Veronika Jordan's Blog, page 46

My Picnic Basket by Paul Guy Hurrell

My Picnic Basket is the third story in the Birdsall family series following on from ‘What’s In My Fridge’ and ‘In My Toaster.’

The Birdsall family are enjoying some quality time together with fun days out to the seaside and more.

But when they return home from a picnic, they receive an unexpected visit from Sam the Titfur, asking Terry and Tracey for their urgent help.

They are needed to stop the Grayling.

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Sam, with his trusted Needed Bag, explains that they must get to the Memory Tree before the Grayling does or there will be grave consequences.

In this new adventure of a race against time, Terry and Tracey meet Wimple the Wizard again, walk on the backs of Skylings to cross a Canyon, dodge bouncing heads and watch a battle between two armies who fight every Saturday over who has the prettiest flower!

My Review

My Picnic Basket is the third book in the trilogy featuring the Birdsall family – mum, dad, Terry and Tracey. In the first book Terry got pulled through the fridge into a magical land. Then the same thing happened to Tracey, only this time she travelled through the toaster. Must have been one of those that toasts really thick bread.

Terry had been badly bullied and Tracey was unhappy because her dad was stuck in New Zealand for ten months during Covid, but now he is finally home. Everyone is so pleased.

So having taken the family on a trip down memory lane through his childhood haunts, Mr Birdsall plans a picnic in one of the places he used to visit. They decide to use the wicker picnic basket that has been stored in the loft for over two years. Onced it’s all cleaned and loaded, they pop it in the boot of the car and off they go.

At this point I will just mention that the description of Scarborough brought back many happy pre-Covid memories. And I also love halloumi cheese.

But let’s get back to the story. Having eaten their picnic and put all the cutlery and crockery back in the basket, Terry and Tracey are sure there is something or someone hidden in the basket. But is there really?

When they get home, it turns out that there was someone in the basket after all. It’s Sam the Titfur, with his trusted Needed Bag! He explains that they must all go to the Memory Tree and stop the Grayling getting there first. And so another madcap adventure ensues.

Kids will love this story. It’s a race against time with lots of crazy characters and impossible rides. I think it may be the last though for Terry and Tracey.

Many thanks to @ZooloosBT for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the Author

“I was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England in 1960 to a single parent family. I am the youngest of five siblings – four boys and a girl. I was brought up on a council estate and my family had very little, just like many other families on the estate at the time. I attended two schools as I grew up Bentley Lane Infants/Junior School and then onto Stainbeck High School. For me school was always hard, mainly because of my absenteeism. I wasn’t ill, it was just my mum didn’t send me (empty nest syndrome). Looking back at my school years there is a good chance I spent more times at home, than I did in school.

“I officially left school in 1976 and my first full time job was making special mirrors, the ones you see in pubs. I didn’t last long there before I got bored. I had a number of other jobs after that, but I didn’t stay long in any of them. One job I stayed a full day before not going back, but my record for the shortest stay was 4 hours, I walked away from this job after the hourly rate was cut from 90p an hour, down to 70p an hour.

“The following year I was forced to take a job, back at Stainbeck High School repairing school desks. While here I met my wife, Beverley. We are still together and have two wonderful grown- up children and three grandchildren. I worked for Leeds City Council, in the Housing section for 22 years, before retirement. Since retiring I have the time to carry out one of my first loves, writing stories.”

Follow Paul at:
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/paul.hurrell.35

Books Links:
GoodReads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199547355-my-picnic-basket
Buy Links – https://mybook.to/picnicbasket-zbt

Highly Flawed Individual by TC Roberts Cover Reveal

In Highly Flawed Individual, thirty-year-old eternal bachelor Archie Flynn has it all: a successful finance career, a beautiful terrace home in Sydney’s highly sought-after Rocks district, and a thriving sex life that James Bond would envy. In other words, life is perfect.

Until, the stunning Jezebel Ekas, an American professional mixed martial arts fighter, enters his life. Jezebel is a woman far superior to Archie in so many ways. When their paths cross, the life Archie thought so perfect is quickly turned upside down. Smart, funny, strong-willed, this is the woman he wants to settle down with, but she won’t fall easily for his usual lines and his promiscuous past is about to catch up with him. 

