Virtual Book Tour Dates: 3/11/14 – 3/25/14Genres: The story is an Action/ Adventure set in 1916.
It encompasses elements of the 1916 Rising and Irish myth and would belong in the Fantasy genre.Blurb:
Bran—a war weary veteran of many conflicts has always closely guarded a dark secret. Now, as he fights for the survival of his men in the brutal trenches, his past has come back to haunt him. Rioghnach, a dark fairy woman, has arisen after centuries beneath the ground. She has been driven mad and power-hungry by her imprisonment. Bran must put aside his loyalties and finally return home. Ireland is a land on the verge of political turmoil and civil unrest. As the time of the Easter Rising draws near a sequence of events will begin to unravel that could bring about an age of darkness. Bran holds the key to their salvation but it could bring about a fate worse than death.
Excerpt:
Things seemed to have gone quiet up above as he stopped, the men behind him holding their breath for him to listen. He thought he had heard something through the earthen walls enfolding them but, as the seconds trickled by, the stillness reassured him and he began to crawl on. The air was thinner down here, making it a struggle to keep going, the exertion of pulling themselves along by their elbows slowly draining their strength. The explosives in his satchel were pressing against his side as he tried to shuffle through the ground works.
The boys were nervous, the tension even more palpable than usual. The number of explosions had increased a lot in the last few weeks. The cave-ins had taken friends from all the men and the most experienced diggers had succumbed to the German offensive. Bran was nervous too. His boys weren’t like the diggers - men who had worked in mines and dig works for years before the war. They were fearless, those large men with their gruff northern accents and their dislike of the upper class officers. His lads were just normal Tommie’s; they were young and scared and didn’t like going underground. It wasn’t natural. They felt trapped.
He stopped again, swearing he felt movement through the ground. His sudden stop halted the other men as the boy at the back, barley eighteen, began to whimper. ‘Quiet’, the harsh whisper chastised him as Bran froze; the sound of breathing seemed loaded and clumsy as it became trapped between the walls of the tunnel. The other men trusted Bran’s judgement. He was a bit of a legend among the trenches, his knack for coming back alive when all around him died was enough cause for the men to listen when he talked. It was this that went against him with his superiors. They did not like the men raising lowly captains to higher stations than themselves. The superstitions of the lower ranks was a constant pain for the officers, their men not wanting to obey direct orders because they had a “bad feeling” about it. It had to be stamped out and talk of this Irish soldier, with his ‘good luck’ and ‘sixth sense’ about things, angered them all the more.
Bran pulled the glove from his right hand with his teeth and sank his fingers into the dirt of the floor beneath his belly. He shut his eyes to concentrate. Nothing seemed to move. Then he felt it, a dragging close by. He squeezed his eyes all the tighter, straining his ears. The vibration he sent out was miniscule, undetectable but he saw what he needed to. He turned his head awkwardly in the tight space until he could see Jones in the harsh lamp light. The perspiration from the heat and the fear was running in droplets from his brow down his nose. He signalled with his hand to go back as the boys began to silently crawl backwards on the long ascent to the top.
As they got higher the tunnel became wider allowing the men to walk, if hunched down, as they awkwardly plodded ever upward, the relief added to by the fresher air the higher they crawled. ‘Say it and stop sulking Jones,’ Bran chastised as he struggled with the bag he carefully protected at his side.
‘There’s going to be trouble about this. They will have your head for turning the lads back’, Jones groaned in his heavy Newcastle accent. He faced Bran, looking into the bright blue eyes of the man he respected but could not understand. The other boys pushed onwards, eager to get back up top, allowing Bran and Jones the privacy to speak.
‘There was nothing to be done. There is a German tunnel. It’s about to intersect ours just ahead of the point we were crawling to’ Bran explained, becoming impatient with Jones’ worrying. ‘I’m not sure if they were aware of our tunnel but they were either going to come through the walls at us or plant explosives themselves. I’m not putting the lads at risk for nothing.’ Jones got the puckered skin between his brows that came when he thought for too long about how Bran knew these things. He took a deep breath of the thick pungent air as he looked at the dirt streaked face of his captain.
