
Hollywood Havoc: The Llama Goes Up (Episode Two)  
TANS: The TANS Collection, Volume I  
The Book Of Deacon: The Wit and Wisdom Of Deacon Jones  
The Devildogs Of Old Sauk Trail And Other Tales Of Hope & Horror  
The Freight Train Of Love  
The Heart Of Desire  
The Rogue Pirates Bible Heretical  
The Save Your Planet Show  
Tinsel Wilderness  
Vidmaker 101  

Enjoy Reading Some Free Short Stories – by John Michael Klawitter  
The Short Stories:  
Home Free  
True Patriot  
Hard Sell  
The Dancing Nazi  
Three On A Match  
The Moon Air Boys  
The Adventures Of Jack Cheese  

Author John Michael Klawitter’s Website and Blog  
http://www.johnklawitter.com  
http://www.johnklawitter.blogspot.com/  
http://www.amazon.com/John-Klawitter/e/B001K8FQJ6/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1405030550&sr=1-2-ent  
Cold Coffee Café Author John Michael Klawitter  
Cold Coffee Press Author John Michael Klawitter

Book Spotlight: Stranded In Time – by Kelli Sue Landon

Stranded In Time – by Kelli Sue Landon
College student and art major Samantha Harper has been tracing her family tree for quite some time. Her mother, Rebecca, died when Sam was sixteen and she never talked much about her past. Samantha is thrilled to hear that she will be allowed to research her mother's past for a school assignment. Upon arriving in Rebecca's childhood neighborhood, Sam arranges to have a tour of her mother's grade school. She finds an area inside the school that had been damaged and at first, thinking a ghost was inhabiting the gymnasium, she accidentally crosses over into the year 1975; the year when her mother is in kindergarten. Fascinated and scared at the same time, Sam gets to witness her mother's childhood up front as she inadvertently gets involved in an old case of a young girl's accidental death. Little Josie Baker, a classmate of Sam's mother, died that year inside the school's gymnasium. But, was it an accident? After uncovering the dark secret surrounding Josie's death, Samantha wonders if she'll ever find her way back home where her father and best friend, Josh, have been waiting for her return. Will she return to the present or will she have to live the rest of her life in the past?

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense  

Amazon Print Purchase Link  
Kindle Purchase Link
Barnes and Noble Purchase Link
 
   

Author Kelli Sue Landon’s Published Titles:  
Nightmare At Camp Forrestwood: A Young Adult Whodunit 
Short Tales: Eight Thrilling Stories 
Stranded In Time Sudden Moves: A Young Adult Mystery
Summer Shack: A Killer Vacation  

Author Kelli Sue Landon’s Website and Related Links:  
http://www.kellisuelandon.com  
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kelli-Sue-Landon-Author/128375177223550 http://kellisbookreviews.wordpress.com/

Author Spotlight - Kelli Sue Landon

  
Kelli Sue Landon is a mystery novelist and short story author. Her novels include Sudden Moves, Nightmare At Camp Forrestwood, Summer Shack: A Killer Vacation, and Stranded in Time. She is from Peoria, IL and works for the United States Postal Service.  

Interview:  

What makes you proud to be a writer from Peoria, Illinois? I like using the Midwest as my settings since we get all four seasons and other states around us really help with road trips for my characters.  

What or who inspired you to become a writer? The idea of it being “fun” is how I started. I also like escaping into another world that I create.  

When did you begin writing with the intention of becoming published? Not until I was halfway through my first novel, Sudden Moves. I just sat down and started writing it. My friends read chapters as I wrote and I was asked many times about publishing it.  

Did your environment or upbringing play a major role in your writing and did you use it to your advantage? I started as a teen, living in a secluded place in the country. No neighbors or any way of riding my bicycle or walking to a friend’s house. I would take a blank sheet of paper and write stories for something to do.  

Do you come up with your title before or after you write the manuscript? Usually in the middle. With Sudden Moves and Stranded in Time, the titles kept coming up in phrases through the books. That’s when I knew what title to use.  