Desperate to date Jezebel but unwilling to let her know that he just caught a rare and exotic, un-diagnosed sexually transmitted infection, Archie must go against his every instinct. Rather than seducing her he must do everything he can to not sleep with Jezebel, including lying to her. 

Tim Roberts’ debut novel takes a hard and honest look at the “modern” man who might not be quite as cool and sexy as he thinks. With a knowing nod and a self-deprecating humour that draws you in, Roberts details Archie and Jezebel’s whirlwind, almost-but-not-quite, romance.
Genre: Romance | Humour

About the Author

Tim Roberts is the author of Goodbye Office, Hello World! and the forthcoming graphic novel Killer Sexbot. When he is not writing, Tim loves traveling, exploring new places, or seeking out his next destination. This is his first novel.
Author’s Website: https://timroberts.au

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Geneva by Richard Armitage

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sarah Collier has started to show the same tell-tale signs of the Alzheimer’s disease as her father: memory loss, even blackouts.

So she is reluctant to accept the invitation to be the guest of honour at a prestigious biotech conference – until her husband Daniel, also a neuroscientist, persuades her that the publicity storm will be worth it. The technology being unveiled at this conference could revolutionise medicine forever. More than that, it could save Sarah’s life.

In Geneva, the couple are feted as stars – at least, Sarah is. But behind the five-star luxury, investors are circling, controversial blogger Terri Landau is all over the story, and Sarah’s symptoms are getting worse. As events begin to spiral out of control, Sarah can’t be sure who to trust – including herself.

My Review

First of all let me just say that the narration was brilliant. Richard Armitage voices Daniel and everything else, while Nicola Walker voices Sarah. It works really well, but then these two are amongst the finest actors of their generation.

I listened to it on Audible. It’s not like someone is simply reading a book, however good they are. This was a performance. And how exciting it was! It was a bit slow to start with, I have to admit, as we had to get to know the characters, but I listened to the last three and a half hours on the plane back from Gran Canaria. I’m glad it got to the end before we landed. I was on the edge of my seat – literally and not just because of the turbulence.

Gosh, what a plot. Sarah has just been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. Her father has dementia, and has recently had to move into a care home. Sarah has frighteningly similar symptoms. She suffers memory loss, disorientation, dizziness and sickness. A brain scan has confirmed the worst. She takes tablets to control the issues.

Having won the Nobel prize for her contribution to controlling ebola in Africa, she ‘retires’ to take care of her and Daniel’s daughter Maddie. Daniel is a complex character, at times fully supportive of his brilliant wife, but at times he shows signs of jealousy. She is a celebrity in the world of neuroscience, whereas he is just a humble professor.

Sarah has been asked to endorse Neurocell, a discovery that could revolutionise medicine forever. It’s been developed at the Schiller Institute in Geneva. All top secret – there are ethical implications and huge sums of money involved. Sarah hates the limelight, and now with her diagnosis, she knows she couldn’t cope. But Daniel pushes and pushes until she agrees to go.

What follows is a terrifying journey to hell and back, with Sarah unable to trust anyone, not even herself. And while she is supposedly the ‘victim’ with a terminal diagnosis, she is also strong and inspirational. And the scenes with her father will bring a tear to your eye, even if you have no experience of dementia.

A wonderful debut, I hope we hear a lot more from Richard as an author, as well as an actor.

About the Author

British actor and audio-book narrator.

Richard Armitage was born in 1971, the second son of Margaret, a secretary, and John, an engineer. He grew up in a village outside the city. Some of his favourite childhood stories included The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

At the age of fourteen he transferred from a local state middle school, Brockington College, to Pattison’s Dancing Academy in Coventry (now Pattison College), an independent boarding school specialising in Performing Arts. The school arranged regular theatre visits, and it was here, watching a performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, that he discovered an interest in acting: “I remember having that moment of finally understanding what was going on. They were having such a good time and the audience was having such a good time and I just thought that was where I wanted to be. I remember thinking they were doing something they loved and they were getting paid for it”.

