Liza Perrat's Blog, page 4
July 30, 2019
Five Great Books Set in Australia
Very chuffed to see my novel, The Swooping Magpie on this list of Five Great Books Set in Australia, alongside some fabulous Aussie authors!
Add caption
The thunderclap of sexual revolution collides with the black cloud of illegitimacy.
Sixteen-year-old Lindsay Townsend is pretty and popular at school. At home, it’s a different story. Dad belts her and Mum’s either busy or battling a migraine. So when sexy school-teacher Jon Halliwell finds her irresistible, Lindsay believes life is about to change.She’s not wrong.Lindsay and Jon pursue their affair in secret, because if the school finds out, Jon will lose his job. If Lindsay’s dad finds out, there will be hell to pay. But when a dramatic accident turns her life upside down, Lindsay is separated from the man she loves. Events spiral beyond her control, emotions conflicting with doubt, loneliness and fear, and Lindsay becomes enmeshed in a shocking true-life Australian scandal. The schoolyard beauty will discover the dangerous games of the adult world. Games that destroy lives.
Grab a copy HERE for only 2.99!
Add captionThe thunderclap of sexual revolution collides with the black cloud of illegitimacy.
Sixteen-year-old Lindsay Townsend is pretty and popular at school. At home, it’s a different story. Dad belts her and Mum’s either busy or battling a migraine. So when sexy school-teacher Jon Halliwell finds her irresistible, Lindsay believes life is about to change.She’s not wrong.Lindsay and Jon pursue their affair in secret, because if the school finds out, Jon will lose his job. If Lindsay’s dad finds out, there will be hell to pay. But when a dramatic accident turns her life upside down, Lindsay is separated from the man she loves. Events spiral beyond her control, emotions conflicting with doubt, loneliness and fear, and Lindsay becomes enmeshed in a shocking true-life Australian scandal. The schoolyard beauty will discover the dangerous games of the adult world. Games that destroy lives.
Grab a copy HERE for only 2.99!
July 24, 2019
Spirit of Lost Angels French Translation
Well it's been a long while in the making, but the French translation of Spirit of Lost Angels (L'Auberge des Anges) ebook is now out: https://books2read.com/u/bQaBe6
Lorsque des aristocrates parisiens accusent Victoire d'un crime odieux et l'emprisonnent dans un tristement célèbre asile de fous, une voleuse séduisante qui a escroqué la reine Marie-Antoinette prend la jeune orpheline sous son aile. Un conte palpitant avec, en toile de fond, la Révolution française.
Available at your favourite ebook retailer: https://books2read.com/u/bQaBe
June 9, 2019
#WWII True-crime Tragedy #Oradour-sur-Glane
75 years ago tomorrow, on June 10th, 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in Nazi-occupied France, was destroyed. 642 inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company.
Read my full story on the massacre here.
To mark the occasion, my novel, Wolfsangel, which is based on this true-life WWII crime, is on a limited offer promotion of only 99c/p HERE at your favourite retailer.
April 5, 2019
The Swooping Magpie
Many thanks to CP Lesley and the New Books network for interviewing me on my #Aussie #1970s family drama novel The Swooping Magpie.
Listen to the interview HERE.
Available HERE at your favourite retailer for only $2.99!
March 14, 2019
#French #histfic Spirit of Lost Angels #Free #Kindlepromo
For a limited time only, Spirit of Lost Angels, first (standalone) story in The Bone Angel French historical trilogy is FREE to download at your favourite retailer: https://books2read.com/u/49D5JYExtract from Spirit of Lost Angels:
The early light burns Victoire’s cheeks, like a beacon warning her this summer day will bring something special. She hears the cries of the villagers long before she reaches the square of Lucie-sur-Vionne.
‘Robespierre is dead!’ Léon shouts, dancing about la place de l’Eglise with the others. ‘Guillotined!
‘They say the Parisians are frolicking on the streets,’ the baker cries. ‘For the death of that bloodthirsty dictator!’
