Category Archives: time-slip

WATCH FOR ME BY MOONLIGHT by Kirsty Ferry #timeslip #highwayman

moonlightWatch for me by Moonlight

by

Kirsty Ferry

moonlight

Series: The Hartsford Mysteries series

Genre: Timeslip

Release Date: 6th October 2017

Publisher: Choc Lit

“It was the first full moon since that night. She waited and watched by moonlight, as she had promised …”

When her life in London falls apart, Elodie Bright returns to Suffolk and to Hartsford Hall, the home of her childhood friend Alexander Aldrich, now the Earl of Hartsford. There, she throws herself into helping Alex bring a new lease of life to the old house and its grounds.

After a freak storm damages the Hall chapel and destroys the tomb of Georgiana Kerridge, one of Alex’s eighteenth-century relatives, Elodie and Alex find a connection in the shocking discovery brought to light by the damaged tomb.

Through a series of strange flashbacks and uncanny incidents, they begin to piece together Georgiana’s secret past involving a highwayman, a sister’s betrayal and a forbidden love so strong that it echoes through the ages …

 

EXTRACT

Elodie had no idea how she made it to the church so quickly when she could barely see anything for the rain bucketing down in front of her eyes.

Pushing her way out of the gift shop, she ran, ploughing through mud and churned up grass, splashing through ankle deep puddles. Water was fountaining out of the drain covers like so many geysers, but Elodie didn’t look down, didn’t look to see where her feet were going. Her trainers would need to be binned and her clothes would probably never dry out again, but who cared? She just kept her sights on the church.

Against the shadows, she saw a tall figure running towards the place and knew instinctively who it was.

‘Alex!’ The wind tore the words out of her mouth and blew them somewhere towards Norfolk.

He reached the church moments before she did and stopped short at the door.

‘Alex!’

This time he heard her and spun around, rain dripping off his messy dark hair and into his midnight-blue eyes. ‘The roof, Elodie, it’s been hit. I was in the greenhouse. I saw it happening.’

‘I know!’ She drew up next to him, quite breathless. ‘I saw it too, from the gift shop.’ She hurried past him and put one hand on the ancient bronze door handle, but Alex’s hand came down on her wrist and held it in place.

‘Let me go first. I don’t know if it’s safe.’

Elodie relinquished the handle and hovered near him as he pulled the door open.

They both coughed as a cloud of dust and plaster came out, but thankfully there was no smell of burning.

‘Thank God,’ said Alex, clearly expecting the worst. ‘I’m still going in first though. You stay here until I call you.’

‘Okay. But come right back out if it’s looking bad!’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t hang around if it is.’ He disappeared into the building and Elodie peered anxiously in after him. After what seemed like an age, he called out to her. ‘It’s pretty grotty, but safe enough I think. The Lady Chapel got the worst of it. You can come in if you’re careful. But if it’s too much for your asthma, go straight back out.’

‘I will. But the poor Lady Chapel!’ Her heart pounding, she hurried into the church. As she stood there in the dark with the modern-day emergency lighting glowing in the rafters, and tiles smashed beneath her feet, and one of the beams hanging at a crazy angle from the ceiling to the floor, and one candle still miraculously lit and flickering wildly in an alcove near the altar, Elodie fought back the worst feeling of dread she’d ever experienced in her life.

‘Oh, my God!’

The Lady Chapel, which housed Georgiana’s tomb, was behind the fallen beam and rain was streaming down as if someone had aimed a garden hose through the roof. If anywhere in the place had suffered the worst from the lightning strike, it was, as Alex had said, that area. It had been built on to the church especially for Georgiana’s monument and never seemed to be quite fully part of the old building. The storm had obviously decided that the time had come to sever the connection completely – and it just felt all wrong, somehow. Damn.

‘I have to check Georgiana!’ Elodie scrambled over the rubble and crunched her way towards the Lady Chapel.

‘You’re not going over there on your own! God knows what it might be like. I’m coming with you.’ Alex tossed some bits of wood out of the way and followed her. With difficulty, they climbed over the beam and choked their way through the plaster cloud, the rain still hammering down and bouncing off the stone floor, but doing little to dampen the dust. Elodie felt the tell-tale tightening in her chest that warned of lungs that weren’t particularly happy in that sort of environment, but she had other things to think about and tried to ignore it.

She’d never forget what she saw after that – Georgiana’s beautiful marble tomb was split, right down the middle. It was as if the lightning strike had come straight through the roof and pierced the heart of the monument. It was all sort of broken in half and the place wasn’t filled with plaster dust: it was more like a mist of marble fragments. There were shards of the stuff scattered around and huge parts of the figure were shattered too. Even Georgiana’s lovely face was cracked from forehead to chin, yet she still looked so, so peaceful. And with the rain flowing over her cheeks, it seemed as if she was crying.

