Isobel Blackthorn's Blog, page 12

Australian Bushfire hits Cobargo – When a bushfire wipes out your old home town

For the last four days I have been gripped by emotions I can scarcely describe, struggling to take in the catastrophe as it plays out through the lives of my friends.

Catastrophic bushfires have been plaguing Australia since September, the result of three years of drought, extreme heat and very dry air and wind. You would need to have your head in a bucket not to have noticed. I have been stirred into climate action as a result. My mum mentioned a fire officer had said the whole of the Great Dividing Range could burn before we get any rain. I didn’t want to believe that but now I think it could be an accurate prediction. The stats keep coming out and the totals keep getting scaled up. We have certainly lost to fire land the size of West Virginia and I believe we will end up with cindered land the size of Scotland. Not to mention the lives of people, at least half a billion animals, and the thousands of homes lost. Our do-nothing, pro-coal, business-as-usual Prime Minister refused to meet with chief fire officers who were very keen to warn him of the looming catastrophe back in May. They could see what was coming. He didn’t want to hear it.

On Monday 30th January I was kept busy tracking the fires beginning to take hold in East Gippsland. I was taking a keen interest because I know that area well. I set one of my novels there. I used to travel through the area on my way from the Far South Coast of New South Wales to Melbourne. I was worried. I opened The Guardian live feed. Slowly, I grew alarmed. Chaos unfolded and I could see that Mallacoota was doomed.

[image error]Photo of sky as fire front approached. Photo unfiltered
Cobargo

As that reality sank in, a notification came through from the Rural Fire Service alerting of a fire that had taken hold up in Badja Road; that it was so intense it had created its own thunderstorm and had crossed the Tuross River and was heading east. I looked on Maps. I saw straight away that my old home town of Cobargo lay directly to the southeast.

It is an idyllic location –

[image error]The view, from the garden I created and the house I co-built

 

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The New Year’s Eve forecast was for strong northwesterly winds that would blow the fire straight for the town. It was a fair distance. Some twenty-five kilometres. So I thought maybe the RFS would take defensive action and things would be okay.

They couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. I woke up on New Year’s Day to find my friends had been alerted in the small hours to leave as the fire charged at them over the mountains and screamed through the valleys. Friends told to go to first one village, then another and then on to a town and then another. Hardly anywhere was safe.

I have owned four properties in the area and lived in another four. I sorted mail at the Cobargo post office. I worked in a gift shop. My children attended the local school. My nieces and nephews were born and grew up on a farm on the edge of the village. I wrote a memoir set in Cobargo, a memoir of building a sustainable lifestyle dream 2005-2009. It was a dream of survival in a post-climate changed reality in what I thought was a climate safe environment. First book I ever wrote. It is currently unpublished.

It is a surreal feeling to be so desperate for news of a place that was once your home, your entire life. All the while knowing how many people you knew or walked past every day are suffering. Are traumatised.

[image error]Aerial view of fires

I started checking Facebook profiles to see what my friends were doing. If they were safe. One announced he was staying to defend. I kept going back to his post for updates. Then, the power and comms went out. No more news.

It was an anxious day of waiting, many hours of scrolling through posts and on live media newsfeeds for announcements. Slowly the news filtered through. I saw people I knew appearing on TV. Cobargo had lost a father and son. I knew the father. He was part of the show society committee when I was secretary. His son went to school with my daughters. Then I saw the footage of the main street. The post office survived. A large chunk of the historic village, many buildings over 120 years old, razed. Buildings housing gift shops and cafes. A large portion of what makes Cobargo quaint, what gives it its olde worlde charm, gone.

Few scenes can look more desolate than a town that has had the heart burned out of it, the community of Cobargo near Bega now a barren sight. @lizziedaniels #9News pic.twitter.com/I71Lgttfi6

— Nine News Sydney (@9NewsSyd) January 1, 2020

As that shock sank in, I learnt of friends who had lost their homes. Of others badly burned trying to save theirs. My stay and defend friend did manage to save his: I got the news via his daughter. Other houses in his vicinity are gone. People describe the smoke the heat the chaos the confusion the heroic moments. People describe houses exploding and animals incinerated and birds falling dead out of the sky. 

