Reading, Reviewing, Guest Authors, Giveaways and more.
15
Timestamp: 2011-06-07 22:08:59 UTC
Twenty-nine-year-old Anna Viktorovna lives in Moscow with her young son and her father, a once popular and respected poet who has fallen into disgrace because of his dissident views. Her husband, a junior officer in the Red Army, is on active duty and living seven time zones away. Anna struggles gamely through her difficult existence, doing the best she can amidst the long lines, bureaucratic inferno, and corruption and incompetence of the police state. When she meets and makes an impression on a powerful Soviet official—Alexey Bulgyakov—her life begins to look a little brighter. Alexey is married and nearly twice her age, but he turns out to be a man of infinite patience and forbearance, and gradually a strange but solid bond grows between them. Though Anna still loves her mostly absent husband and harbors no illusions about the future, she and Alexey become lovers.
Soon Anna and Alexey’s burgeoning romance is irrevocably threatened when a KGB colonel forces Anna to spy on Alexey, who is suspected of disloyalty to the state. Though Anna loathes the notion of double-crossing the man she has come to love, when her family is threatened she must comply. But Anna isn’t the only character playing a double game.
With bravura storytelling, stunning authenticity, and complex yet sympathetic characterizations, The Russian Affair depicts a love that struggles to survive against all odds and despite its many-layered deceptions.
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU PUBLICLY FOLLOW THIS
BLOG (IF NOT, GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT ON RIGHT SIDE).
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK.
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER.
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT TO LET ME KNOW THAT YOU
RETWEETED THIS GIVEAWAY (LEAVE LINK).
*REMEMBER TO INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS FOR ALL ENTRIES.
Giveaway copies are supplied and shipped to winners via publisher,
agent and/or author. This blog hosts the giveaway on behalf of the
above. I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in
exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are
ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.
I am not responsible for lost or damaged books that are shipped
from agents. I reserve the right to disqualify/delete any entries
if rules of giveaway are not followed
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
*Grab your current read
*Open to a random page
*Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
*Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Less than an hour later, there was a knock at the door and both Connie and Meredith froze. They were still at the dining room table, drinking coffee and letting their bowls of cereal grow soggy.
Twenty-nine-year-old Anna Viktorovna lives in Moscow with her young son and her father, a once popular and respected poet who has fallen into disgrace because of his dissident views. Her husband, a junior officer in the Red Army, is on active duty and living seven time zones away. Anna struggles gamely through her difficult existence, doing the best she can amidst the long lines, bureaucratic inferno, and corruption and incompetence of the police state. When she meets and makes an impression on a powerful Soviet official—Alexey Bulgyakov—her life begins to look a little brighter. Alexey is married and nearly twice her age, but he turns out to be a man of infinite patience and forbearance, and gradually a strange but solid bond grows between them. Though Anna still loves her mostly absent husband and harbors no illusions about the future, she and Alexey become lovers.
Soon Anna and Alexey’s burgeoning romance is irrevocably threatened when a KGB colonel forces Anna to spy on Alexey, who is suspected of disloyalty to the state. Though Anna loathes the notion of double-crossing the man she has come to love, when her family is threatened she must comply. But Anna isn’t the only character playing a double game.
With bravura storytelling, stunning authenticity, and complex yet sympathetic characterizations, The Russian Affair depicts a love that struggles to survive against all odds and despite its many-layered deceptions.
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU PUBLICLY FOLLOW THIS
BLOG (IF NOT, GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT ON RIGHT SIDE).
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK.
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER.
*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT TO LET ME KNOW THAT YOU
RETWEETED THIS GIVEAWAY (LEAVE LINK).
*REMEMBER TO INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS FOR ALL ENTRIES.
Giveaway copies are supplied and shipped to winners via publisher,
agent and/or author. This blog hosts the giveaway on behalf of the
above. I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in
exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are
ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.
I am not responsible for lost or damaged books that are shipped
from agents. I reserve the right to disqualify/delete any entries
if rules of giveaway are not followed
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
*Grab your current read
*Open to a random page
*Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
*Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Less than an hour later, there was a knock at the door and both Connie and Meredith froze. They were still at the dining room table, drinking coffee and letting their bowls of cereal grow soggy.