Buy Links:About the Author:
Christina George is an Irish writer based in Dundalk, Co. Louth. She mainly writes Fiction with an emphasis on Fantasy. Her academic background is in the arts. After completing her undergraduate with a BA in Cultural studies in 2008 she went on to study for an MA in Comparative Literature in Dublin City University. Her first novel The Rise of the Sidhe has recently been released for Kindle on Amazon. She is currently working in the Heritage sector in County Louth and outlining a new writing project.
My Self-Publishing Journey
I finished the first draft of my book back in 2010. It was a pretty difficult time for me. I had recently become unemployed and had spent my day’s job hunting and doing courses. I wrote late at night when everyone else had gone to bed. Things were hard but I really wanted to write the book. I set a dead line for finishing the manuscript for the end of August. I had been accepted at DCU to do a Masters and felt that if I didn’t finish before that I would never get the chance again. I stuck to the dead line, my sister printed a couple of copies and then—I put it out of my head.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do anything with the manuscript, I just found myself in a position that a lot of people find themselves in when finishing a book. Writing is the easy part, it is what comes after that that takes a lot of effort. I didn’t know what to do with it. I had no connections in the publishing industry or friends who knew agents or the right way to go about things. I just felt lost. Google became my best friend, but it was a bit of a catch 22 situation. The more information I got, the more confused I became. I remember making a list of my books, I scanned the spine of each of them and took a note of the publisher’s details. I made endless lists. Then I started sending query letters to small publishing houses (the ones that accept unsolicited manuscripts). I got requests for chapters and some really encouraging rejection letters but as to that sought after publishing contract—no joy!
I think things began to come together when I joined the Writers and Artists website, on a side note I would recommend that anyone interested in writing should get a copy of the Writers & Artists Yearbook. It is full of useful information for every aspect of publishing. They have a series of interviews on the website on Self- Published Authors. At this point I had just received a contract from a small publishers in London that wanted to take on my book. I had never received any reply from agents and had a horror of all the slush pile stories. I was seriously considering signing that contract, even though it was far from ideal. It had been over three years since I had started writing the book, I had my fair share of heartache when it came to rejection and I really considered giving up. But something just clicked when I read those interviews. It was like a light switched on. I realised I didn’t have to wait for something to happen, I could take things into my own hands.
I started researching self-publishing, reading all the interviews and articles I could find on it. I found a copy-editor through Writer & Artists and redrafted the book for the umpteenth time and set up a Kindle Direct Publishing Account. I spent money on a copy-editor, this was vital. A big mistake made in Self-Publishing is to put up an early draft. There is no quicker way to turn people off your work and it reflects badly on self-publishing as a whole. I read a lot about how important it was to have a good cover, I was very lucky as I have two friends who are very talented and we worked together to make a cover I was proud of. That was it, the last piece of the puzzle.
My hands were shaking when I uploaded my book. I could barely focus on the screen when I previewed it on the different Kindle devices. It was pretty surreal. I can’t really describe the feeling when I hit publish. It was elation at first, swiftly followed by blind terror, no one ever tells you about the terror part. I was putting it out there. I never really told anyone apart from close friends and family that I was writing. The realization that strangers would be reading something so personal was intimidating.
I put the book up for sale a few weeks ago, it is still early days but sales are going well. I had worried about self-publishing, about being responsible for all the different aspects of publishing my own work but I can honestly say I take pleasure in researching and doing things for myself. It is now four years, almost to the day since I started writing The Rise of the Sidhe. I didn’t get that amazing contract that I had always dreamed of, but I got the book out there, and I did it myself. Reviews and feedback are beginning to filter in. I was terrified at first but having someone tell you how much they loved the story or their favorite character is just the most amazing feeling. I went through a lot to get the book up for sale but on reflection I wouldn’t change a thing!
Connect With The Author:
No comments :
Post a Comment