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So far, I only know the status of two places I lived. The home I built has survived. The farm next door where my parents lived for seven years has been razed. This photo, showing the current owner, features the bedroom where my mum slept – the wall behind the car.

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The people of Cobargo are livid with the federal government and particularly the callous indifference of the Australian Prime Minister. As they should be.

[image error]Local mum berates Scott Morrison over lack of support.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/02/scott-morrison-abused-by-bushfire-victims-in-nsw-town-of-cobargo

The Looming Threat Continues

And there is no comfort on the immediate horizon. My sister, who still lives in the region, is evacuating like many thousands of others. Even the outer limits of the towns are under threat. Everyone will have to huddle in the centre of towns with the fire approaching.

There are many towns under severe threat tomorrow, Saturday 4th January, in NSW. Humidity will be below 10%. Temps up to 48C. (118.4F) Wind speeds up to 80kmh. The southerly change is not due till Sunday and it will bring its own difficulties. Conditions in Victoria are no better. There are a lot of people in tiny towns trapped. There is no water down there. It is a humanitarian crisis. (watch the fire action here – https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au/)

 

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Meanwhile, back in Victoria, the horror continues. People are trapped in tiny villages, completely cut off. In Mallacoota people are being evacuated on navy ships. To the north, mass evacuations are occurring. And the fires in the Snowy Mountains and slopes, the two fat blobs on the bottom left corner of the map above, they are joining up and when the cool change does sweep through on Sunday, they are heading straight for Canberra.

We need to face the horror of this and stamp it into our brains. These monster fires are capable of burning through the night traversing 24km in about 6 hours as though by stealth. These fires create firestorms that roar at you like a steam train, they hurl “embers” (read little fire bombs) many kilometres, they suck the oxygen out of the air, they create their own weather including lightning and tornadoes; these fires have been caused by climate change. 

My heart goes out to everyone caught up in this devastation.

Call to Action:


Donate to Red Cross


Join in Climate Action

 

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[image error]Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of unique and engaging fiction. She writes gripping mysteries, dark psychological thrillers and historical fiction. She is the author of The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey. She has become a climate activist.

Do Something to Make a Difference

Climate Change: The Australian Apocalypse

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These last weeks and months I have been caught up in the horror show that is the Australian bushfire season and the insane heatwave. Not to mention the dust storms. With fires out of control all over the continent, lives lost, homes lost, wildlife incinerated, it has been impossible for me to write creatively. Book promo, which is the usual undertaking for authors during these weeks in the hope of Christmas sales, has seemed to me in very poor taste, for me personally, that is. I have been unable to detach from the apocalyptic reality. I’ve felt the grief of those who have lost loved ones and homes and livelihoods. I have listened to the fire chiefs describing these new kinds of fire, ferocious fires that create their own weather. Fires that are too big and too erratic to be controlled.

[image error]Fire in NSW, 20 Dec 2020

I have read with alarm countless articles on climate change and it is sinking in that what we are going through right now in Australia, or indeed during the whole of 2019 around the world, is the ‘new normal’. How will we cope? How will we cope lurching from disaster to disaster? What lies ahead for us? This situation – while it goes on first here then there and everywhere else can ignore it – is a global state of emergency and someone needs to declare it.

Where Are Our Leaders?

Meanwhile, our governments, and especially the Australian government, are choosing to do nothing to mitigate climate change and everything to make this disastrous situation worse. Their myopia has as much to do with vested self-interest as it does the pressures exerted on them by powerful lobby groups of the fossil fuel industry. Not to mention kid bro Australia has to be seen to be kowtowing in lickspittle fashion to the mega-power coming out of the US.

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In the absence of effective leadership, we need to take the matter into our own hands, as has been exemplified by our retired fire chiefs who have banded together to hold a bush fire/climate change summit in 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/17/hugely-disappointed-emergency-chiefs-to-hold-bushfire-summit-with-or-without-pm These fire chiefs give me hope. They are standing firm and they are firmly situated in mainstream Australia. They cannot be sidelined as fringe dwellers.

Voices of Negativity

I have had to put down my pen and focus my attention on this cataclysmic situation, because I am well aware we need to make change happen fast.

