John Wilson's Blog, page 7

The SEVEN are gathering

Seven award-winning authors. Seven grandsons. Seven stories. All shrink wrapped and ready to go (not the authors). Check out upcoming events and read samples of the stories here.

Research trip return

A boot from the Franklin expedition, found
at the charmingly named Starvation Cove.Back with much information and many ideas and fascinating/odd/bizarre facts to enrich the Scholastic's I Am Canada book and, undoubtedly, many others. series. Many thanks to the Access Copyright Foundation for the research grant that made it all possible.
Short visit home then Word on the Street in Vancouver on Sunday. I'm in the Author's Tent at 2:45. Come and say hello.
On Monday I'm off to Kelowna for a library tour. Who said a writer's life is dull?
Follow my adventures and get news on Facebook.

News—research trip

The sort of thing I'll be looking at.In two days, I'll be flying to London to research an upcoming book for Scholastic's I Am Canada series. Trip made possible by a grant from Access Copyright Foundation.
Follow my adventures into the past—with photos—on my travel blog, Twitter, and Facebook.

My father's India!

My father was a railway engineer in India in the 1920s and 30s. I grew up in the 1950s and 60s immersed in tales of the vanished India he had known, and I developed a fascination with the British experience that he had been a part of. I went in search of it and discovered a magical, modern nation, moving into the future, but dragging along the ghosts of an incredible, complex and fascinating past. Where Soldiers Lie is my homage to that past and to the stories my father told me. Amazon.com  Amazon.co.uk Smashwords.com

Where Soldiers Lie is set in 1957, around the tragic events at Cawnpore (Kanpur) during what is variously known as the Indian Mutiny and the First War for Independence. Jack O'Hara and Alice Wheeler don't fit into either imperial British society or Indian culture. When war breaks out, they are both caught helplessly in the middle, struggling to understand—and to survive.

"This is an absolutely terrific book…Never lagging with a credible hero and an exotic setting which should engage both female and male readers…The pacing is flawless." Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction Jury Citation

"The tension and action of the battle and the intense danger of the escape…will keep readers turning these pages." Quill & Quire

Deux livres en français

Dans l'Angleterre de la fin du XVIe siècle, le jeune Robert Bylot rêve de devenir explorateur. À l'âge de quinze ans, il part pour Londres, où il est recueilli par John Dee, célèbre mathématicien, géographe et alchimiste protégé par la reine. Le savant lui enseigne l'art de la navigation et lui confie son rêve : recueillir des échantillons des quatre éléments magiques disséminés dans le monde, dont la conjonction permettra d'instaurer un nouvel âge d'or.
D'abord fasciné par les révélations du mage, Bylot accepte de se rendre en Indonésie pour lui rapporter la «roche de feu». Mais, en 1610, alors qu'il participe à l'expédition d'Henry Hudson pour découvrir le passage du Nord-Ouest, des événements tragiques l'éloignent durement des chimères de Dee et mettent fin à ses propres rêves de gloire et d'aventures…
Sous la forme d'un retour dans le temps, ce palpitant récit d'aventures, basé sur des faits et des personnages historiques, vous révélera des aspects étonnants de l'exploration navale au XVIIe siècle. Amazon.com Amazon.fr


Jim Hay a quinze ans lorsque la Première Guerre mondiale éclate. Il pense que la guerre est une aventure glorieuse et il a hâte d'aller en découdre avec les Allemands. Son père s'est enrôlé en août 1914. Comme il n'a pas l'âge de s'engager à ses côtés, Jim doit se contenter de confier ses pensées et ses rêves à son journal. Au fil du temps, la vie simple de Jim se complique sérieusement. Son père est tué au front et sa mère sombre dans une profonde dépression. Lorsqu'il réussit enfin à s'enrôler pour la guerre, il y trouve davantage un refuge que la gloire.
Ce que Jim découvre dans les tranchées, sur le sol français, est à l'opposé de la vision romantique qu'il avait de la guerre. Sa belle aventure devient un effort de chaque instant pour survivre… et son rêve de jeunesse se transforme en une affreuse tragédie. Amazon.com Amazon.fr

Two American Civil War novels

Flags of War and its sequel Battle Scars are now available as eBooks on Amazon (click on the cover or above) or, for all other formats, on Smashwords (Flags of War, Battle Scars).
The story follow two cousins, Walt and Nate, during the Civil War. Nate lives in South Carolina and Walt in Canada, but they are linked by a runaway slave, Sunday, on the Underground Railroad. As the war develops, they are drawn together, but also into adventures that they might not survive."…action-filled, tightly written prose. Realistic battle scenes illustrate the senselessness of war…the story offers a fresh take on the conflict - the idea of Canada as refuge for fugitive slaves and the irony of how it was nearly drawn into the war on the side of the South."- Albany Public Library, NYFind out more about these and other recently uploaded eBook tittles at my updated website

TWO CIVIL WAR NOVELS

Flags of War and its sequel Battle Scars are now available as eBooks on Amazon (click on the cover or above) or, for all other formats, on Smashwords (Flags of War, Battle Scars).The story follow two cousins, Walt and Nate, during the Civil War. Nate lives in South Carolina and Walt in Canada, but they are linked by a runaway slave, Sunday, on the Underground Railroad. As the war develops, they are drawn together, but also into adventures that they might not survive."…action-filled, tightly written prose. Realistic battle scenes illustrate the senselessness of war…the story offers a fresh take on the conflict - the idea of Canada as refuge for fugitive slaves and the irony of how it was nearly drawn into the war on the side of the South."- Albany Public Library, NYFind out more about these and other recently uploaded eBook tittles at my updated website

Two WWII novels

Flames of the Tiger and Four Steps to Death are now available on Amazon (click on title link or cover) or on Smashwords for other formats (Flames of the Tiger and Four Steps to Death). The former takes place in a ditch, by the flickering light of a burning Tiger tank, over one night in 1945 outside Berlin. A fleeing German soldier tells a young wounded Canadian his life story to keep him conscious and alive.The latter follows two soldiers, one Russian and one German, as they struggle through the greatest battle in human history—Stalingard.

Billy the Kid-Free

Billy the Kid—free (this is a play on words, you'll understand when you read the story!).
At the end of the Desert Legends Trilogy (Written in Blood, Ghost Moon, Victorio's War), there was a story left over.
Orca have now made it available for free, complete with a cool cover.
Enjoy a free download of Billy the Kid—The Last Desert Legend as a PDF, EPUB or MOBI.

Shot at Dawn Award

Shot at Dawn, my WWI story in Scholastic's I Am Canada series is up for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction. My sixth nomination, I'm due.

The jury says: “This book is powerful and vivid, accessible to a wide range of readers and very compelling in its presentation of a story that is so hard to imagine and yet that we know to be so sadly and terrifying true... Wilson tells the story of life in the horrific trenches of World War I and the effects of battle on a shell-shocked soldier... Allan is a convincing narrator, the pacing of the story is just right and this is a strong fictional rendering of this major event in history.”

To quote Annie Lennox, 'who am I to disagree?'