Pattison’s introduced him to the demands and obligations of an acting career: “It… instilled me with a discipline that has stood me in good stead – never to be late, to know your lines and to be professional.” It gave its pupils opportunities to appear in local amateur and professional productions, and by the time Richard left school at 17, he had already appeared in Showboat, Half a Sixpence, as Bacchus in Orpheus and the Underworld and in The Hobbit at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham.

After leaving school, Richard joined The Second Generation, a physical theatre group, working for eight weeks in a show called Allow London at the Nachtcircus in Budapest. Here he “threw hoola hoops to a skateboarding Russian and held ladders for a juggling act…did guide roping for the trapeze, and…a weird kind of UV glow-in-the-dark mime illusion thing”. Though he later described “sleeping next to the elephants” as “a low point in show business”, it was sufficient to gain him his Equity card, a prerequisite at the time for entry to the profession.

Returning to the UK, he embarked on a career in musical theatre, working as assistant choreographer to Kenn Oldfield and appearing in the West End and on tour in a series of musicals including 42nd Street, My One and Only, Nine, Mr Wonderful, Annie Get your Gun and Cats.

By 1995, inspired in part by seeing Adrian Noble’s classic 1994 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stratford, he was laying the foundations of an acting career, appearing at the Actors’ Centre’s Tristram Bates Theatre as Macliesh in Willis Hall’s The Long and the Short and the Tall, and at the Old School Manchester as Henry in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, Flan in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation and Biff in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. He was also studying for a Society of British Fight Directors qualification.

This was the year that Richard enrolled on a three-year Acting course at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). In his final year at LAMDA, an advert on the college notice board for film extras led to his first experience of acting in a feature film: a one-line role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It was a humble, though interesting, entry into film: “I felt very nervous saying my line – I had practised it for three weeks… I actually ended up as a computer graphic in the film, I think”. Despite being unidentifiable on screen, he found himself besieged by Star Wars fans when touring Japan with the RSC two years later.

Graduating in the summer of 1998, he immediately joined the cast of Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, having already appeared at the Edinburgh Festival.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Hindsight by Mary Turner Thomson Cover Reveal

In a fusion of past and present, Catherine’s world spirals into chaos when a mysterious childhood memory unveils haunting recollections of a life she never lived.

The mesmerizing saga of Merwynn, a defiant 9th-century Saxon beckons from deep within her psyche. Every revelation from Merwynn’s era sends ripples through Catherine’s existence. Connected across millennia, Catherine grapples with the weight of their entwined destinies, as she confronts stark parallels in their quests for love and liberation. With each layer of Merwynn’s history, Catherine’s own life frays, driving her to a precipice: will she succumb or muster the strength to redefine her destiny through understanding the truth about her past?

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Delve into a moving narrative that examines the essence of identity, the scars of generational trauma, and the transformative effects of empowerment. Catherine’s fervent pursuit of truth amidst illusion and reality stands as a compelling symbol of human resilience and the perpetual hope that links souls across the ages.

About the Author

In her debut novel, Mary Turner Thomson (international best-selling author of THE BIGAMIST and THE PSYCHOPATH) draws upon her personal experience of being victimised to tell an inspiring story about powerlessness, learning from the past and taking back control.
Author’s Website: www.maryturnerthomson.com

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Stolen Pieces by SK Golden Cover Reveal

OCEAN’S 8 meets Janet Evanovich, this fast-paced crime caper features one badass mother, with a certain set of skills who is forced to come out of retirement to protect her son, and teach a few men a few lessons!

Ex-con artist Bee Cardello is going legit. Divorced from her mafia boss husband, she is determined to stay on the straight and narrow. So, when ex-hubby Charlie steals $37.5 million from a dangerous kingpin, who puts out a hit on Bee and her ten-year-old son Oliver, she finds herself pulled back into the life she’s worked so hard to escape.

Genre: Crime
Publisher: Severn House

Part of that old life being one Adam Gage – an old flame and all-round sexy badass who Charlie’s now employed to keep her and Oliver safe . . . well, that’s what he tells her. Bee has been in this game long enough to know that everyone is in it for themselves, and she’d be stupid to trust Adam . . . again.