‘Oh, Georgiana!’ Elodie whispered and reached out, touching her hair.

There was an ominous creaking and groaning – then: ‘Look out!’ Alex grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her towards him as the whole tomb collapsed in on itself. The side fell off and Alex yanked Elodie out of the way. She lurched into him and automatically buried her head in his sopping wet chest. Then there was a horrible silence and all she could hear was the rain pounding on the wreckage of the tomb and Alex’s heart beating.

The silence was broken by Alex swearing.

‘Where is she?’ he asked. ‘Where the hell is she?’

 

BUY LINKS

Amazon UK: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0758K49D4/

Amazon US: www.amazon.com/Watch-Me-Moonlight-Choc-Lit-ebook/dp/B0758K49D4/

Kobo: www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/watch-for-me-by-moonlight-2

iBooks: www.itunes.apple.com/gb/book/watch-for-me-by-moonlight-choc-lit/id1271346379

The title of my new book, Watch for me by Moonlight, is a line taken from my favourite poem, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. I’ve wanted to write about a highwayman for ages, and I suspect the inspiration came from three things – that poem, the romantic idea of the famous highwayman Claude Duval, and the fact I grew up in the ‘eighties and Adam Ant’s Highwayman character was very much a ‘thing’ in my days at primary school! My friends would paint stripes on their faces and strut around a bit, but I was never allowed to get my hands on make-up which was rather sad!

However, it was around that time we studied the Noyes poem and I was caught up in it from the very first reading. The images of the Highwayman falling for the beautiful Bess and the ultimate sacrifice she made to save him haunted me for years. At the time, I didn’t really understand the effect it had on me – at nine or ten years old, it was a rather scary, rather chilling and very romantic story; but the fact that even now I can remember sitting in class and reading those words and feeling the goosebumps on my arms, and that I kept thinking about it even after I went home and have remembered those feelings and Noyes’ words all these years, must have meant it touched me deeply.

Ben, the highwayman hero in Watch for me by Moonlight, is also based heavily on Claude Duval. He’s not really a bad guy; he’s an adventurer, and rather dashing – and stole a dance instead of Georgiana’s jewels when he intercepted her coach one dark night. The real Duval is said to haunt the Holt Hotel in Oxfordshire – and my Ben is said to haunt the woods at Hartsford Hall, the fictional stately home I created for my new series, the Hartsford Mysteries. I decided that Hartsford should be in Suffolk, which is a bit (okay, a lot) further south than my Rossetti Mysteries series, which is based in Yorkshire. However, I have still managed to link the two series together, and if anyone has read my novel The Girl in the Painting, then they will be familiar with the contemporary heroine of Moonlight, and maybe be pleased to find out a little more about some of the Rossetti characters as well!

ABOUT KIRSTY FERRY

moonlight

Kirsty is from the North East of England and won the English Heritage/Belsay Hall National Creative Writing competition in 2009 with the ghostly tale ‘Enchantment’.

Her timeslip novel, ‘Some Veil Did Fall’, a paranormal romance set in Whitby, was published by Choc Lit in Autumn 2014. This was followed by another Choc Lit timeslip, ‘The Girl in the Painting’ in February 2016 and ‘The Girl in the Photograph’ in March 2017. The experience of signing ‘Some Veil Did Fall’ in a quirky bookshop in the midst of Goth Weekend in Whitby, dressed as a recently undead person was one of the highlights of her writing career so far!

Kirsty’s day-job involves sharing a Georgian building with an eclectic collection of ghosts – which can sometimes prove rather interesting.

You can find out more about Kirsty and her work at www.rosethornpress.co.uk, catch her on her Facebook Author Page or follow her on Twitter @kirsty_ferry.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirsty.ferry.author/

Twitter: @kirsty_ferry

Blog: www.rosethornramblings.wordpress.com

Website: www.rosethornpress.co.uk

 

A SHAPE ON THE AIR by Julia Ibbotson ~#guestpost #timeslip #giveaway

Julia IbbotsonA Shape on the Air

by

Julia Ibbotson

Julia IbbotsonGenre: historical time slip romance

Release Date: 28th July 2017

Publisher: Endeavour Press

Buy link: AMAZON

Two women 1500 years apart. One need: to save the world they know. Can they help each other to achieve their greatest desire? And what if that world they want is not the one that’s best for them?  University lecturer in medieval studies, Dr Viv Dulac, is devastated when her partner walks out (and with her best friend too!) and threatens her home.  Drunk and desperate, her world quite literally turns upside down and she finds herself in the body of the fifth century Lady Vivianne, who is struggling with the shifting values of the Dark Ages and her forced betrothal to the brutish Sir Pelleas who is implicated in the death of her parents. Haunted by both Lady Vivianne and by Viv’s own parents’ death and legacy, can Viv unravel the web of mystery that surrounds and connects their two lives, and bring peace to them both? A haunting story of lives intertwining across the ages, of the triumph of the human spirit and of dreams lost and found.

