What Amazon says

Erin Mason, divorced and with two teenage sons, finds her world begins to fall apart when she undergoes what is termed a “life event”, and is diagnosed with cancer. Not too far away somebody else, Alan Beaumont, is also suffering a similar fate. Their paths slowly come together in this inspiring and humorous tale which is partly based on actual events, and shows how love can flourish in the most unlikely of circumstances.

My review

I listened to the audio book of A Rather unusual Romance narrated by Wendy Anne Darling. Right up front I must say that I really enjoy Wendy Darling’s reading style which is perfectly suited to this particular book. I listen to enough audio books to know that the reader’s voice and style can ruin a book, but Wendy Darling’s narration really added to my enjoyment of this excellent story.

Erin Mason has a busy but ordinary life. She is a ward clerk in a busy hospital ward that specialises in care of the elderly and, right up front, she proves herself to be patient, firm and kind as she deals with the patients and her work colleagues. Erin is a single mother to her twin teenage boys after their father, her husband at the time, leaves her for another woman with whom he’s been having an affair.

The relationship between Erin and her boys clearly indicates the type of person she is as they are caring and reasonably considerate towards their mother all the way through the book. It was heart warming to know that her children, Kevin in particular, were capable of expressing their love through looking after Erin and preparing meals for her when she became ill.

I quickly came to be ambivalent towards Erin’s ex-husband, Chris, who not only had an affair and treated her quite badly when their marriage broke up, but behaves selfishly and self centredly when he becomes aware of her involvement with Alan.

Alan is a kindly and decent man who has also been through a divorce following his wife leaving him for another man. He is left to bring up his daughter, Matilda, on his own and she is a testimony to his excellence as a father.

Alan is diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the same time as Erin and ends up being her neighbour in the lead lined hospital rooms during their simultaneous treatment with radiation.

The author’s understanding of thyroid cancer, its treatment and pitfalls are quite apparent in this book and found it all very interesting having had a few encounters with breast cancer and its treatment in my own family.

This is a compelling book . The author probes into the anxiety and psychology of each of Alan and Erin as they go through the processes of suspecting something is wrong with them, diagnosis of their conditions, treatment, and finally its aftermath.

I enjoyed the positivity the author portrayed while telling this story and the fact that the characters found happiness and love in the most unexpected place and circumstances. The author also delves into the difficulties of introducing a new relationship into two existing families and the complexities of dealing with teenage angsts, rejection and concerns in such circumstances.

On the whole, I thought this was an excellent book, well written and full of the best of humanity.

Purchase A Rather Unusual Romance

The vintage music books lay in a neat pile on top of her old vinyl records. Reaching out, he picked one up and looked at it. The paper was slightly yellow from age.

I can’t believe she’s still got these books, he thinks. I remember how pleased she was when she found them in an antique shop in Greymont. I’d just passed my Grade 4 practical music exam and she was hopeful I would learn to play some of the songs.

He’d started music lessons at four years old and had learned to read music fluently before he could read. He remember his mother telling him that he had initially struggled to learn the alphabet and to read because it was like learning a second language for him.

She had done everything she could to encourage him with his music. Listening to him practice every morning before she went to work and taking him to lessons in the afternoons when she got home were built into her long list of daily activities. He’d been having three hour-long lessons a week before elected to give up music; one for singing, one for theory, and one for practical piano.

When he’d reached high school and decided to stop playing the piano, his mother had hidden her disappointment and allowed him to do so without an argument. She’d accepted that music was something that no longer interested her tall, academic son. He was not a creative and she couldn’t live her life through him. She let it go and he’d pursued maths, science and IT.

He’d been grateful for her understanding, especially as he knew she would have loved an opportunity to learn to play when she was a girl. One day she’d told him that a next-door-neighbour had started teaching her when she was nine years old. Her family had moved a few months later and she’d never had another chance to learn.