‘Cheering as when they guillotined fat Louis and his Austrian whore,’ a silk-weaver woman shouts.
Victoire had not relished the Queen’s beheading. No matter how scornful; how wasteful with money, Marie Antoinette was but a scapegoat. Victoire believes we are all such victims, simply shuffling the hand of cards dealt at our birth.
‘Come and celebrate with us, Victoire.’ Léon takes her hand. ‘They’re saying this reign of terror is over.’
‘Let’s hope we’ll have peace now,’ she says, looking away from him, at the coach rattling along the cobblestones of the square. ‘Far too much blood has stained our earth.’
Snagged in the revelry of the crowd, Victoire doesn’t pay much attention to the first two people who alight from the public coach, but then a young girl steps down.
She is about fifteen years old, and her grey-green eyes remind Victoire of the Vionne River in a storm.
The girl gazes around the square, her ribboned curls, the colour and sheen of a fox, bobbing in crests and peaks. One of her hands folds over a pendant, hanging from a strip of leather about her neck.
Victoire cannot move, or speak. She can only stand there, staring at the girl, terrified she is simply a wicked trick of her imagination––a spirit-like illusion she might have glimpsed that terrible day on riverbank.
Her heart begins to beat wild, like the wings of a bat trapped in a hot attic.
‘No, surely not, it cannot be …?’
She falters, and stumbles towards the girl.
Start reading for free HERE
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February 14, 2019
The Magpie and Stump, Now You See it, Now You Don't!
To celebrate the release of her third novel, Time Will Tell, I'm very happy to welcome author, Eva Jordan on my blog today.
So, Eva, can you tell us a bit about your books please?
Many thanks Liza for inviting me on your blog today, Valentine’s Day, and also the ebook publication day of my third novel, Time Will Tell – the third and final chapter in the trilogy concerning Lizzie Lemalf and her madcap family. Like the previous novels in the series, 183 Times A Year and All The Colours In Between, this book can also be read as a standalone, however, unlike its predecessors, which for the most part are set in the present day fictional fenland town of Great Tossen, Time Will Tell also takes a step back in time to the East End of London during the 1960s. This inevitably meant, while I was writing it, more research was involved than the previous novels, especially as (albeit only a brief time ago) it meant historical, as well as contemporary research. I love research and I love trawling through the history books, especially when I come across places, or people, or snippets of information I wasn’t previously aware of. However, sometimes hours of research (depending on the storyline) eventually amounts to just one or two sentences in a writer’s finished story. Take, for instance, the following information I gathered about one of London’s very oldest pubs – the Magpie and Stump.
Dating back to around 1550 the Magpie and Stump is an English pub with a very long history. Although not the original building, the current drinking house stands on the site of the original pub with the same name, opposite the Old Bailey, which itself stands on the site of what was once Newgate Prison. In the 1700s the Magpie & Stump was one of the most renowned ‘mughouses’ in London. Mughouses served as meeting places for Mug House Clubs, so-called because every man had his own drinking mug. Often noisy, mughouses sometimes proved to be the source of riot and disturbance.
During public holidays, wealthy guests would often visit the Magpie and Stump for a pint of Two'penny ale (similar to pale ale) and rent the upstairs rooms where they had a prime view of the hangings that took place outside Newgate Prison. These were often referred to as a ‘hanging breakfast’! It is also believed that the pub would send out a last pint to the condemned man or woman before his or her execution. This tradition ceased in 1868 after public hangings were abolished. Michael Barrett was the last person to be publicly executed for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion, which took place in 1867, killing 12 people and injuring another 50. However, as a nod to the past, a board stands outside the pub promoting “Last Pint Friday”, which is a half-price offer ‘commemorating’ the pub’s tradition of sending a last pint to the condemned man or woman. The last woman to be hanged in public was serial killer Catherine Wilson who was hung before a huge crowd of 20,000 spectators on 20th October 1862.