We need to understand that the scale and intensity of the bushfires now raging throughout Australia is entirely the result of climate change. Some are countering this reality by talking about fuel loads and blaming the ‘greenies’, the ‘environmentalists’ – two dirty words thanks to a decades long smear campaign – for limiting fuel-reduction burns. Fuel loads have little to nothing to do with these fires as has been stated by our fire chiefs.

We need to sidestep the arguments over whether Greta Thunberg should be in school, questions over who is funding her, and suspicions over their agenda. Put the word ‘Green’ in anything and the blinkered clarion conspiracy or some such nonsense. Greta Thunberg is who she is and she’s doing a grand job.

Others complain about how annoying Extinction Rebellion is, and ‘those people should not be allowed to disrupt our lives’. What an absurd complaint! They are taking action because the rest of us do-nothings haven’t.

We need to step outside of our own habituated thinking patterns and face the situation. Inertia is going to kill us.

Then there are the deniers. Frankly, climate change denial is an idiotic position in the face of irrefutable truth. Those who perpetuate the lies should be held accountable. Those who believe them need therapy. As many are saying, we need an international court for Climate Crimes Against Humanity. That will mop up the fossil fuel giants behind the misinformation campaign.

Do Something to Make a Difference

The first question we should all be asking ourselves, the first thought we should have at the beginning of each day is this: What Am I Doing to Make a Difference? Just about every one of us can do something. It isn’t hard. We really should be doing everything to make a difference, but something is a good start. To do nothing in the face of this reality is not only astonishingly selfish, it is astonishing self-destructive. I acknowledge those who cannot act to mitigate climate change for various legitimate reasons. The rest of us must double our efforts to compensate. We cannot wait around for our governments to do all the heavy lifting. We cannot be complacent. Here are a few things you can do: https://isobelblackthorn.com/2019/11/24/authors-have-a-moral-duty-to-help-save-the-planet/

I have taken a stand. I have a huge solar system on my roof and I feed in more power than I use. I have no car and am not much of a consumer of anything. These are the things I have been able to do. I mention them because I do not want to be considered a hypocrite. I have been concerned about climate change since the mid 1980s. I am now declaring myself a climate activist. I’ll do as much as I can.

Somehow or other, I will also continue to write books, but existential stress undermines creativity, so it won’t be easy.

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Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of unique and engaging fiction. She writes gripping mysteries, dark psychological thrillers and historical fiction. She is the author of The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey.

Book Review: The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run by Matthew S Cox

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Here’s my slot on The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run Blackthorn Book Tour.

 

About The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run

A move to the small town of Spring Falls, New York, is the perfect cure for Mia Gartner’s horrid commute. However, her new home isn’t quite empty.

She adored working in fine art restoration, but a two-hour ride each way got old fast. When her husband found a house for sale at a suspiciously low price, they jumped at it. Mia expected chemical contamination, a fixer-upper, or termites, so when the problem turned out to be persistent rumors of haunting, she set aside her worries. Adam hoped the place would propel his parapsychology hobby into a career.

Upon first sight, the innocuous suburban house filled Mia with dread. Adam had long maintained she had a psychic gift, but if she believed him, that would mean something terrible and dark once happened there.

Soon after their arrival, unexplained events prove the rumors are more than wild stories. A childlike spirit attaches itself to Mia, seeming harmless and so very lonely.

Alas, she fears the ghost may not be as innocent as it seems.

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My Thoughts

This straight ahead haunted house novel opens with Adam and Mia heading to their new home on Minstrel Run. Adam is an academic taking up a new posting at Syracuse in the psychology faculty. Mia is a painting restorer with a spooky past. Adam has a special interest in the paranormal and believes Mia has special psychic abilities she’s in denial of. He knows Six Minstrel Run is haunted and buys the house no one else wants as a kind of twisted experiment. He is as keen as mustard. Mia is, from the very first moment, terrified, even as she battles with her fear and summons enough courage to get on with the normal routines of domestic life. Yet even before she crosses the threshold and enters the house, she is consumed by dread. It is Mia’s terror that permeates the narrative and makes this novel utterly convincing and really very spooky. Throw in a local clergyman who comes knocking on their door offering his assistance and protection from the truly evil spirits lurking in their new home and you have the perfect set up.