Please introduce your genre and why you prefer to write in that genre? Mystery/Suspense/Amateur Sleuth. I read that genre, plus I love keeping readers guessing, just like I do when I read a suspenseful mystery. Agatha Christie is the author who I love reading when it comes to sleuths.  

What has been your most rewarding experience with your writing process? When my short story, Pizza Night, was sold for $50 to a local Peoria magazine, Downstate Story. I was ecstatic that someone liked my story that much!  

Have you had a negative experience in your writing career? If so please explain how it could have been avoided. A couple of book reviews, but they weren’t real bad, just not the reviewers cup of tea. I took them as a learning experience.  

What has been your most rewarding experience in your publishing journey? Finding many people like International Book Promotion, KanDel Media, and Lynda Brown of Author Chat who promote indie authors or a low price and even throw free services in the mix. I am so grateful for people like this who give prompt service and help out indies.  

What one positive piece of advice would you give to other authors? Never look down on independent publishing. I have known authors who lie and say they got accepted to a publisher, when really they paid for their publishing service. It’s a stepping stone to having an agent or even getting traditionally published. Never shy away from having your book in print, just because you did it all on your own. You should reward yourself for your hard work.  

Who is your favorite author? Agatha Christie, Linwood Barclay, Dean Koontz, Janet Evanovich, Stephen King.  

Is there anything else that you would like to share with us? One great way to stay motivated while writing, is to write scenes and send them to people who love to read. I did this with a few retired friends and they would email me back and tell me how much they enjoyed it. I kept writing more and more to send them and get their feedback. It really helped push me to get my books written.

 
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Stranded In Time – by Kelli Sue Landon
College student and art major Samantha Harper has been tracing her family tree for quite some time. Her mother, Rebecca, died when Sam was sixteen and she never talked much about her past. Samantha is thrilled to hear that she will be allowed to research her mother's past for a school assignment. Upon arriving in Rebecca's childhood neighborhood, Sam arranges to have a tour of her mother's grade school. She finds an area inside the school that had been damaged and at first, thinking a ghost was inhabiting the gymnasium, she accidentally crosses over into the year 1975; the year when her mother is in kindergarten. Fascinated and scared at the same time, Sam gets to witness her mother's childhood up front as she inadvertently gets involved in an old case of a young girl's accidental death. Little Josie Baker, a classmate of Sam's mother, died that year inside the school's gymnasium. But, was it an accident? After uncovering the dark secret surrounding Josie's death, Samantha wonders if she'll ever find her way back home where her father and best friend, Josh, have been waiting for her return. Will she return to the present or will she have to live the rest of her life in the past?

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense  

Amazon Print Purchase Link  
Kindle Purchase Link
Barnes and Noble Purchase Link
 
   

Author Kelli Sue Landon’s Published Titles:  
Nightmare At Camp Forrestwood: A Young Adult Whodunit 
Short Tales: Eight Thrilling Stories 
Stranded In Time Sudden Moves: A Young Adult Mystery
Summer Shack: A Killer Vacation  

Author Kelli Sue Landon’s Website and Related Links:  
http://www.kellisuelandon.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kelli-Sue-Landon-Author/128375177223550 http://kellisbookreviews.wordpress.com/

Book Spotlight: Wisdom and Rubies – by J. F. Slattery

Eminent criminal barrister Adolphus Winterbourne had been worried about his godson Arthur before but when he discovered that the young man was in Clerkenwell prison on remand for suspected burglary, he got quite a shock…It is 1829, and burglary is a capital offence. But Arthur's brief stay in a London prison on a mistaken charge is only the first in a strange series of interlinked events into which he and Lord Horatio Carlton, his friend and fellow student, are inextricably drawn – events involving every aspect of London life: its journalists and politicians, its artists and scholars, its idlers and gamblers, its burglars, confidence tricksters and pickpockets. Meet George Marshall, irascible editor of The Morning Indicator and his striking print workers; Colonel Henderson and his Indian wife, whose greatest ambition is to walk in a London street without a veil; Oliver Morris and Lieutenant Peterson, on leave from Madras, whose friendship ends in violence and death; and above all, Frank Hoskins – charming, talented, kindly Frank, receiver of stolen goods and police agent, whose career spirals down into robbery and murder. Once Arthur and Horatio lived a life of jokes and laughter but as events unfold they find the shadows of tragedy closing in around them. Only a desperate plea to Sir Robert Peel, Home Secretary and founder of the new Metropolitan Police Force, will avert disaster.When, twenty-five years later, Mr. Winterbourne takes up his pen to write an account of these events, he wonders how he is to do it…Based on actual police reports of the period, Wisdom and Rubies is an engaging fictional account of a vital period in English social history.A sequel to 'Wisdom and Rubies' will shortly be published, entitled 'The Scapegoat'. It will be a story of mutiny on a ship returning from China and a subsequent trial for murder, based once again on real events of the period as reported in the newspapers.
Genre: Fiction, Literary
Amazon Kindle Purchase Link  
Barnes and Noble Nook Purchase Link