The Magpie and StumpPhoto courtesy of Local Pub Histories on historypin
In the 1950s the Magpie & Stump became affectionately known as ‘Courtroom No 10’ – used as a gathering place for detectives and reporters who would discuss the trial of the day at the Old Bailey over a traditional lunch of chop ‘n’ chips.
As interesting as all this information is, most of it is irrelevant to my story, and it would have been near on impossible to include much of it without making it sound just what it is, a brief and interesting history about one of London’s oldest pubs. However, I loved the history behind the Magpie and Stump, and geographically it was close to the area where some of my story unfolds, so, after a bit of discussion with my editor, the small extract below from Time Will Tell shows you just how much, or should I say, how little, of my research I actually retained for my story:
Ten minutes later, Salocin emerged from the depths of London’s basement to find morning had well and truly broken, the sun just rising above a colourless winter day, cold and windblown, the pavements slick with sleet. Head down, avoiding the hullabaloo of Smithfield, which was now winding down for the day, he headed for Clerkenwell. Thankfully, he still had the set of keys to the yard that Mickey had given him to unlock the place yesterday, had forgotten to give them back to him last night.
There was no sign of the Old Bill, either, which didn’t surprise him… It was some passers-by that had found her, close to a pub called the Magpie and Stump, a good couple of miles from the yard… Mickey said people used to watch the public hangings of prisoners outside Newgate Prison from that pub. Salocin would love to watch a certain someone swing from the hangman’s rope over a pint. And there’d be no fucking last pint, as was tradition, for that condemned bastard.
So, as you can see, sometimes a writer’s painstaking research, like the old cutting room floor of movie makers, is discarded – at worst cut from the story altogether because it’s distracts from the storyline, at best, edited.
Food for thought when you read your next book!
Thanks for that interesting snippet of info, Eva, and I wish you all the best for Time Will Tell!
Eva loves to hear from readers, and if you’d like to contact her, or know more about her, she can be found at the following places:
Website
Twitter: @evajordanwriter
Facebook
Instagram
If you’d like to purchase a copy of Time Will Tell, or would like to know more about the story, click HERE
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So, Eva, can you tell us a bit about your books please?
Many thanks Liza for inviting me on your blog today, Valentine’s Day, and also the ebook publication day of my third novel, Time Will Tell – the third and final chapter in the trilogy concerning Lizzie Lemalf and her madcap family. Like the previous novels in the series, 183 Times A Year and All The Colours In Between, this book can also be read as a standalone, however, unlike its predecessors, which for the most part are set in the present day fictional fenland town of Great Tossen, Time Will Tell also takes a step back in time to the East End of London during the 1960s. This inevitably meant, while I was writing it, more research was involved than the previous novels, especially as (albeit only a brief time ago) it meant historical, as well as contemporary research. I love research and I love trawling through the history books, especially when I come across places, or people, or snippets of information I wasn’t previously aware of. However, sometimes hours of research (depending on the storyline) eventually amounts to just one or two sentences in a writer’s finished story. Take, for instance, the following information I gathered about one of London’s very oldest pubs – the Magpie and Stump.
Dating back to around 1550 the Magpie and Stump is an English pub with a very long history. Although not the original building, the current drinking house stands on the site of the original pub with the same name, opposite the Old Bailey, which itself stands on the site of what was once Newgate Prison. In the 1700s the Magpie & Stump was one of the most renowned ‘mughouses’ in London. Mughouses served as meeting places for Mug House Clubs, so-called because every man had his own drinking mug. Often noisy, mughouses sometimes proved to be the source of riot and disturbance.