I enjoyed the steady plotting, the twist, and the unfolding of the characters, their interesting lives, thoughts and motives, the plethora of scary scenes rising in intensity and escalating to a heart-pounding climax. Mia is a strong female lead, intelligent, resilient, courageous. The narrative has a strong forward drive, not overly weighed down by back story and exposition, the reader given just enough explanatory detail to provide context and setting. In all, The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run is a well written, traditional supernatural horror novel for those who want to be truly terrified. Not to be read alone in the dark in a big old house with creaky doors and attics and cellars. Cox has penned a classic.

About the Author

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Originally from South Amboy NJ, Matthew has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Since 1996, he has developed the “Divergent Fates” world in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, The Awakened Series, The Harmony Paradox, the Prophet of the Badlands series, and the Daughter of Mars series take place.

His books span adult, young-adult, and middle-grade fiction in multiple genres, predominantly science fiction, cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, and fantasy.

Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, developer of two custom tabletop RPG systems, and a fan of anime, British humour, and intellectual science fiction that questions the nature of humanity, reality, life, and what might happen after it.

He is also fond of cats, presently living with two: Loki and Dorian.

Links:

The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MY8GDHC

Twitter: @Mscox_Fiction / https://twitter.com/mscox_fiction

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewSCoxAuthor

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/mscox

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/matthewcox10420/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7712730.Matthew_S_Cox

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mscox.author/

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[image error]Isobel Blackthorn is the author of a Canary Islands Mystery series, including A Matter of Latitude, Clarissa’s Warning and A Prison in the Sun. The Drago Tree serves as a prequel. Find her author page and easy access to her writing here author.to/IsobelBlackthorn

Book Trailer: A Prison in the Sun

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I’m delighted to share this book trailer for a Prison in the Sun, created by PR Manager and author Henry Roi.

http://mybook.to/prisonsun

“After millennial ghostwriter Trevor Moore rents an old farmhouse in Fuerteventura, he moves in to find his muse.

Instead, he discovers a rucksack filled with cash. Who does it belong to – and should he hand it in… or keep it?

Struggling to make up his mind, Trevor unravels the harrowing true story of a little-known concentration camp that incarcerated gay men in the 1950s and 60s.”

Read more about my novel here – https://isobelblackthorn.com/canary-islands-novels/a-prison-in-the-sun/

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[image error]Isobel Blackthorn is the author of a Canary Islands Mystery series, including A Matter of Latitude, Clarissa’s Warning and A Prison in the Sun. The Drago Tree serves as a prequel. Find her author page and easy access to her writing here author.to/IsobelBlackthorn

Book Review: Gumshoe Blues by Paul D. Brazill

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It’s my turn on the Blackthorn Book Tour for Gumshoe Blues by Paul D. Brazill!

Gumshoe Blues

Following the breakdown of his marriage, in a booze-addled flash of inspiration, Peter Ord decides to become a private investigator. Dark farce and tragicomedy soon ensue. Peter must tackle many challenging cases, and when he comes under the radar of a local crime lord, he may have bitten off more than he can chew. With sidekicks, like boozy hack, Bryn Laden, failure is not an option – it’s compulsory.

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My Thoughts

What a corker of a volume this is! Four stories, one a novelette in length, all told from the perspective of washed-up, hard-boiled private investigator and former English teacher Peter Ord. The opening scene of ‘Gumshoe Blues’ find Peter waking up on New Year’s Day after a night of binge drinking. I can hear U2 playing in the background, I can smell the fetid air in the grotty room. The sleaze continues on into pubs and Velvettes, a nightclub for ‘gentlemen’. We soon meet the  supporting cast of barmen, dancers, and underworld bosses make up the northern UK town of Seatown.