EXTRACT

God, why did it all have to happen now, when she needed to be on top form. Oh, why did it have to happen at all. Everything in her life was crumbling away. Pete, what have you done to us …

Again, a movement behind her, a parting of the rushes. The sense of a dark figure at her back. She swung round. Nothing. Then she turned back to the mere. A shadow on the water. She stared at the ripples but the image diffused and disappeared. Hardly daring to look she glanced round again. Nobody. She was alone.

Viv shuddered, her eyes fixed on the water in front of her. She must get out of here, get safely home, but somehow she couldn’t move. She was transfixed and held against her will, as if her body was bound with invisible ropes. The mere and the world around her juddered, swept away and then returned, misty and echoing in her head.

She felt herself cry out. But it was a cry, not for help, but of despair.

Then a hand planted firmly on her back, pushing her. She staggered but felt the inexorable push towards the dark murky water. As she fell, she had the odd sensation of someone breathing on her neck, falling with her. Her hand reached out to save herself, to grasp anything that might halt her tumble. She scrabbled wildly at the undergrowth but felt the branches break as she tried to clutch hold of them.

The cold water rose to meet her and there was no longer firm ground beneath her. She flailed about but it was hopeless; the cold stole her breath and her strength. Something was pulling her downwards, sucking her into the murky depths of the mere.

My little Lady Vivianne.

She was sinking, as if there was someone below her who was grasping her ankles and pulling her down. The water covered her head and, even at the last, when she managed to struggle her head above the surface she saw that she was much further away from the bank than she had imagined. She could no longer fight, and with that realisation, the water covered her head for the last time.

 *    *    *

A deep male voice came faintly from far away and slowly entered her consciousness.

“Lady Vivianne!”

Viv felt a strong arm grip her waist and then she was floating, being drawn gently through the water. She gasped for breath as she rose, and her mouth filled with balmy air, sweet and fragrant. Oddly, it was light, and the sun was just starting to sink into dusk.

“What …? In heaven’s name …?”  Viv spluttered, as the man lifted her up and over his broad shoulder and, splashing through the shallows, carried her to the bank. The world swirled around her and she found it hard to focus. She tried to draw in her breath but her chest felt too tight. She was trapped against him. Her body felt strange, her dripping sleeves seemed wider than they should be, her jeans somehow flapping against her legs. She was soaked through but yet the mere seemed to be calling her back again. She tried to twist round to it but the man only held her tighter. She grabbed hard at his shoulder and a piece of wet cloth tore away in her hand. It felt strange, not a fabric she was familiar with, thick and closely woven, but not rough.

He lowered her to her feet and grinned down at her. His eyes were dark like smoke, skin olive and exotic, and he ruffled his long dark curly hair to flick away the water that soaked it. She stared at his large wide mouth and the dark shadow that swept his chin and upper lip. His smile was intimate as if they shared a secret. For a moment, Viv felt her brain somersault. Her mind was drifting in and out of consciousness.

She was aware of movement around her and she tore her eyes away from him. There were people, men, their figures moving out of focus behind him, their voices echoing as if from far away. There were trees that she didn’t remember being around the mere. It seemed wilder than it should have been.  Yet everything within a few feet of her was exceptionally bright and clear, the light picking out all detail: the veins on the leaves, the knobbles and crevices of the tree bark starkly sharpened in high relief. Beyond that, all she saw was misty and swirling.

As she clenched her hands into fists she realised that she still held the torn fragment of cloth, and made to thrust it into the pocket of her jeans. The pocket was no longer there. She looked down and saw that she wore a long skirt, the dark wet fabric clinging to her legs. Good god, what was happening?

Viv looked back at the tall figure before her. He was dressed in some kind of loose cream tunic, dripping with lake water, with a brown leather belt that was finely tooled in gold, and as she stared he pulled on his boots that he had left at the water’s edge.

She looked wildly around her. The other men were dressed likewise in tunics, though not so fine.  There were horses higher up on the bank-top; she could hear their loud snorting and feel the juddering of the earth as they stamped their hooves. What was this?  What was going on? Her brain didn’t seem to be working properly; she felt confused, dull-witted. The sun was sinking behind the trees, leaving a trail of bloody streaks, red and orange, in the sky. Yet she had stumbled into the lake in the dark. She remembered staggering, a hand on her back, clutching for the branches to halt her fall into the water, floundering, or being pushed? Her clothes … her peculiar-feeling body … these people.

Her hand found a pouch hanging from her waist within the folds of her soaking skirt and she thrust the fabric into it, hiding it, though she had no idea why she needed to.