When Oliver is snatched from right under their noses, rather than risk losing him forever, Bee gathers her old team, dusts off all her old grifting tricks, and comes out of retirement to get her son back!

About the Author
S.K. Golden writes cosy mysteries and crime capers. Born and raised in the Florida Keys, she married a commercial fisherman. The two of them still live on the islands with their five kids (one boy, four girls — including identical twins!), two cats, and a corgi named Goku. Sarah graduated from Saint Leo University with a bachelor’s degree in Human Services and Administration and has put it to good use approximately zero times. She’s worked as a bank teller, a pharmacy technician, and an executive assistant at her father’s church. Sarah is delighted to be doing none of those things now.
Author’s Website: skgoldenwrites.com

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Rabbit Heart: Book 1 of the Terrafolk Trilogy by Francesca Crispo Out Now

Quirky and adventurous Mycel had ventured away from her home in the mystical forest realm of Yannaya to immerse herself in the eccentricities of human society.

While creating a new life in the city of Seattle – complete with a job and human roommate – she meets Earwyn, a charming but mysterious ocean conservationist. As their relationship heats up and their bond deepens, Mycel finds her magick fading fast. Her unassuming, quiet lifestyle takes a dangerous turn and she is forced to face truths she thought she had left behind. To save herself and those she loves, she must search for answers between the human world, her homeland and her own past. 

Genre: Fantasy/Romance

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Surviving Him by Jo Johnson

When Daisy reaches eighteen, she enters a highly selective club. In this club, you get a test that decides if you live or die.

To the casual observer Daisy is a vile bully with a drug habit. She’s been expelled from school and frightens her family. Realising the disease that devoured her father is after her, Daisy has given up.

Her one remaining cheerleader is her Uncle Ben. He’s trying hard to fulfil the promise he made to her father, but has big problems of his own.

Light emerges when Daisy is forced to work in a care home. Much to everyone’s delight, she’s shockingly successful. Just as she turns a corner, long hidden family secrets crawl from under the carpet. When Daisy stumbles upon the ugly truth, relationships crumble to an all-time low. Can Ben or her overbearing gran contain this volcanic teenager before she blows everyone’s future out of the water?

Surviving Him is a coming of age, psychological suspense informed by Jo Johnson’s work as a clinical psychologist. The story explores the aftermath of frontal temporal dementia for three generations of one extended family.

My Review

When I started reading this book I found it a bit vague and convoluted, and myself and my fellow Pigeons (my online book club), got a bit frustrated. We had no idea what was going on. However, by the end I was blubbing like a lovesick teenager, which is something I rarely do when reading. So on that basis alone I have give it 4.5/5 stars. I only just remembered that I read Surviving Her with The Pigeonhole and gave that 5 stars as well.

The story is focused around 17-year-old Daisy. She’s a ‘typical’ teenager but in the extreme – a stroppy, gothy emo who self-harms and shouts and swears, nicks things, and hangs around with the wrong crowd. But her reasons are very different from most teens. Her dad Owen was diagnosed with FTD (frontotemporal dementia), for which there is no cure and life expectancy is six to eight years but can be far less. In his worst moments he broke things, lost his temper and finally hit Daisy, which was the beginning of the end.

Daisy is smart and creative, but her world has been rocked and she can’t cope. FTD is genetic and everyone wants her to take a test when she turns 18 to find out if she will be affected. It’s too much for Daisy.

Finally she is expelled from school (great move by the school – write her off at 17), and doesn’t know where to turn. Then her controlling gran Dorothy (I had a lot of sympathy for her) gets her a job in The Orchards nursing home and she starts to flourish. In fact some of the residents will only respond to her straightforward attitude.

The trouble with Daisy’s family is that everyone is keeping secrets, and often they don’t behave in a way that I consider to be ‘normal’, but then I’m not a psychologist. Her mum Estelle has turned to drink and fallen out with Daisy, uncle Ben is a bit of a twat really, his wife Callie is OK, but she doesn’t know the truth (I would have told my husband everything), while Dorothy tries to hold it all together by perpetuating the lies. Then Daisy meets Sachini and her son Haizeh in the park and everything changes.

I loved this book – there is so much warmth and hope amongst the despair.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read. 