Throughout the volume, Brazill’s originality and imagination shine. ‘Mr Kiss and Tell’ finds a wife-beating loser and Ord as a store detective at Poundland – one of Britain’s cheap discount stores. I am reminded of ‘World of Quid’ in the opening episode of the new season  of Birds of a Feather. Stores existing to let the poor believe they can afford to shop. ‘Who Killed Skippy’ finds Ord paid to protect Craig Ferry, from himself. The mystery is solved in the end, but it is hardly the point to the story, which is rather to spotlight the iniquitous Ferry family and particularly the  loser-behemoth, Craig. ‘The Lady and The Gimp’ is an oddly charmingly bleak tale of former lead singer of a punk rock band Lightning Jones – who belongs to Spammy Spampinato doing time for a string of murders –  and Barry Blue, ‘The Gimp’, doing some handyman work at Harry Shand’s bar. His gaze lands on Jones and he falls in lust. Meanwhile, Jones hires Ord to track down his mother.

Brazill crafts strong, believable and quirky characters. The jump cuts walking us through vignettes and backstory work well. A healthy use of colloquialisms lends a gritty authenticity. Told masterfully with tremendous wit and realism in taut, punchy prose, Gumshoe Blues contributes a work of considerable merit to the noir crime stable. In all Brazill offers his readers a window on northern Britain’s underbelly, the everyday humdrum banality of struggle street existence and wrecked lives. Definitely a book to look out for.

 

About the Author

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Paul D. Brazill was born in Hartlepool, England and now lives in Bydgoszcz, Poland, where he’s been TEFL teaching for more than a decade.

His books include Last Year’s Man, A Case Of Noir, Guns Of Brixton, Small Time Crimes, and Kill Me Quick. He’s had stories published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime 8,10 and 11, and his writing has been translated in Italian, Polish, Finnish, German and Slovenian.

You can usually find him on Twitter @PaulDBrazill and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pauldavidbrazill/

Website: https://pauldbrazill.com/

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[image error]Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of unique and engaging fiction. She writes gripping mysteries, dark psychological thrillers and historical fiction. She is the author of The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey.

Authors have a moral duty to help save the planet

I have been dwelling all day on whether I should write this post. Then I started re-watching Climate Change: The Facts – David Attenborough’s documentary on climate change – and I decided that yes, I must.

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Authors often taken a stand on various issues. We have a tendency to champion causes when our latest release carries that theme. Right now, when it comes to climate change, I don’t have a book I am promoting. I just feel the need to speak out. There are some in the writing community who believe we should zip it and get on with entertaining readers. But what of authors such as Tim Winton or Richard Flanagan or Arundhati Roy, to mention but three, who have stepped up and written extensively on the environment and social justice.

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Authors have a moral duty to lend their weight to global salvation at a point in history that is so critical, extinction is a very real possibility.

Thanks to our inertia, our planet has reached a tipping point. The dystopias presented in climate fiction are becoming a reality today and not at some point fifty or a hundred years from now. The climate denialist machine funded by the fossil fuel industry has successfully thwarted efforts to raise widespread awareness. The same fossil fuel industry is totally aware that climate change is real and they are for the most part selfishly and greedily planning on milking the planet for all it is worth regardless of the death they cause. They must be stopped.

The United Nation’s IPCC has been constrained, forced by governments into providing the most conservative estimates when climate change scientists have for decades known how fast climate change will happen once it really gets going. In the past few years in language and reality we have gone from the cautious-sounding global warming to the more realistic global heating and climate catastrophe. Vast swathes of Australia and southern Africa are sliding into permanent drought. Communities are running out of water. Mass human migration is on the cards. What of the plants and animals left behind? Our glaciers are melting, the tundra is melting, the Arctic has melted. A one degree rise in global temperature and our weather has become wild and chaotic. We are experiencing monster storms, ferocious winds, freak winter freezes, droughts, extreme heat waves, torrential downpours and devastating floods. The evidence is everywhere.

Authors situate their books in settings around the world. Each and every one of those settings is affected by climate change. As writers we are rooted in the very worlds we create – perhaps with the exception of speculative fiction – and as storytellers we are reliant on the continuity of our precious resource, our planet Earth, with all of the wonder and magic that nature affords. Our fiction will soon appear quaint and redundant as the world we live in undergoes radical change. And as creatives, the anguish climate change looks set to cause will affect us profoundly. I for one, do not wish to be burdened with writing stories set in an apocalypse.

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Take Action to Help Mitigate Climate Change

This is a call to action. Do something to make a difference. Stand on the right side of history. Now is not the time to think about it. Act. All of us together can turn this trajectory around. But it is going to take all of us, not just a handful. (For my part, I do not own a car, I use my feet and public transport, and I have just put a 5.5KW solar system on my roof, making me a net energy provider. But, I need to do more.)