*************************
 
Author J. F. Slattery was born in Essex, England, in 1950. In the course of a varied education (some said restless mind, others intellectual butterfly) he studied Classics, social history and German - the latter at London University, after which he spent twenty years teaching German literature and philosophy to university students. During this time he published scholarly articles on Heine, Thomas and Erika Mann, and the history of the BBC German Service. In 1995 he decided he could not stand the university world for another moment, so he escaped. In 1996 he founded Slattery Translations, an international business, which in 2000 he relocated to Portugal. He lives in Cascais, near Lisbon. 

 
Second Book: Before The Beak: True Stories From
The London Police Offices In 1830
by J. F. Slattery
This is a book about people, of all social classes, who lived in London in the year 1830. It presents a vivid snapshot of their lives, gained from newspaper reports of cases heard at the police offices. Actual crimes occupy a certain space, but criminals are not the book’s overriding focus. Victims and witnesses of crime appeared in court as well, plus many others who were not criminals, but for whom the magistrates were responsible: children, the mentally ill, spouses involved in domestic disputes and, above all, the unemployed and otherwise destitute seeking relief under the Poor Law.
After an initial Chapter I. Setting the Scene, which provides a succinct account of the socio-political background, and explains the administrative and legal system in the London of 1830, the book is constructed as a series of narratives, featuring individual cases. Chapter II. In the New Year Snow describes the severe winter of 1830, and introduces the police offices and their magistrates. Chapter III. The Poor and the Destitute recounts tragic stories of poverty requiring action by the magistrates in their capacity as Poor Law administrators. Chapter IV. Love, Marriage and the Law has three sections: (i) “Errant husbands and thorough scoundrels” features husbands prosecuted for failure to maintain their families and fathers of illegitimate children sued by mothers for maintenance. (ii) “Domestic strife, elopement and the tar who bought a wife” narrates cases of domestic violence and cruelty, the misadventures of couples who eloped, and the misadventure of a trusting sailor. (iii) “Bigamy” speaks for itself: it was a widespread crime. Chapter V. Children, Animals and Lunatics begins with orphans, abandoned children and child apprentices; then come cases involving the mentally disturbed (in whose often terrible treatment the courts interfered), and finally prosecutions for cruelty to animals carried out by the SPCA (not yet the RSPCA). Chapter VI. The Tempted and the Fallen is divided into (i) “Drink” (cases of drunken people, sometimes funny, but more often tragic) and (ii) “Sex” (a more lurid Chapter, including child brothels in Marylebone and some reported rape cases). Chapter VII. Thieves and their Victims turns to actual crime: (i) “The perils of the street” describes the rife street crime of the period; this is followed by (ii) “Burglars and cracksmen”, and (iii) “Dishonest servants." The chapter closes with (iv) “A miscellany of theft", including shoplifting and body-snatching. Chapter VIII. Two Murders recounts two sensational murders which took place in London that year; one was never solved; for the other a man was hanged, and the newspaper reports accompany him to his last moments on the gallows. Chapter IX. Flouters of the Law features prize fighters, duellists, fortune tellers and others who deliberately and repeatedly broke the law. Chapter X. Public Order and Disorder has Chapters: two sections: (i) “The New Police” recounts the foundation of the Metropolitan Police by Peel and narrates cases of unsuitable policemen prosecuted for misbehaviour; while (ii) “Riot and Revolution” portrays the severe rots which occurred in London in November 1830 and the cases of individual rioters who came up before the police magistrates. Finally Chapter XI. 1830 and Beyond brings a medley of cases to close the year, and looks forward to the history of England over the next seventy years, noting that in the lifetime of a person born in 1830 the social and political fabric of England would undergo a complete change.
The general reader interested in history will find this book both funny and tragic, but always fascinating. It would be a perfect bedside book, but it would also be very suitable background at school or university. Lawyers will find a particular interest in its cases. It is original in its approach and lively in its presentation.
Genre: Fiction, Literary  