He turned the page of the top book and it opened to ‘My Favourite Things’ from ‘The Sound of Music’.

Mother’s favourite song. She always said she wanted me to play it at her funeral one day. Of course, she didn’t expect to die of a stroke just before her fiftieth birthday. Didn’t know that her blood pressure was a ticking time bomb due to years of work-induced chronic stress.

A tear slipped down his cheek and plopped onto the page.

I can’t play it at her funeral myself but I can see that it is played. This song and Morning has Broken will definitely be included in the order of service at her memorial.

This piece was written for Suzanne Burke’s weekly challenge. You can join in here: https://sooozburkeauthor.wordpress.com/2020/09/18/fiction-in-a-flash-challenge-week-18-new-image-prompt-join-in-the-fun-iartg-asmsg-writingcommunity-pursoot/

Here are the specifics for this week’s contest:

1. Seasons are changing. The Theme is a funny haiku (or, more technically accurate, a senryu) about seasonal change. Spring, fall, summer, winter, autumn; whatever.
2. From Wikipedia about senryu, regarding Length: “three lines with 17 morae (or “on”, often translated as syllables, but see the article on onji for distinctions).” We’re also fine with the ole 5-7-5.
3. Dude; this poetry form does NOT Rhyme.
4. I dunno what might be racy about nature, so a G-rating is preferable.
5. Just MAKE US LAUGH. Mother Nature needs to slap your wrists with climbing roses as she holds her vinèd sides in laughter.

Autumn leaves

Leaves, leaves everywhere

I’ll persuade hubby to rake

Where’s my lingerie?

You can join in here: https://chelowens.com/2020/09/19/the-a-mused-poetry-contest-9-19-9-25-2020/

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). 

McCaig’s Tower, also known as McCaig’s Folly, is a prominent tower on Battery Hill overlooking the town of Oban in Argyll, Scotland. It is built of Bonawe granite taken from the quarries across Airds Bay, on Loch Etive, from Muckairn, with a circumference of about 200 metres with two-tiers of 94 lancet arches. It is a Grade B Listed historic monument. The structure was commissioned, at a cost of £5,000 sterling, by the wealthy, philanthropic banker, John Stuart McCaig. It was never finished as John McCaig died before his vision was completed and the £1,000 per annum he left in his will for the completion of the structure was challenged in court by his family.

You can join in Thursday’s doors here: https://miscellaneousmusingsofamiddleagedmind.wordpress.com/2020/09/17/thursday-doors-september-17-2020/

What Amazon says

2019 KCT RRBC Runner-Up Silver Award Winner

The year is 1970, and the story follows the two soldiers – impressionable Detroit teenagers – during their long night in a Listening Post (‘LP’), some 200 meters beyond the bunker line of the new firebase. Their assignment as a “human early warning system”, is to listen for enemy activity and forewarn the base of any potential dangers. As they were new to the “Iron Triangle” and its reputation, little did they know that units before them lost dozens of soldiers in this nightly high-risk task and referred to those assigned as “bait for the enemy” and “sacrificial lambs”.

Sitting in the pitch black tropical jungle – with visibility at less than two feet – John’s imagination takes hold throughout the agonizing night, and at times, transports him back to some of his most vivid childhood memories – innocent, but equally terrifying at the time.

As kids, we instinctively run as fast as we can to escape imaginary or perceived danger, but as soldiers, men are trained to conquer their fears and develop the confidence to stand their ground and fight. Running is not an option.

My review

I have recently learned a lot more about the war in Vietnam so when I saw this book I grabbed the opportunity to read about the experiences of a veteran. I was not disappointed. When Can I Stop Running is an account of one night in the lives of two American soldiers, Polack and L.G. in the jungle outside of the base camp.