From – https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/6-actions-to-fight-climate-change/

Reduce emissions
Save energy
Reduce, reuse, recycle
Eat low-carbon
Act against forest loss
Demand governments take action

Release Day for A Prison in the Sun

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Book 3 in my Canary Islands Mysteries Series is released today by Next Chapter Publishing!

The Blurb: After millennial ghostwriter Trevor Moore rents an old farmhouse in Fuerteventura, he moves in to find his muse.

Instead, he discovers a rucksack filled with cash. Who does it belong to – and should he hand it in… or keep it?

Struggling to make up his mind, Trevor unravels the harrowing true story of a little-known concentration camp that incarcerated gay men in the 1950s and 60s.

Some Reflections

There is a lot to this novel, including the setting. Trevor rents a house I came very close to buying. I poured over the photos, dwelt in my mind in the rooms, but in the end it wasn’t to be. In the course of my quest to buy I discovered the location of the prison that was used to incarcerate gay men for a period of twelve years in the 1950s and 60s. I first heard about the prison in the 1980s when it was still very much a shameful secret whispered among locals.

Despite Fuerteventura receiving about two million tourists a year, the prison remains little known outside the island. I had to conduct all my research in Spanish. I am pleased I made the effort. I hope my readers are too. Here’s what some are saying:

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“The author has used her deep knowledge of landscape, politics and history on the Canary Islands to give us a page-turning juxtaposition of savage past events with present-day drama, mystery and murder.

The book weaves two stories together over decades: a present-day author uncovering revelations of sadistic and gut-wrenching homophobia in the past while anguishing over his own sexual orientation. Matters heat up as he finds himself battling for his life, caught in the crosshairs of a murderous drug deal.

The result is a tapestry of events that will keep you reading to the last page.”

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Buy your copy here
http://mybook.to/prisonsun

Book Tour: Chance by Carolym M Bowen

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About Chance

High-powered Atlanta attorney Sydney Jones never backs down from a case. So when her bodyguard and boyfriend is accused of murder, she’s determined to fight for him in court. Instead, the charges are suddenly dismissed, and he vanishes without a trace…

Suspecting CIA involvement, Sydney takes on a lawsuit with Chinese Black Society ties and finds a startling connection to her missing man. But as she digs deeper, she discovers that someone may kill to keep the secret.

Will this dangerous cat-and-mouse game reveal the truth or put a bullet in Sydney’s head?

Chance is the second book in the Sydney Jones psychological thriller trilogy. If you like fearless heroines, page-turning action, and shocking twists, then you’ll love Carolyn Bowen’s gripping story.

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My Thoughts

Chance is a gripping psychological thriller that takes the lid off the underbelly of Atlanta, Georgia, the various cultures at play, the sleaze, the Chinese mafia. Adding to the intrigue, the involvement of the CIA. Meet tough, no-nonsense lawyer Sydney Jones, her beefy bodyguard-lover Walker and washed-up rock star Roxanne who attempts to lure Walker back to her side and ends up accidentally dead for her trouble. I particularly enjoyed the complexity of Sydney’s unexpected and unwanted pregnancy.

The narrative has a strong forward drive that makes for very fast reading. Written in third person personal, the story flits seamlessly from character to character in a fluid jump cut style, an approach that takes a moment to get used to but works well. Bowen’s pastiche of character-led vignette’s adds to the tension, lending a sense of urgency. Sacrificed is the deep point of view of the contemporary thriller – this technique applies especially to psychological thrillers – and Chance is light on dialogue and long action scenes, again, key drivers of the thriller genre. Nevertheless, Bowen has deployed a narrative style that captures the reader and keeps them turning the pages until the very end. Well written with good plotting and pacing and enough intrigue and twists to keep you on your toes, Chance will keep you guessing, waiting for the pay off at the end. Recommended to those after a lighter read in the thriller genre. Chance will also appeal to those after strong female leads.

