Month: August 2019

Short Story Sunday: The Girl in the Plane by Katherine Center

The Girl in the Plane: A Short Story
Author: Katherine Center
Published: July 23, 2019
Audiobook

Reviewed By: Jessica
Date Read: August 21, 2019
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars

Book Description:

From Katherine Center, New York Times bestselling author of How to Walk Away, comes a short story The Girl in the Plane, featuring Cassie Hanwell, the courageous female firefighter at the heart of Things You Save in a Fire.

This audio edition is read by the author.

Jessica’s Review:

This short story is the bridge between two of Katherine Center’s novels: How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire. If you have read and enjoyed those two novels then you ABSOLUTELY MUST listen to this audio short story, as it enhances both, but more so How to Walk Away for me. 

I really enjoyed having both Margaret and Cassie together and a certain other character I won’t name: You’ll just have to read it to find out who it is.  Listening to this short story makes me want to read both of these novels again. I really loved both of them. I will definitely be reading more of Center’s books!

I also loved that Center read the audiobook. She did very well reading it and it makes the chapter more personal hearing her actual voice reading her words.  It was read in just over 30 minutes.

My review for How to Walk Away is here.
My review for Things You Save in a Fire is here.

You can listen to the audio version of The Girl in the Plane for FREE via Google Play or Apple Books.

First Line Friday #120


Today’s First Line Friday is one I have been reading this week for a Blog Tour in early September. I have read a couple of the author’s works and hope to read more. And this first line represents what First Line Friday is all about: Can that first line draw you in and leave you wanting more????

They say it takes less than ten seconds to make a first impression.

31 dates in 31 days – what could possibly go wrong?

Izzy is a journalist who usually writes a technology column for a local newspaper. Her somewhat-intimidating boss William sets her the task of dating thirty-one men, via an internet dating site, all within a month, and writing about it for the paper.

Having an active, though fruitless, social life with her friend Donna, Izzy knows what she wants in a man, so creates a shopping list of dos and don’ts and starts ticking them off as she meets the men.

Follow the ups and downs of the dating process including Tim ‘the Weeble’, whose date leads Izzy to see banoffee pie in a whole new light, Lawrence the super-skinny social worker, Felix with his bizarre penchant for Persian Piranhas, and ‘the music maestro but don’t talk about dead pets’ Jake.

By the end of the month, will Izzy have met Mr Right? 

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

Here is the blog tour poster which shows my day along with the other bloggers participating:

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Blog Tour: The Nine Lives of Jacob Fallada

Today I will be sharing an extract for my spot on the blog tour for The Nine Lives of Jacob Fallada by Neil Randall. And if you are in the UK you can be in the running for a giveaway!

Book Description:

Nine stories
One artist
The whole world against him

The Nine Lives of Jacob Fallada is the story of an outsider, a lonely, misunderstood young artist who chronicles all the unpleasant things that happen to him in life. Abandoned by his parents, brought up be a tyrannical aunt, bullied at school, ostracized by the local community, nearly everyone Jacob comes into contact with takes an instant, (often) violent dislike towards him. Like Job from the bible, he is beaten and abused, manipulated and taken advantage of. Life, people, fate, circumstance force him deeper into his shell, deeper into the cocoon of his fledgling artistic work, where he records every significant event in sketches, paintings and short-form verse, documenting his own unique, eminently miserable human experience. At heart, he longs for companionship, intimacy, love, but is dealt so many blows he is too scared to reach out to anybody. On the fringes of society, he devotes himself solely to his art.

Purchase Link here.


Promise Me No Promises

Jacob Fallada leaned back on a park bench, closed his eyes, and listened to the familiar yet somehow disconcerting sounds of children at play: the shrieks, excited voices and high-pitched laughter. It took him back to his own childhood, to those dark, confusing days where all he sought was peace, quiet, and solitude, where this kind of raucous scene was pure torture, a rolling kind of purgatory he could never quite escape. It’s odd, he thought to himself, how something so synonymous with innocence, the happiest, most carefree times of life were associated with his own bleakest memories, the most sickening of emotions, as if his sensory apparatus had been reversed, as if black was white, as if he were subject to a completely different set of emotional criteria than ordinary, everyday people. And although he could easily identify the root causes for this, he still wasn’t sure why he had been destined to feel so isolated and conflicted all the time.

When he opened his eyes again, he was startled to see someone standing right in front of him, a slender, casually dressed yet decidedly smart, well-to-do woman in her late twenties.

“I’m sorry, but I really need to have a word with you.”

“Me?”

“That’s right. I’m a young mother. My two children are playing just over there in the sandpit.” She gestured towards the sun-drenched play area. “Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen you down here a hell of a lot. And I don’t like it one bit.”

Jacob blinked in confusion. He had no idea what this woman was trying to say. This was, after all, a public place, a place he had come to frequent in the summer months, to sketch, jot down notes, read, relax, gather his thoughts. He had as much right to be here as anybody else.

