#poweredbyindieOne More Day.

Looks like there's just one more day to go and then it will be Thursday 1st December and the beginning of five days of plenty.

 I'm talking about plenty of free books by the title Like One of the Family. 

Everyone can download one for free on that day and begin reading.  Enjoy!

#poweredByindieTwoweeksuntilfreegiveawayof LikeOneoftheFamily

Time is flying. Only another two weeks left to go before the start of free downloading of  Like One of the Family.As the back blurb goes it is a moving story of an Irish family of passion, tragedy and love. Just the thing to get deep into over the Christmas holidays. It has all the ingredients of a good read. Free give away starting Thursday lst December until 5th December. 

#poweredByindieDon't say I don't keep my promises!

Good news! Starting on Thursday lst December copies of my ebook 'Like One of the Family' are available for downloading from Amazon free.

The offer lasts for five days.

The story is about Claire Shannon,  the child of a broken marriage, who experiences happiness for the first time when drawn into the warmth of the McArdle's family circle. Later, in the aftermath of a tragedy that occurs she believes her childhood secret is buried and forgotten - until she falls in love with the son of the man who abused her.  Download and enjoy.

#poweredByindieTiming is everything

I love Chris De Burgh singing that song 'Timing is everything' and when you think about it he has a point.  Maybe for writers and artists more than anyone else timing can make or break your career -  or for writers lessen  your chances of having your book published - and is the reason why Chris sings that song with such feeling. Of course the song is all about the power of love but so are many of the books we write or the lives we portray.  In Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' it was timing in every case that led poor Tess to her sorrowful ending at Stonehenge. If only she had met Angel Clare before the wretched Alec had  taken her innocence and made her pregnant, if only the priggish Angel had had time to mature a bit before falling in love with Tess or that they had both lived in a more enlightened age - one in which Angel did not blindly believe in double standards, one more lenient for men and less so for women.

But Hardy wrote about the age he lived in with all its hypocrisy and pitiful human failings. He wrote about what he knew and he wrote it honestly, tragically,even poetically.  It's what he did best.

So here now is one writer becoming obsessed with time, desperately hoping to choose the right day to begin the  Amazon KDP Selection Program having received confirmation that copies of my ebook 'Like One of the Family' have been successfully removed from all selling outlets other than Amazon -  and my enrollment completed. So far so good.

Shortly I will be starting off my 90 day Amazon exclusivity with five days of giving away free copies of  my book to anyone who wants to download and read it. All I want  in return is that they like the book and have an enjoyable time reading it.  Well, maybe I want a little more if I am being honest. I would be pleased no, absolutely delighted if they felt moved to write a review of my book and maybe even get a discussion going of who it was who did what and why they did it and what happened then. How great that would be!

 In the meantime I am spending time consulting the stars, pondering on my horoscope and pulling petals off flowers while murmuring this week, next week. Perish the thought. Only kidding!.

But undoubtedly the timing of this venture is crucial if readers are to know about this big beautiful book coming their way for free.  Anyway I will soon have to name the day and get busy drumming up a bit of advance publicity. All I can tell you now is that you will know very, very soon,

That's a promise!.

An eight year old's memoir of Rhodesia during the Bush War.

For my birthday this year my son who greatly admires Alexandra Fuller's writing gave me 'Don't let's Go to the Dogs Tonight'. I read this well written memoir while on holidays and very much enjoyed it.Fuller writes with honesty, insight and vivacity resonant of Molly M. Kaye's writings on the Indian Mutiny and her childhood growing up in India. The words spring off the page, the style explosive, her story of growing up in Rhodesia during the Bush War written without sentimentality of her loving but eccentric racist, hard-drinking parents who teach their children once they are five years old to strip and clean a gun and keep it in readiness on their beds at night in case of attack. She writes of her beautiful older sister Vanessa whom she describes as 'the conversation-stopping beauty in our family' without envy, with awe even, admitting to her own desire to win the approval of her Dad and be like 'an army guy' cleaning and loading her father's FN rifle and her Mum's Uzi wllingly, not wanting to be classed as just one of what her father angrily calls, 'Bunch-of-bloody-women-in-the-house'. But it is the languid Vanessa when goaded by her father to 'Bloody well strip and clean your gun' who surprises them all when she decisively lifts the heavy gun and with deadly precision fires off a few rounds, putting shots clean through the head and heart of the target, a cutout crouching terrorist figure stationed at the end of the garden. Fuller labels these the happy years and describes them with a certain humour and deprecating honesty. When the greatest tragedy occurs Fuller is eight years old and she leads into it with the line 'It's during Christmas when everything is green-growing with the rainy season'. While her parents take Vanessa with them and go shopping they leave Alex at her Aunty Rena's farm in charge of her three year old sister Olivia whom they all adore. There is an entrancing store on the farm sweet with treasures. Bright nylon dresses hanging from beams in the roof among the gleaming silver-black bicycle wheels, crates of Coca-Cola, an explosion of incandescent sweets, bubble gum with gold foil inside a pink, bubbled wrapper and sweet gobstoppers all of which make Alex forget her little charge long enough for the terrible thing to happen. Only when someone remarks on the absence of the toddler and a search commences is the heartbreaking discovery of the child lying face down in the muddy pond behind the farm and she says 'my whole happy world spins away from me.... I will never know peace again, I know. I will never be comfortable or happy again in my life. ' Is it any wonder Fuller's parents drink to excess, all joy gone, no longer caring how they live, their sadness and grief over Olivia's accidental drowning coming after the earlier catastrophic death of two other infants bornto them in earlier years. Fuller's mother goes into a deep depression from which she never recovers. From then on she always has a glass of brandy in her hand, desperately drinking non-stop, trying to eradicate the pain of loss. Running through the book is the deep enduring affection between the two sisters who look out for each other feeling thwarted by their parents refusal to acknowledge the turmoil raging about them. 'Don't exaggerate,' is their typical reaction when the children speak of falling bombs and the sight of dead, mutilated bodies or the sexual assault on them by their parents' drunken friend when left in his care and forcing them to run across the street to seek asylum in a neighbour's house. Apart from their sorrow there is one thing binding the family together and that is their deep, abiding love for the land they live in, whatever name it is called by, Rhodesia or Zimbabwe, for no matter what this land continues to lie unblinking under the African sky and succeeds in drawing them back every time as they struggle to survive the trauma of those early years, and to live with the scars they have suffered.


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