Amazon Print Purchase Link  

Barnes and Noble Print Purchase Link

J. F. Slattery’s Published Works 
Before the Beak (Amazon 2012)  
Wisdom and Rubies (Troubador 2014)  

J. F. Slattery’s Website  

Please Visit Author J. F. Slattery At Cold Coffee Press 

Author Spotlight – J. F. Slattery

J. F. Slattery was born in Essex, England, in 1950. In the course of a varied education (some said restless mind, others intellectual butterfly) he studied Classics, social history and German - the latter at London University, after which he spent twenty years teaching German literature and philosophy to university students. During this time he published scholarly articles on Heine, Thomas and Erika Mann, and the history of the BBC German Service. In 1995 he decided he could not stand the university world for another moment, so he escaped. In 1996 he founded Slattery Translations, an international business, which in 2000 he relocated to Portugal. He lives in Cascais, near Lisbon.
Interview:
What makes you proud to be a writer from (Cascais)?People often ask me where I am "from", and I never know what to reply. I am not really "from" anywhere: I have lived in so many cities, in England, in Germany, and in Portugal. But Cascais – that elegant, cosmopolitan town, on the coast twenty miles from Lisbon - suits me, and suits my business, (my day job) completely. Some people have found it strange that I should be living here and writing books which rely on a precise evocation of another city (London) in another time (nearly two-hundred years ago). I reply that such abstraction of place is not unusual: Arnold Bennett wrote many of his books about life in the industrial heart of England (the "Potteries") while he was in fact living in Paris; while Thomas Mann's minute evocation of life in Lübeck, Buddenbrooks, was composed when he was living in Munich – a very different city, especially at that time. I think physical removal from the place you are writing about has great advantages: you are forced to imagine it most vividly and most carefully, and it comes to have an existence much stronger than would be the case if you could just look at it out of the window. But every so often I make forays to London and pace round the streets I am describing, to make sure I have got it right.
What or who inspired you to become a writer?I cannot think of any single thing or person who, or which, inspired me to become a writer. I only knew, from an early age – certainly by the time I was about thirteen – that I wanted to describe the world in words. But how exactly? In diaries? Letters? Dramas? Narratives? And, if narratives, what sort of narratives? Narratives of real events, in the present or past, i.e. history or journalism? Or fictional narratives, novels or stories? By the time I was eighteen I had tried them all and was pretty sure that narrative fiction or historical narrative was what I really wanted. Yet I looked on all my work as just a hobby, something which amused me privately, and which I rarely showed to others. It gave me pleasure, and that was enough up to that point.
When did you begin writing with the intention of becoming published?It's a complicated story. By the time I graduated from university I was ready to become more serious in my writing. I meditated a novel, or a collection of stories. But at this point I needed a job and found myself teaching literature and philosophy at a university. People think college teachers have plenty of spare time, but they don't. So my literary ambitions were largely squeezed out – but never completely. I wrote a couple of novels during these years (1975-95), but I was dissatisfied with them and consigned them to the drawer. I assuaged my wish for narrative, however, by writing biography: my studies of Thomas Mann (1988) his daughter Erika (1991), which appeared in scholarly journals. When I left the university world and founded my own business, my time was even less my own. But by the time I was sixty, in 2010, the itch to write, always ticking away in the background, would be ignored no longer. I scaled down my business and looked for a subject. In the London Library I came upon their archive of The Times newspaper, and at random opened the volumes for the year 1830….Here was a world which demanded a narrative of its own. So I wrote a study of one aspect of that world, the aspect of crime and punishment, and called it Before the Beak. True Stories from the London Police Offices in 1830, which I finally published in 2012. It is an account of the criminal cases which came before the London magistrates in the course of a year, from pickpockets, to bigamists, to burglars and confidence tricksters, and a murderer or two, all as reported in the daily press. As a narrative, it pleased me. It was not fiction but historical fact. Yet I found that the historical mode did not express what I wanted. The people, places and events of the early nineteenth century, it seemed to me, could only be adequately represented as fiction, but fiction based closely on fact. So I conceived of a historical novel on the subject; and it may seem strange that I had never thought of combining history and fiction before in my work; but so it was. I wrote Wisdom and Rubies, a work of fiction, inspired closely by the factual journalism of the early nineteenth century. Did I say earlier that no single thing inspired me to write? Perhaps I should revise that statement. If any single thing inspired me to narrative fiction, it was a famous nineteenth century newspaper, in dusty files, in a library basement.