Here are your random numbers:
12 35
Timestamp: 2011-06-07 02:29:54 UTC
Here are your random numbers:
12 35
Timestamp: 2011-06-07 02:29:54 UTC
Lately I have had many requests from authors to stop by, visit and discuss their latest book with us. And the reason must be that they have heard that here, at CMash, the visitors are fantastic and fabulous, but then I am a bit biased. Today I have the honor and pleasure to introduce you to Mr. Tony McFadden!
This biography was provided by the author or their representative.
You can visit Mr. McFadden at his website: http://www.tonymcfadden.net/
A year and a half ago, November 5, 2009, I read a tweet written by Richard Castle. Obviously not the real Richard Castle, because there ain’t no such person. It made a reference to some of his writing tips and how he hoped they would help all of those writers taking part in NaNoWrimo.
Understand that before this the best I could call myself was a wannabe writer. I’d been working on a novel for over ten years and was perennially promising myself that this was the year that I’d buckle down and make a real stab at this writing thing, and see if I could make a career out of it.
Hollow, shameful promises, like those promising I make to myself on a weekly basis to stay away from KFC forever.
I did a quick search on the intertubes and discovered NaNoWriMo. I was entranced. 50,000 words written in a month. Unheard of. I took a fairly quick look at my calendar and realised that the only way I would ever pull that off would be if I woke every morning at 4 and wrote for two hours, and completely abandoned all pretence of keeping the yard presentable until December. To hell with the lawn. If the neighbours didn’t like it, they could mow it themselves.
I sat down on November 6th and wrote the first line
‘Impressive damage. The front is almost as bad as the back.’ Samantha Reeves, Miami’s Chief Coroner, fitted a pair of latex gloves and gently lifted the head of the facedown victim.
accurately, Detective Dan MacCready-‐was going to solve the murder.
It was exhilarating.
And it resulted in an absolute pile of horse crap.
I made it to the end, put it down for a couple of months, because ‘that’s what you’re supposed to do’, promising myself to pick it up in February to start the edit process.
In that two months I did some research on writing, and story structure, character development, voice and few other things and vowed never to start writing before I knew what the end was, what the structure needed to be and, generally, what path I was going to take to get there.
‘Scary Barry’ (as I called that first NaNoWriMo effort) stayed in that bottom drawer. I set a goal of writing self-‐sufficiency in five years (one year and a bit down) and started putting what I learned to work.
Since then I’ve rebuilt/rewritten two works in progress and wrote a third (‘G’Day L.A.’ a give away on this site) and have finally taken that old Scary Barry out of the bottom drawer. I’m re-‐writing it completely.
The overall story/plot stays the same, none of the characters have changed, but I’m re-‐building it from the ground up.
I’m wandering a bit here.
What I’m trying to say is that you can either take ten years to write a novel (Matt’s War-‐that one I’d been plodding through) or less than a year (for G’Day L.A.). In fact, the first draft of G’Day was written during NaNo2010. All 92,000 words of it. In less than a month.
The difference? A good six weeks spent planning and detailing what the end game is. Planning your story. Nutting out your plot. defining in advance what your character arc is. from the middle of September 2010 to the end of October I planned. And plotted, and schemed, and figured out exactly what my story should be. I wrote it in November. Took December off and spent the last few months cleaning up the spelling, grammar, voice and voila. Here we are.
Sure, it’s a bit of hard upfront work, but do you know what? Once that’s done, there are virtually no more instances of writer’s block. You know the endgame and the general path and the words flow like wine.
Happy writing.
Tony
Bart loved working with her in “Beast”, and encouraged her to make the move. He believed her to be talented enough to make it on the big stage.
A year later and she’s still finding that success elusive. She’s thinking of packing it in and heading back to Sydney when Joel, her roommate and best friend, is found dead in his tub, a case of suspected suicide.
That pushes her over the edge. She books flights and packs her bags and is ready for the airport when she learns that Joel didn’t kill himself – he was killed.
Can Ellie convince the police that Joel’s death wasn’t suicide? Or accidental?
Can she stay alive herself, now that the killer knows what Ellie knows?
And can she find a career in a city that cares more for what’s on the outside than on the inside?