 

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CAROLYN BOWEN is a mystery author who calls on her life escapades and an adventurous, imaginative spirit to inspire and entertain. Bowen uses travel as a muse to explore cultures and dialogue to bring her stories to life. Her writing credits include: Cross-Ties, a romantic adventure; The Long Road Home, a contemporary crime fiction mystery; The Sydney Jones Series Mystery Thrillers; Book 1: Primed For Revenge, and Book 2: Chance – A Novel.

Link – Amazon Exclusively – http://bit.ly/CBChance

Amazon Author Page: http://bit.ly/CBNovels

Carolyn M. Bowen – Website – http://bit.ly/CMBNovels

Twitter Handle: @cmbowenauthor

 

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[image error]Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of unique and engaging fiction. She writes gripping mysteries, dark psychological thrillers and historical fiction. She is the author of The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey.

 

Book review: Inside the Secret Life of Fairies: Where Dreams Come True by Maggie Hamilton

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What is it about fairies that enchants us so? Where do these elusive beings live, and what do they do? Why is it some see fairies and others do not? What’s the truth about glamour? And why when they promise your dreams will come true, do fairies grant three wishes?

Maggie Hamilton has spent a decade exploring the rich world of the fairy. Having talked with people from all walks of life, she captures their astonishing, sometimes poignant encounters with fairies here. Read about the fairies found in people’s homes and gardens, deep in nature, and in city streets and parks.

On this mesmerising journey deep into this achingly beautiful otherworld, you’ll discover the many exquisite possibilities present at dawn and dusk, and why the fairy kingdom has an ecology all of its own. Learn about the notes plants sound, and why some indigenous peoples no longer need to pick a plant to access its healing properties. Find out how to work with fairies to heal the earth and your own bruised spirit, and how this quest can transform you inside and out.

For those with their own fairy stories to tell, and fairy lovers everywhere.

 

My Thoughts

What an absolutely enchanting this book is! Exquisitely told in a genuine, heartfelt and inquiring fashion, Inside the Secret Life of Fairies sets out to enchant and delight while inviting readers to make that deeper connection with nature that is our birthright – a too often unrecognised gift of being. Hamilton takes us on a journey of discovery at a time in our history when humanity has disconnected from nature. Smart phones, urbanisation, the pressure and pace and demands all pull us all away from simple acts such as observing a flower or a meadow. We live in a time when even our holidays are fake and constructed. Just simply reading Inside the Secret Life of Fairies acts like a salve.

In gentle and uplifting prose, Hamilton coaxes all of us into accepting the existence of the fairy realm: fairies are nature spirits of the plant and animal kingdoms, fairies are loving light energy, fairies are divine portions of the Creator. We may see or feel fairies when we see the world as sacred, when we indwell in nature. Fairies can be experienced anywhere but we are more likely to encounter their energy in the wilderness. I am reminded of a recent experience of my own, when I stood in the Valley of Fire in Nevada. Desert, fringed by mountains with breathtaking rock formations. I felt expansive, at one with the environment, a profound connection I couldn’t make sense of, and an overwhelming sense of belonging. It was as if I could hear the silence. The feelings were so powerful, all-consuming, and yet subtle. I had to pull myself away. Then I read this fed back to me by Hamilton:

‘This, I’ve discovered, is what the fairy realms do. They help us connect more profoundly to ourselves and to the whole of life.’

Inside the Secret Life of Fairies is fundamentally spiritual and refreshingly unpretentious. I especially appreciated Hamilton’s honesty, her questioning, her doubts. And then, her revelations. Written in part as memoir and part informative, the author gifts us a valuable lesson; to take time out and really connect with nature. Following in the footsteps of the Caddys and Dorothy MacClean of Findhorn, and of all those who have gone before and live today in communion with nature,  Inside the Secret Life of Fairies is a very special self-help book, a survival guide in this crazy, artificial reality most of us now live in. Ultimately, Hamilton has penned a book that, through the lens of an overlooked spiritual reality, encourages us all to care for our world.

I’m off to clean my house! If you want to know why, read this truly exceptional book. No superlatives do it justice!

https://www.maggiehamilton.org/

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Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of unique and engaging fiction. She writes dark psychological thrillers, mysteries, and contemporary and literary fiction. Isobel was shortlisted for the Ada Cambridge Prose Prize 2019 for her biographical short story, ‘Nothing to Declare’. The Legacy of Old Gran Parks is the winner of the Raven Awards 2019. Isobel holds a PhD from the University of Western Sydney, for her research on the works of Theosophist Alice A. Bailey, the ‘Mother of the New Age.’ She is the author of The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey.