Did your environment or upbringing play a major role in your writing and why? Oh yes, quite definitely. My family were all very aware of words, and very good at them. My mother, educated by the French nuns, spoke excellent French; my father was an admirer of Italian language and literature. Our cousin was a well-known journalist. But inheritance is nothing without environment. Looking back, I am sure two factors operated in my childhood and adolescence to propel me towards writing; more specifically, towards writing the way I do. The first was my school education; the second was television.We are talking of the 1960s. Up to the age of sixteen I had a wonderful education, based strongly on the study of the Latin and Greek Classics. This type of education hardly exists any more, which is a very great loss. It taught the student language, literature and history, all in one package. The history of Rome in particular fuelled my imagination; it was no abstract pursuit, but a living thing, drawn from the language and the books of the period itself. So I early thought of history as narrative, and as very real.English television at that time had only two channels. That meant that everybody tended to watch the same thing. Much was rubbish, but much was not. In particular, there was at that time a great deal of original drama to be seen almost every night. These plays would be reviewed in the newspaper next day, and at school we would discuss them in our lunch hour. So I learned how to construct a story in the form of a drama, and found how people reacted to what they saw.In this way, through the Classics and through the TV, the life a boy in a dull country town was filled with light and interest, with art and history and the fascination of language. I have little doubt: I owe everything to that early experience.
Do you come up with your title before or after you write the manuscript? I have a title in mind when I start to write, but I may well change it. I could not decide what to call the book that ultimately became Before the Beak, and even now I am not very satisfied with the phrase: "beak" in the sense of "magistrate" or "judge" is so very English and may not be understood elsewhere. Wisdom and Rubies was originally Mr. Adolphus Remembers. Now I have been working for some months on a sequel, featuring many of the same characters, and I have been calling it The Scapegoat. But now I find that Daphne du Maurier used this title, so I think I shall have to change it. To what? I don't yet know. All books grow and develop in the writing of them, and titles are no exception.
Please introduce your genre and why you prefer to write in that genre?I recently came across the phrase "docu-novel." It means a narrative fiction based in detail on the author's actual experience of particular events, a cross perhaps between fiction and journalism. I think this phrase might helpfully be applied to Wisdom and Rubies, though with certain reservations. The novel is very closely based on real events, but they did not happen to me; they happened in London in 1830, and the novel is in that sense a successor to my historical study, Before the Beak. You might call it a historical docu-novel, drawn from the journalism of nearly two-hundred years ago. But, as I say in my Author's Note, I have altered many details. Moreover it has a certain feature which you will also find in TV soap operas. The events which befall the characters in soaps are perfectly plausible, but it is unlikely that they should all have happened to the same people. So the lives of my characters were quite unusually eventful. Beyond that, I have striven for absolute historical accuracy in all things, including the English of the dialogue. I prefer to write in this genre because it enables me to say everything I wish to say about my characters, their personalities, minds and interests, while remaining strictly truthful; while sticking to facts. I like facts. The theme is an old one: crime and punishment. I hope Mr. Winterbourne, the elderly, ironic, tolerant and kindly lawyer who narrates the events, both tragic and comic, of Wisdom and Rubies is a pleasant guide to the criminal underworld, and the justice system which attempted to cope with it, in the years shortly before Queen Victoria came to the throne. He has a long literary career ahead of him: I have a number of sequels planned.