The pair are assigned to Listening Patrol which entails hiding in the jungle all night and acting as a human warning system for any unusual activity from the enemy. The reader quickly realises that this is not a popular duty among the men and the descriptions of the heavy and dense blackness of night in the jungle make it obvious as to why. It is awful to imagine being in such complete blackness, where you can’t see anything, and waiting and listening for the sounds of enemy soldiers all night long.

Polack and L.G. have some unpleasant experiences during the night, including a group of enemy soldiers stopping for a meal not far from their chosen hiding spot and being attacked by apes with rocks.

The experiences of the two soldiers is alternated with flashbacks, by Polack, to his childhood when he faced something that frightened him. These flashback’s ranged from when Polack was a young lad of eight years old attending holiday camp to an encounter with some neighbourhood witches a few years before he joined the army and was posted to Vietnam.

The two different perspectives, those of the child and teenage Polack, who uses flight as his saving grace when faced with something scary, and Polack the young adult soldier who cannot run and has to face his fears is poignant and striking.

I enjoyed this thought provoking book and would recommend it to people who like to read books about human drama, courage and the life of a soldier.

Purchase When Can I Stop Running?

Tell us what you love the most about your work(s) in progress.

I am currently participating in a horror anthology called Spellbound, featuring 27 stories from 16 authors. This is the third horror anthology in the Box Under the Bed series, compiled by Dan Alatorre, that I have been involved with and I really do enjoy it.

There are a few reasons I like participating in anthologies:

Firstly, I enjoy writing short stories from time-to-time. Short stories require a different writing approach to a book as you have much less time to flesh out your characters and develop your plot. I enjoy the challenge of writing short stories and, as horror and supernatural are my favourite genres, that is also a big plus for me. I also like short stories because your can write and finish one in a week. That makes a nice change from the twelve to eighteen months I need to write a book.

Secondly, I enjoy engaging with a group of other writers to create an anthology and I also enjoy assisting with some of the editing and proofreading of the stories. I have found that I learn an awful lot from carefully reading other peoples work with a sharp editing and proof reading eye. I have started to pick up filter words and word echoes and other writing faux pas in other people’s writing. This has made me more aware of these writing technique errors and I try to avoid them as I write now rather than having to do a huge editing exercise at the end of a book.

Thirdly, I believe that I benefit from being part of an anthology and being exposed to a wider readership. If sixteen authors all participate in a book and they all have readers of their books, short stories, blogs and social media, you are bound to meet some new readers. Some of these readers are likely to enjoy at least one of my stories and that puts my name on their radar for the future.

I have two short stories in Spellbound, one is called Death Is About Choices and has a historical supernatural steer, while the other, Glass Mountain, is pure horror [in my opinion]. I know that both these stories have a common theme of fear of death. In both stories, the young main characters are put in a situation where death is likely, even expected. I have en deavoured to delve a little bit into the psychology of impending death in a young person [teenager]. I wonder if any readers will pick up on this common theme.

I created the following adverts and GIF for this new book.

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I have finished A Ghost and His Gold in all is nearly 118 000 words of glory. I have re-read it several times and I have decided not to shorten it as everything is relevant in this tale of three ghosts, all of whom died during or soon after the Second Anglo Boer War in South Africa between Great Britain and the Orange Free State and the South Africa Republic. This war raged between 1899 and 1902 and changed the course of South African history.

My main objective with writing this book has been to delve into the physiology of what was almost a civil war at the time and how it impacted on all the people of South Africa, to the extent such historical information is recorded and available.

This book should be available on Amazon in January 2021.

Here is the blurb:

After Tom and Michelle Cleveland move into their recently built, modern townhouse, their housewarming party is disrupted when a drunken game with an Ouija board goes wrong and a sinister poltergeist, Estelle, who died in 1904, is summoned.