About the Author

Jo qualified as a clinical psychologist in 1992 specialising in neurology since 2000. She worked for fifteen years within the NHS but in 2008 made an impulsive decision to leave in order to write and explore new projects.

She continue to practise psychology hoping one day to become perfect at it! In her spare time she loves writing fiction and given her day job she believes she can write characters who could be real.

It’s Your Turn Now by Theo Baxter

Daisy is desperate to escape her husband. But has she made a deal with the devil?

Daisy Costigan is desperate to leave her violent, controlling husband, Bruce. But she knows he’ll never let her go. And if she tries to escape, he’s promised he’ll do whatever it takes to track her down and have his revenge.

She’s trapped.

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One day Daisy meets a charming stranger in a bookstore. His name is Marco and he overhears Daisy’s terrified phone conversation with controller Bruce. Marco makes Daisy an offer. He’ll take care of Bruce if she’ll help him with a little problem – his wife.

Daisy doesn’t really think he’s serious, but two days later Bruce is dead. And now Marco wants her to hold up her end of the deal. If she doesn’t, he says he’ll kill someone she loves. Stalked by the unhinged Marco, Daisy finds herself in an impossible situation. Can she find a way to escape this terrifying man?

Or will she be forced to do the unthinkable?

My Review

I wanted to read this book because I really liked the concept. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Daisy has been abused by her husband Bruce throughout the ten years of their marriage. She can do nothing right. If his meals are not ready on time, he beats her. If he doesn’t like what she has prepared, he’ll throw the food on the floor, dish and all, like a demented toddler, and say it’s her fault for giving him rubbish. She isn’t allowed out of the house without good reason, and then he calls her every five minutes to ask why she’s taking so long. If she is late he threatens to take her car off her. He employs a housekeeper, a gardener and a handyman, who are there basically to spy on her. She’s been in A & E three times in six months with lacerations, bruises and broken bones. But no-one is prepared to help her because Bruce’s father is the Mayor and he can make anything go away if he chooses to.

Then one day Daisy is allowed to go to the bookstore, where Marco overhears Bruce shouting at Daisy over the phone. He guesses, rightly so, that Daisy is being abused. He starts a conversation with her and shows her a book called Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. I haven’t actually read the book, but I’ve seen the Hitchcock film many times and it’s brilliant. And this is the concept that inspired It’s Your Turn Now. The story concerns two strangers who meet on a train, one of whom is a psychopath who suggests that they ‘exchange’ murders so that neither will be caught.* Tennis star Guy wants to divorce his wife, while Bruno wants to get rid of his father. Bruno suggests that he kills Guy’s wife and Guy then returns the ‘favour’ by killing Bruno’s father. Guy doesn’t take it seriously, but of course Bruno carries out the murder and now Guy must fulfil his side of the bargain.

There is a slight difference though. Daisy is actually tempted, but she doesn’t think she could kill anyone. But her fear of Bruce is enough to make her do something rash. Marco has told her that his wife Sarah is a dreadful person, who is unfaithful and treats him like a slave. Surprise, surprise, none of it is true and he’s the dreadful one. A psychopath, a narcissist and a criminal.

So when Bruce turns up dead and the police are on Daisy’s doorstep, she has a decision to make. Carry out her part of the deal, or risk Marco coming after her. And Marco isn’t going to give her a choice.

Suspenseful and terrifying, you’ll have to read the book to discover what Daisy decides.

Many thanks to @zooloo2008 for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

*Wikipedia

About the Author

Theo Baxter loves writing psychological suspense thrillers. It’s all about that last reveal that he loves shocking readers with. He grew up in New York, where there was crime all around. He decided to turn that into something positive with his fiction. His stories will have you reading through the night—they are very addictive!

Theo’s Links
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theobaxterauthor/

Buy Links
Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200043307-it-s-your-turn-now
Buy Links : https://mybook.to/itsyourturnnow-zbt

Paradise Undone By Annie Dawid Q & A

Marceline Baldwin is a shy and mild-mannered pastor’s daughter. Then she meets the charismatic Jim Jones. She falls madly in love.