Behind the Story: A Prison in the Sun (Canary Islands Mysteries Book 3)

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When I was first told that a prison incarcerating gay men during General Franco’s regime in Spain, I was a foolish twenty-seven year old with aspirations of becoming a writer and not a clue how to go about it. The year was 1989. Back then, the true story of the prison was a dark secret whispered among locals and no one else. The Canary Islands government was silent.

It took me almost thirty years to feel equipped to tell this story. By then I was living in Australia, I had three novels set in the Canary Islands and I knew I needed to write a fourth. I felt torn as I also wanted to produce something literary, a work set entirely in the Canary Islands in the 1950s. Trouble for me was I no longer lived there, I was not born there, my Spanish was adequate but by no means sufficient to chat with locals, and above all, I am not male and I am not gay. I am also not rich! The research needed for such a literary approach would have cost many thousands in travel and accommodation. Twice I applied for funding but was unsuccessful. So I resigned myself to the notion of positioning the novel alongside the two mysteries I had already written, knowing that approach would constrain the way A Prison in the Sun could be told.

[image error]The prison cells at La Colonia Agrícola Penitenciaria de Tefía, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain

I felt apprehensive. I had a lot of conversations with numerous respected authors and publishers. There was talk of the inappropriateness or lack of my fitness for the task, being neither male, gay nor from the islands. Lionel Shriver was mentioned along with political correctness. Most encouraged me, championing my efforts and bravery. I took this very idea of appropriateness and also of contemporary conversations around sexual preference and created a conflicted character, millennial ghostwriter Trevor Moore. I decided I would have him tell the story of the prison. After all, he wants to write a novel with his name on the cover for once, and there is the small matter of his ghostwriting gigs winning prizes for other writers. I had so much fun being Trevor. Best of all, I popped him in a holiday let which was a house I was poised to buy back in 2017. The only reason I didn’t was the owners took it off the market. I think they did me a favour, as you will find out if you read the book.

[image error]Screenshot taken from documentary La Memoria Silenciada Tefía – Twelve men crammed in a barn.

As for the prison in Tefía, Fuerteventura – or rather concentration camp for that is what it was – I spent many many hours brushing up my Spanish so that I could read newspaper articles, blog posts, doctoral theses and academic books. I read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. I took copious notes on the economic, political and social history of the Canary Islands from the 1920s. I watched YouTube videos. I read everything I could find on the prison. I am indebted to former prisoner Octavio García, whose testimony and activism helped raise awareness, in Spain at least, of this ignominy. Also to Professor of History Miguel Ángel Sosa Machín who interviewed Octavio and produced a novella, Viaje al centro de la infamia (which I read). His efforts gained much publicity in the noughties. It would have been impossible for me to write this novel prior to efforts of these two men.  I read up on what it was like to be gay in Spain. I recalled my closest friends of that time, who were both local to the islands and gay. The result is as authentic as I, a humble female author in her fifties, could make it. I did not shy away from the brutal truth of prison life. I put myself there. I lay down in the prisoners’ cots. I trudged up the hill in the searing sun and the raging wind to assemble in the quadrangle. I imagined what it would be like to break rocks all day. To be starving.

Not wanting to give Trevor an easy time of it, I put him through his paces. And what he goes through provides relief from the harsh reality of Fuerteventura in the 1950s. To say more would spoil the novel. Here is what one reviewer has to say:

“The author has used her deep knowledge of landscape, politics and history on the Canary Islands to give us a page-turning juxtaposition of savage past events with present-day drama, mystery and murder.

The book weaves two stories together over decades: a present-day author uncovering revelations of sadistic and gut-wrenching homophobia in the past while anguishing over his own sexual orientation. Matters heat up as he finds himself battling for his life, caught in the crosshairs of a murderous drug deal.

The result is a tapestry of events that will keep you reading to the last page.” – Veronica Schwarz.

You can find A Prison in the Sun here : http://mybook.to/prisonsun