Estelle makes her presence known in a series of terrifying events, culminating in her attacking Tom in his sleep with a knife. But, Estelle isn’t alone. Who are the shadows lurking in the background? – one in an old-fashioned slouch hat and the other, a soldier, carrying a rifle.  Discovering their house has been built on the site of one of the original farms in Irene, Michelle becomes convinced that the answer to her horrifying visions lies in the past. She must unravel the stories of the three phantoms’ lives, and the circumstances surrounding their untimely deaths during the Second Anglo Boer War, in order to understand how they are tied together and why they are trapped in the world of ghosts between life and death. As the reasons behind Estelle’s malevolent behaviour towards Tom unfold, Michelle’s marriage comes under severe pressure and both their lives are threatened.

Here are a few extracts from this book:

Do the extracts and the blurb entice you? Let me know in the comments.

If you would like to Beta read a copy, then please email me at sirchoc[at]outlook[dot]com

Enjoy your weekend.

Robbie

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). 

The Dohány Street Synagogue complex consists of the Great Synagogue, the Heroes’ Temple, the graveyard, the Memorial and the Jewish Museum. Dohány Street has strong Holocaust connotations as it constituted the border of the Budapest Ghetto.

You can learn more about the Dohány Street Synagogue here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doh%C3%A1ny_Street_Synagogue

Even if you knew you would never sell another book, would you keep writing?

An interesting topic this week and one I’ve had to think about. I’ve reflected on this on and off all day as I work towards finalising the editing of my new novel, A Ghost and His Gold. This book has been a huge exercise for me with all the research and effort I’ve put in to try and ensure it ticks all the writing criteria. I’ve checked for filter words, read and re-read the dialogue, tied up a few loose strings that my editor pointed out, checked spelling and punctuation and generally spent many hours perfecting this book. Writing is a real labour of love and one most writers willingly do, even it they know they won’t necessary generate a lot of sales.

But no sales! None at all! Hmmm! I’m not sure if I would continue to write if I had absolutely no encouragement at all. My need in this regard doesn’t necessarily translate into sales, but I would like to believe that at least a few people out there read my work and enjoyed it. I find reviews quite rewarding and would not like to have absolutely none at all. I do believe I would find that disheartening and I’m not sure if I would put so much effort in if this was the case.

I tend to write about topics that one, interest me, and two, I am passionate about so I accept that I am unlikely to ever be traditionally published. I could never write to a formula or curtail my writing to fit a purely commercial mould. That being said, I like to think there is a market for unconventional and different books like mine.

I think I will always write poetry as it is like a pressure valve for me. It is a way for me to release emotional stress and strain that might otherwise result in confrontations or arguments that would serve no real purpose and produce no positive change in my life. Some things are just to big to change and you have to accept them in life.

Would other blog-hoppers still write if they never sold another book?  Click on the link below to find out:

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2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

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Resentment and anger made poor bedfellows . They stole the pleasure from the day, creeping relentlessly across her mind like a slow eclipse of the sun. It was time to take back control of her life. Time to make a change.

She never imagined her life could become this unfulfilling and frustrating. Getting up early every day and trying to behave as if everything was normal.

Outside the walls of her home, the world had turned itself upside down. Masked strangers roamed the streets, ringing on doorbells asking for food to fill empty bellies or trying to sell some unnecessary and unwanted item to the impatient and irritated inhabitants of the houses. There were no jobs and the poor and uneducated were desperate and verging on starvation.

Within the walls of her familiar home, her own life had become a nightmare of relentless stress as her working days grew longer and longer. More and more demands were made on her until one day she’d awoken to the unexpected realisation that exploitation and abuse of human rights comes in many forms. The shocking understanding dawned that she was a pathetic pawn in the corporate game where no-one mattered and no employee ever won.

Pressing the send button, her resignation letter left her email box.

To late she learned

That undue quickness of mind

Mixed with compassion

Creates the perfect cocktail

For endless exploitation

This haibun was written for Colleen Chesebro’s poetry challenge. You can join in here: https://colleenchesebro.com/2020/09/01/colleens-2020-weekly-tanka-tuesday-poetry-challenge-no-193-poetschoice/