They have a mutual desire to change the world and quickly become inseparable. In the midst of 1950s segregated America, Jim and Marceline Baldwin Jones made headlines for being the first white family in Indiana to adopt a black child. They adopt five other non- white children and called themselves ‘the rainbow family’.

Jones’ following begins to grow and becomes The People’s Temple, welcoming people from all walks of life and giving hope to the disenfranchised. They build a commune in the jungle of British Guyana on the ideals of equality and brotherly love, but the reality is very different. Jim Jones is a dangerous egotist and when things start to fall apart, he plans his mass-murder suicide mission. If he’s going to die, he will take his followers with him…

On November 18th 1978, nine hundred and nine people died in the jungle in British Guyana.

Published on the 45th anniversary, Paradise Undone explores the tragedy through the voices of four protagonists – Marceline Baldwin Jones and three other members of the Peoples’ Temple. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Annie Dawid blends fact and fiction, using real and composite characters to tell a story about the greatest single loss of US civilian lives in the 20th century.

Q & A

What made you decide to write about this particular event? Have you written about any other religious cults?
Two childhood friends of mine, sisters, went into a cult as young adults and didn’t emerge for decades. Their disappearance was the catalyst for my quest to understand how human beings can fall under the spell of a charismatic leader who is deleterious to their health. The older sister died of cancer while still in the cult, under suspicious circumstances. The younger sister finally managed to extricate herself, along with her son, after the death of her sister, and we have been in touch ever since.

Two other good friends of mine had friends/family fall into cult land. One emerged after 25 years, and the other died in the Heaven’s Gate suicides in California. I wrote a long story about the sisters and read part of it at the 2004 University of North Dakota writers’ conference, where I was a Master Teacher in Residence. Part of the story involves the parents going to a deprogrammer, and I invented him telling the parents that he had lost a daughter in Jonestown. (Story took place in 1982.) After the reading, a friend called JM came up in tears, telling me about his colleague Becky, whose two sisters and nephew died in the Jonestown massacre. (Later I would learn the nephew was also the son of Jim Jones.) That moment in my story was fleeting, as was my understanding of
Peoples Temple at the time. A few months later, roaming the bookshelves doing research for my forthcoming sabbatical, where I planned to write a novel, HIPPIE RUINS, about communes in Southern Colorado, I roved down the aisle to Cults. Multiple books with with Jonestown in their titles called out to me. Remembering JM’s grief for his friend, I thought: I must write about Jonestown. HIPPIE RUINS can wait.

How much research did you have to do?
I started researching in 2004, continued through 2008, and then had to do still more to write the epilogue, which takes place in 2018. So, I’ll say a minimum of 5 years reading everything I could find, or order over the internet, as I was no longer at my university job with recourse to a library and librarians. I also spent many hours listening to the tapes from the Jonestown Institute, and this was some of the most difficult and most informative research. Note: Becky (mentioned above) is Dr. Rebecca Moore, who runs the Jonestown Institute with her husband, journalist Fielding McGehee

How many of the characters are fictional and how many are real people from the event? Did you interview any survivors? Were they willing to speak to you freely? Could they justify what happened?
Two of my four protagonists are real: Mrs. Jim Jones, who has barely been written about anywhere, despite her being part of Peoples Temple from the beginning until the horrible last day, and the Guyanese Ambassador to the United States, though I fictionalized his name. I wanted a Guyanese character; the real-life ambassador had killed himself, his wife and their son on the 3rd anniversary of the massacre. The other two are composites: an African- American man who escaped Jonestown on the last day and a white woman who stayed in San Francisco working at the Peoples Temple headquarters, remaining in thrall to Jones and the Utopian ideal of Jonestown for many years.

How important is setting in the book?
As a fiction writer, setting is key for me. Lots of the book takes place in San Francisco, where I lived for 7 years. I never made it to Jonestown, Guyana, but I read a great deal about the country and studied the many photographs available of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Compound in the jungle.

What is your typical day as a writer? Do you write at home in a special place?
When I was working on the book, I would take my son to the bus stop at 6:30 am, read all morning, write for a few hours, then take a hike with my dogs while listening to books on tape for research. My cabin was 780 square feet, and I worked at the dining room table.