“I am, in fact, speaking on behalf of a dozen or so concerned mothers who don’t like the idea of such an unkempt loner staring at their children for hours on end, who don’t want to put them at risk of being accosted by someone who could very well be on the sex register.”

Only then did Jacob realise exactly why she had approached him.

“Now, we don’t want to have to call the police. But if you don’t leave here, this minute, I’ll be forced to—”

“Maureen, no,” said a petite, middle-aged woman in glasses, who had literally appeared out of nowhere. “Not to be clichéd, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. This young man is an artist. I’ve seen him down here with his sketchbook countless times before. I’ve sat next to him on this very bench, and he didn’t even know I was there, so absorbed was he in his drawing. He isn’t some deviant stalking local children. If anything, you’re the one harassing him, interrupting his work.”

Maureen’s cheeks reddened; she became incredibly flustered, incredibly quickly.

“Oh, my word. I…I’m terribly sorry.” She swallowed hard and shifted her weight. “It’s just…it’s just that you hear such awful things these days, and, not to be rude, but you look so, so down-at-the-heel, pretty much like every mother’s worst nightmare. I just assumed you were a…a, you know.”

So effusive were her apologetic words, so horrified did she look at her mistake, Jacob found himself apologising in return, just as effusively, saying that he understood perfectly well why she had reacted in the way she did, almost conceding the fact that he did indeed resemble the popular image of a career paedophile.

“Really, it’s nothing,” he assured her, “a misunderstanding, just one of those things.”

After graciously accepting his apology, Maureen scuttled away, joining a group of young mothers gathered by the climbing-frames, no doubt awaiting a full account of her exchange with the dubious stranger who had so enflamed their maternal anxiety.

Jacob turned to the woman in glasses.

“Thank you for that,” he said, ruefully shaking his head. “For interceding, I mean. I don’t know what it is, but that kind of thing happens to me quite often.”

“It’s because you’re different,” she said, carefully folding her pretty floral-print dress and sitting next to him. “It’s because you’re an artist, someone who lives an alternative lifestyle that everyday people just can’t understand. Normal Joes and Josephines fear those who want to create, express themselves, who are not driven by money and material possessions. Put simply, your mere existence makes them question theirs.”

Jacob took a moment to consider her words. Not one to overthink things too much, the reasons why he did what he did, he nonetheless thought she had summed up his situation, and that of anyone who seeks to be creative in the modern world, to dedicate themselves to an artform, particularly well indeed. For that reason, he felt an instant connection, a bond, a sense of solidarity. Rarely had anyone taken the time to try and understand him, his way of life and motivations.

“I, myself, am a bit of a weekend artist,” she told him. “Not that my work is easy to define, categorise, put into any kind of box. I tend to splice genres, mix things up—part painter, part writer, part candlestick maker.”

“Really?” said Jacob, laughing at her amusing play on words.

“Yes. In fact, I was thinking of taking my sketchbook down to the promenade tomorrow morning, near where the fishing boats are moored overnight. Not to be presumptuous, but would you like to perhaps meet up? We could carry on our discussion about art and artists, why we spend all our time in front of a canvas or hunched over a sheet of writing paper.”

“Erm, yes,” he replied, a little wrong-footed by her suggestion—strangers rarely spoke to him, let alone made arrangements for a second meeting. “Yes, I would.”

“Good.” She smiled and got to her feet. “I’ll see you then…then. Ha! Oh, and my name’s Rhea, by the way.”

Shyly, she offered him a slender hand with black painted nails to shake.

“And I’m Jacob, Jacob Fallada.”

That night, Jacob found it almost impossible to sleep. He was far too excited by what amounted to both a regulation date and an artistic assignation with an incredibly intriguing woman. Perhaps this whole thing was fated, he thought to himself.

      Perhaps I was destined to be in the park at that precise hour of the morning. Perhaps, perversely, being accused of being a potential child rapist was part of the whole karmic process, to bring me closer to Rhea, a fellow artist, someone who understands the inner workings of my mind, someone I can talk to freely and openly, perhaps even show my own body of work. Perhaps all the pain and rejection of my early life was leading up to this one point.

In this irrepressible state, he tried to remember every aspect of Rhea’s appearance: the dark, tangled hair that rested at a shoulder’s length, the pale, almost porcelain skin, the curious greeny-blue eyes that lurked behind her stylish designer glasses, the quite disarming white-toothed smile, petite, almost painfully thin frame, which belied the dynamo-like energy generated by what clearly was a fierce intelligence, the simple floral dress, shoes with straps, the black nail polish. All in all, Jacob Fallada had never met anyone like Rhea before.


About the Author:

Neil Randall is the author of seven published novels and a collection of short stories. His work has been published in the UK, US, Australia and Canada.

Contact Neil:
Twitter: @
NARandall1
Instagram: neilrandall4869
Facebook

**UK Only Giveaway**

Win one of 3 Copies of The Nine Lives of Jacob Fallada

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box above.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

 

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