During public holidays, wealthy guests would often visit the Magpie and Stump for a pint of Two'penny ale (similar to pale ale) and rent the upstairs rooms where they had a prime view of the hangings that took place outside Newgate Prison. These were often referred to as a ‘hanging breakfast’! It is also believed that the pub would send out a last pint to the condemned man or woman before his or her execution. This tradition ceased in 1868 after public hangings were abolished. Michael Barrett was the last person to be publicly executed for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion, which took place in 1867, killing 12 people and injuring another 50. However, as a nod to the past, a board stands outside the pub promoting “Last Pint Friday”, which is a half-price offer ‘commemorating’ the pub’s tradition of sending a last pint to the condemned man or woman. The last woman to be hanged in public was serial killer Catherine Wilson who was hung before a huge crowd of 20,000 spectators on 20th October 1862.
The Magpie and StumpPhoto courtesy of Local Pub Histories on historypin In the 1950s the Magpie & Stump became affectionately known as ‘Courtroom No 10’ – used as a gathering place for detectives and reporters who would discuss the trial of the day at the Old Bailey over a traditional lunch of chop ‘n’ chips.
As interesting as all this information is, most of it is irrelevant to my story, and it would have been near on impossible to include much of it without making it sound just what it is, a brief and interesting history about one of London’s oldest pubs. However, I loved the history behind the Magpie and Stump, and geographically it was close to the area where some of my story unfolds, so, after a bit of discussion with my editor, the small extract below from Time Will Tell shows you just how much, or should I say, how little, of my research I actually retained for my story:
Ten minutes later, Salocin emerged from the depths of London’s basement to find morning had well and truly broken, the sun just rising above a colourless winter day, cold and windblown, the pavements slick with sleet. Head down, avoiding the hullabaloo of Smithfield, which was now winding down for the day, he headed for Clerkenwell. Thankfully, he still had the set of keys to the yard that Mickey had given him to unlock the place yesterday, had forgotten to give them back to him last night.
There was no sign of the Old Bill, either, which didn’t surprise him… It was some passers-by that had found her, close to a pub called the Magpie and Stump, a good couple of miles from the yard… Mickey said people used to watch the public hangings of prisoners outside Newgate Prison from that pub. Salocin would love to watch a certain someone swing from the hangman’s rope over a pint. And there’d be no fucking last pint, as was tradition, for that condemned bastard.
So, as you can see, sometimes a writer’s painstaking research, like the old cutting room floor of movie makers, is discarded – at worst cut from the story altogether because it’s distracts from the storyline, at best, edited.
Food for thought when you read your next book!
Thanks for that interesting snippet of info, Eva, and I wish you all the best for Time Will Tell!
Eva loves to hear from readers, and if you’d like to contact her, or know more about her, she can be found at the following places:
Website
Twitter: @evajordanwriter
If you’d like to purchase a copy of Time Will Tell, or would like to know more about the story, click HERE
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January 14, 2019
Sun, surf and Swooping Magpies
Gorgeous rainbow lorikeetThe old cliché, "all good things must come to an end" seems especially pertinent (and despressing!) as I sit back at my desk in dull, rainy, wintery France, after a sun-baked holiday in homeland Australia.Apart from fun times catching up with friends and family, I was able to sneak in a bit of book promo, since my latest two novels, The Silent Kookaburra and The Swooping Magpie , are set in Wollongong, New South Wales (in the 70s).
First up was a radio interview with the charming Steve White on Tuesday Drive 104.5 FM. Here's a link to the video if you are interested.
Next was an Author Talk Event hosted by my local (Wollongong) library. It was great to see many familiar faces from my childhood and school years in Wollongong and to meet new friends from the many people who'd helped me with the books' research.
Figtree High School mates
Lovely book-seller helpers!
Book signing
You can get a copy of The Silent Kookaburra or The Swooping Magpie at your favourite retailer for only 2.99c!
December 19, 2018
Ten Pound Poms
Julie, one of the characters in my Aussie medical drama novel, The Swooping Magpie, is referred to as a 'Ten Pound Pom'. While this expression was very familiar to Aussies growing up in the 60s and 70s, others might wonder what it means.