What has been your most rewarding experience with your writing process? Creating something is of itself rewarding. If people like what you have created, and even pay money to read it, then that should be a bonus!
Have you had a negative experience in your writing career? If so please tell us about it.I cannot think of one. Writing is hard work, and getting a long book into shape will always be a struggle (see below), but it is a rewarding struggle, and the end result is endlessly pleasing.
What has been your most rewarding experience in your publishing journey?The actual physical existence of the books, enabling other people to read and comment on them, even if the comments are not wholly positive. While a book is unpublished, you are speaking merely to an inner world. When it is published, real people read it. It's so different! One reader told me, of Before the Beak, that it had one great fault: in most cases it failed to tell you what ultimately happened to the real people who walked through its pages and whose lives were briefly glimpsed in newspaper reports. A reader, he said, wants to know what happens to the characters. I agreed, and this criticism was one of the incentives for turning to historical fiction, rather than writing another purely historical narrative. In a novel I can tell you what happens to all the characters. I cannot promise that vice will be punished and virtue rewarded. But I hope, in one way or another, that the ending will be satisfactory. I might not have seen this point if Before the Beak had never been published.
Have you had a negative experience in your publishing journey? If so please explain how it could have been avoided. Oh, rejection by agents and publishers, of course. Everyone must persevere in the face of rejection. But it does require some determination. And it can’t be avoided, any nmore than bad reviews can be avoided.
What one positive piece of advice would you give to other authors?Accept the existence of chaos. By this I mean that writing a book may be a bumpy adventure. Will the book be any good? Will I even finish it? More than once I thought I could not solve certain formal problems in Wisdom and Rubies, and was about to give it up; but on each occasion my mind came up with a solution: chaos was reduced to order. But, for this to happen, you must endure some chaos. Writing, like all art, is about form and the creation of form. It does not necessarily come easy.And remember: it's never too late to start.
Who is your favorite author? It depends what is meant by favourite author. If, by this phrase, we mean the author who, over all the many years, I have returned to repeatedly with delight; the author who, if you have nothing new to read, you pick off the shelf and say, "I'll just read that bit again where he says…"; the author whom you are constantly recommending to others…then it would be Macaulay, in his Essays and History of England. Try his account of the arrest of Judge Jeffries History, Chapter X)…you will be hooked.
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Featured Selection:
Wisdom and Rubies – by J. F. Slattery  
Eminent criminal barrister Adolphus Winterbourne had been worried about his godson Arthur before but when he discovered that the young man was in Clerkenwell prison on remand for suspected burglary, he got quite a shock… It is 1829, and burglary is a capital offence. But Arthur's brief stay in a London prison on a mistaken charge is only the first in a strange series of interlinked events into which he and Lord Horatio Carlton, his friend and fellow student, are inextricably drawn – events involving every aspect of London life: its journalists and politicians, its artists and scholars, its idlers and gamblers, its burglars, confidence tricksters and pickpockets. Meet George Marshall, irascible editor of The Morning Indicator and his striking print workers; Colonel Henderson and his Indian wife, whose greatest ambition is to walk in a London street without a veil; Oliver Morris and Lieutenant Peterson, on leave from Madras, whose friendship ends in violence and death; and above all, Frank Hoskins – charming, talented, kindly Frank, receiver of stolen goods and police agent, whose career spirals down into robbery and murder. Once Arthur and Horatio lived a life of jokes and laughter but as events unfold they find the shadows of tragedy closing in around them. Only a desperate plea to Sir Robert Peel, Home Secretary and founder of the new Metropolitan Police Force, will avert disaster. When, twenty-five years later, Mr. Winterbourne takes up his pen to write an account of these events, he wonders how he is to do it… Based on actual police reports of the period, Wisdom and Rubies is an engaging fictional account of a vital period in English social history. A sequel to 'Wisdom and Rubies' will shortly be published, entitled 'The Scapegoat'. It will be a story of mutiny on a ship returning from China and a subsequent trial for murder, based once again on real events of the period as reported in the newspapers.
Genre: Fiction, Literary  