Do you listen to music while you write? Or do you prefer total silence?
Either silence or classical music.

What sort of books did you read as a child and what is your favourite book ever (as an adult or child)?
Louise Fitzhugh’s HARRIET THE SPY made me a writer. I recommend it to everyone. Although it’s a book for young readers (my mother inscribed a copy for me on my 10th birthday), its sensibility is New York adult, and very funny.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Paradise Undone is my 6th and most important work. Getting it published was a 16-year process, and the fact that I can now hold the book in my hand still stuns me. It’s my most important work because I feel it speaks to the human condition in ways none of my earlier work does, most of which was semi-autobiographical. I wanted to illuminate some of the lives lost at Jonestown, almost all of whom remain, 45 years later, subsumed in the shadow of Jim Jones.

Thank you so much to the author for taking the time to answer my questions. The responses have been so interesting.

And many thanks to @Read_Media and Inkspot Publishing for inviting me to share this Q & A.

About the Author

Annie Dawid has published five books, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays. She teaches at the University of Denver, University College master’s program in creative writing online from her home in very rural Colorado. Her fifth book, Put Off My Sackcloth, was published last year by The Humble Essayist Press. It was a runner up in the Los Angeles Book Festival 2021 autobiography category and a finalist in the 2022 Memoir category from Book Excellence and in non-fiction, Rubery International Book Award 2022. Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown won the 2022 Screencraft Cinematic Book Contest.

Crow Face, Doll Face by Carly Holmes

Unhappily married mother of four, Annie is drowning in domestic servitude.

She often wonders what her life could have been had she not had children, but when her youngest daughters perform a seemingly impossible act of levitation, her life is touched with magic and she realises that her girls are truly special and that she must protect them. Eventually Annie musters the courage to leave the wreck of her marriage, but she commits a terrible, unthinkable, unmotherly act along the way.

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Crow Face, Doll Face explores being forced to live with the consequences of the decisions we make and the fantasies we construct to soothe ourselves when the life we live falls far short of the life we planned.

An uncanny tale of a flawed mother and her wicked children.

My Review

Amazing cover!

I’m not sure what I’ve just read. I don’t know how to describe it or what genre it falls into. Maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s its own genre. I just know I found it terrifying and at times was scared to read on.

Annie wants to travel and see the world. But she marries Peter and he doesn’t. So she gives it all up. They have their first child – a boy they call Julian – followed by a girl. Annie struggles to love Elsa and believes that touching her will taint her with her mother’s disdain. She wears gloves on the rare occasions she handles the baby. At this point, I would have diagnosed her with post natal depression, maybe postpartum psychosis, but this was then, not now. I’m unsure if this is the 70s – it never gives the date, but they still use pound notes, though there are 50ps, there are no mobile phones or internet.

Then Kitty is born. She is so beautiful, they call her Doll Face. Peter is obsessed. Finally they have Leila, whose dark, shiny hair and slightly beaky nose make her look like a crow so they call her Crow Face. Leila and Kitty are inseparable. Annie is slightly jealous that she isn’t needed by either of them, emotionally at any rate.

I felt so sorry for Elsa at this point. She’s plain and clumsy and gets pushed out all the time. She adores Julian, who is the only one who is kind to her.

Annie believes that the two youngest are special in some way and she must protect them, even at the expense of everyone else. It’s hard to tell whether she is delusional or her post natal depression is spiralling out of control. I found her hard to like, even though she is as much a victim as anything else. She never wanted to be a mother, she never wanted to be like her own mother where having children was enough for her. Peter’s behaviour is pretty awful as well, though having clipped Annie’s wings, he’s left her to falter on the ground.

It’s a remarkable book, but don’t expect everything to be neatly packaged. You’ll be disappointed.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Carly Holmes lives and writes on the banks of the river Teifi, west Wales. Her debut novel The Scrapbook was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award, and her Literary Strange short story collection Figurehead was published in limited edition hardback by Tartarus Press, and reprinted in paperback by Parthian Books. Her prize-winning short prose has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Ambit, The Ghastling, The Lonely Crowd, and has twice been
selected for The Best Horror of the Year.