"Ten Pound Pom" is a colloquial term used to describe British people migrating to Australia after WWII. Citizens wishing to migrate could do so by paying only £10 for their ticket. The government, who had set up this Assisted Passage Migration Scheme in 1954, paid the rest. Children could travel for free.
The Assisted Passage Migration Scheme was intended to substantially increase the population of Australia and to supply workers for the country's booming industries. The Government promised employment prospects, housing and a generally better lifestyle.
However, on arrival, migrants were placed in rudimentary hostel accommodation and often, as happened to Julie's father, the expected job was not readily available.
A newly-arrived family
The scheme attracted over amillion migrants from 1945 -1972, representing the last substantial scheme for preferential migration from the British Isles to Australia.
Assisted migrants were generally obliged to remain in Australia for two years after arrival, or refund the cost of their assisted passage.
If you'd like to know more about Julie, and the other characters in The Swooping Magpie, you can buy the novel for only 99c/p New Release price at your favourite retailer HERE
"Ten Pound Pom" is a colloquial term used to describe British people migrating to Australia after WWII. Citizens wishing to migrate could do so by paying only £10 for their ticket. The government, who had set up this Assisted Passage Migration Scheme in 1954, paid the rest. Children could travel for free.
The Assisted Passage Migration Scheme was intended to substantially increase the population of Australia and to supply workers for the country's booming industries. The Government promised employment prospects, housing and a generally better lifestyle.
However, on arrival, migrants were placed in rudimentary hostel accommodation and often, as happened to Julie's father, the expected job was not readily available.
A newly-arrived familyThe scheme attracted over amillion migrants from 1945 -1972, representing the last substantial scheme for preferential migration from the British Isles to Australia.
Assisted migrants were generally obliged to remain in Australia for two years after arrival, or refund the cost of their assisted passage.
If you'd like to know more about Julie, and the other characters in The Swooping Magpie, you can buy the novel for only 99c/p New Release price at your favourite retailer HERE
November 28, 2018
Stressful day? What you need is a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down
'A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a Good Lie Down' was an expression that became a common Australian saying post WWII when aspirin became readily available.It came to be used in the pejorative and abbreviated form "go and take a Bex" to indicate that someone should take a more relaxed attitude to a certain subject, or to soothe a frazzled housewife.
As was Valium in the UK, Bex in Australia was referred to as "mother's little helper". Sadly though, Bex only helped in the short-term, while killing in the long-term.
In the 1960s, women routinely used Bex to get through the day. However, once it was recognised that these substances were addictive and large doses of phenacetin were resulting in kidney disease, analgesics came under government regulation in the 1970s.
An ad I recall so vividly from my childhood!Like so many other housewives, one of my characters in The Swooping Magpie (the heroine's mum) a 1970s Aussie psychological suspense novel, is addicted to Bex. During my research I came across this Bex TV ad, that I remember so well. Watch it here.
If you'd like to learn more about Lindsay's mother and the other characters, you can buy The Swooping Magpie for only 99c/p New Release price HERE.
1970s Australian medical dramaNovember 26, 2018
#Aussie #short stories collection: Friends & Other Strangers
Friends & Other Strangers, the award-winning collection of Australian short stories has been republished with a beautiful new cover.
Special PROMO price of only 99c/p at your favourite retailer:
Amazon
Other e-retailers
What readers are saying about Friends & Other Strangers:
"… each story is a jewel filled with interesting and provocative characters… "
"… in stories like Santa Never Came, and Daughter of Atlas, Perrat explores the layers and complexities of an immigrant nation, of different cultures coming together under a baking sun and learning to adapt to one another … not the Australia of Crocodile Dundee, but a much more nuanced country, one the rest of the world deserves to know better … "
"… lovely collection of insights into Australia, but be warned, you'll be Googling flights when you put it down. The author captures the atmosphere of a young, vast country, with unpredictable weather and huge space"
"These stories are of the Australia that you won't find in tour guides - a still young nation still trying to blend together from the mixed ingredients of immigrants from all over the world… "