Amazon Kindle Purchase Link  
Barnes and Noble Nook Purchase Link


*************************    


Before The Beak: True Stories From The London Police Offices In 1830
by J. F. Slattery

This is a book about people, of all social classes, who lived in London in the year 1830. It presents a vivid snapshot of their lives, gained from newspaper reports of cases heard at the police offices. Actual crimes occupy a certain space, but criminals are not the book’s overriding focus. Victims and witnesses of crime appeared in court as well, plus many others who were not criminals, but for whom the magistrates were responsible: children, the mentally ill, spouses involved in domestic disputes and, above all, the unemployed and otherwise destitute seeking relief under the Poor Law.
After an initial Chapter I. Setting the Scene, which provides a succinct account of the socio-political background, and explains the administrative and legal system in the London of 1830, the book is constructed as a series of narratives, featuring individual cases. Chapter II. In the New Year Snow describes the severe winter of 1830, and introduces the police offices and their magistrates. Chapter III. The Poor and the Destitute recounts tragic stories of poverty requiring action by the magistrates in their capacity as Poor Law administrators. Chapter IV. Love, Marriage and the Law has three sections: (i) “Errant husbands and thorough scoundrels” features husbands prosecuted for failure to maintain their families and fathers of illegitimate children sued by mothers for maintenance. (ii) “Domestic strife, elopement and the tar who bought a wife” narrates cases of domestic violence and cruelty, the misadventures of couples who eloped, and the misadventure of a trusting sailor. (iii) “Bigamy” speaks for itself: it was a widespread crime. Chapter V. Children, Animals and Lunatics begins with orphans, abandoned children and child apprentices; then come cases involving the mentally disturbed (in whose often terrible treatment the courts interfered), and finally prosecutions for cruelty to animals carried out by the SPCA (not yet the RSPCA). Chapter VI. The Tempted and the Fallen is divided into (i) “Drink” (cases of drunken people, sometimes funny, but more often tragic) and (ii) “Sex” (a more lurid Chapter, including child brothels in Marylebone and some reported rape cases). Chapter VII. Thieves and their Victims turns to actual crime: (i) “The perils of the street” describes the rife street crime of the period; this is followed by (ii) “Burglars and cracksmen”, and (iii) “Dishonest servants." The chapter closes with (iv) “A miscellany of theft", including shoplifting and body-snatching. Chapter VIII. Two Murders recounts two sensational murders which took place in London that year; one was never solved; for the other a man was hanged, and the newspaper reports accompany him to his last moments on the gallows. Chapter IX. Flouters of the Law features prize fighters, duellists, fortune tellers and others who deliberately and repeatedly broke the law. Chapter X. Public Order and Disorder has Chapters: two sections: (i) “The New Police” recounts the foundation of the Metropolitan Police by Peel and narrates cases of unsuitable policemen prosecuted for misbehaviour; while (ii) “Riot and Revolution” portrays the severe rots which occurred in London in November 1830 and the cases of individual rioters who came up before the police magistrates. Finally Chapter XI. 1830 and Beyond brings a medley of cases to close the year, and looks forward to the history of England over the next seventy years, noting that in the lifetime of a person born in 1830 the social and political fabric of England would undergo a complete change. The general reader interested in history will find this book both funny and tragic, but always fascinating.
It would be a perfect bedside book, but it would also be very suitable background at school or university. Lawyers will find a particular interest in its cases. It is original in its approach and lively in its presentation.
Genre: Fiction, Literary

Amazon Print Purchase Link  
Barnes and Noble Print Purchase Link  

J. F. Slattery’s Published Works 
Before the Beak (Amazon 2012)  
Wisdom and Rubies (Troubador 2014)

  J. F. Slattery’s Website  

Please Visit Author J. F. Slattery At Cold Coffee Press