“Sir Roland,” murmured one of the men, holding out to the dark-eyed man a  large heavily embroidered crimson cloak which her rescuer swept around his shoulders and pinned with a huge gold brooch, covering the torn seam. As he did so, he glanced at Viv and smiled intimately again, his glance insolently drifting down to the clinging folds of her skirt and the pouch where the fragment of cloth nestled. His eyes found hers.  Embarrassed, she turned away.

Research and the time-slip novel

I love the historic novels of Philippa Gregory. I’ve learned much of my knowledge of the Tudor period from her work. Even though I know they are novels and not non-fiction academic texts, I still trust that they are reasonably accurate albeit a fictionalised ‘take’ on characters of history. I do know that she has done her research, even though you may disagree with some of her interpretations!

All the authors I know do a lot of research before and during writing their novel, but it’s especially vital if you are writing about a historical period, or a location or a concept, because you have to get it right! There are, believe me, many readers waiting to jump on the slightest inaccuracy – and that’s understandable. Readers want to see the novel, even if it’s a fictionalised account of the time or place, as an authority.

For A Shape on the Air, I needed to research theories of time and update my research on the early medieval period. Both of these are areas I love to read about, so it was no hardship. I’d studied medieval language, literature and history at university and was fascinated by the Dark Ages (after the Romans rule ended) and the early Anglo-Saxon settlements. There isn’t very much researched and written about the Dark Ages, which is where it got its name, not because it was violent and barbaric (which is what many people think) but because of the lack (darkness) of evidence in archaeology and documents. In some ways I had to use my deductive powers to assess what might have been retained from the earlier Roman period and what might be developing forward into the Anglo-Saxon period. More evidence is now appearing, such as from the ‘dig’ at Lyminge in Kent, England, where a fifth century feasting hall has recently been unearthed. So there was a fair amount of both evidence and informed imagination at work as I wrote A Shape on the Air.

My research into time-slip was also fascinating. I looked again at the scientific theories of quantum mechanics, which sounds a bit like something from Dr Who, the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, and worm-holes, all basically ideas about space-time portals through which you could slip from one layer of the universe into another, or from one historic period into another. Fascinating, especially for all those who like fantasy and the paranormal, and yet these are real scientific theories of the concept of time, albeit unlikely to be tested by experiment! It sounds insane, and of course Viv (in the present day) wonders if she’s going mad when she thinks she’s had a dream but brings back a real golden key from 499 AD! And her ‘dream’ is so real she begins to wonder if she’s taken on the identity of Lady Vivianne, her counterpart in the Dark Ages. How do they fit together? Why are their lives becoming intertwined? Why do they need to reach out to each other across the centuries? Read it and see …!

About Julia Ibbotson

Julia IbbotsonAward winning author Julia Ibbotson lives with her second husband in the heart of England in a renovated Victorian rectory, and, their four children having grown up, she is now suffering from empty nest syndrome. She is obsessed with the medieval world and concepts of time travel (and chocolate) (and cakes …).  She read English at Keele University (after a turbulent but exciting gap year in Ghana) specialising in medieval studies. She wrote her first novel at 10 years of age, but life (and later the need to earn a living as a single mother) intruded and she became a school teacher, and then, on gaining her PhD as a (very) mature student, a university lecturer. Julia has written a memoir The Old Rectory: escape to a Country Kitchen (with recipes) and a children’s book S.C.A.R.S (a fantasy medieval time slip), before embarking on her Drumbeats trilogy (which begins in Ghana).  Her latest novel, A Shape on the Air, is a historical (medieval) time slip romance. Clearly, she is obsessed …  Apart from insatiable reading, she loves travelling the world, singing in choirs, swimming, yoga, baking, and walking in the English countryside.

Author page on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Julia-Ibbotson/e/B0095XG11U/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1377188346&sr=1-2-ent

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Ibbotson-author/163085897119236

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/JuliaIbbotson

Goodreads Author Page:  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6017965.Julia_Ibbotson

LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-julia-ibbotson

Blog:   http://www.juliaibbotsonauthor.com

Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/juliai1/

GIVEAWAY

An e-copy of either The Old Rectory or Drumbeats (outside UK) Or paperback (UK only) if you sign up to Julia Ibbotson’s newsletter mailing list on her website.

Julia IbbotsonJulie Ibbotson

a Rafflecopter giveaway

#CoverReveal ~ A SHAPE ON THE AIR by Julia Ibbotson

shape

A Shape on the Air

by

Julia Ibbotson

 

shape

Genre:  historical time slip romance

Release Date: 28th July 2017

Publisher: Endeavour Press

Pre-Order link: AMAZON

Two women 1500 years apart. One need: to save the world they know. Can they help each other to achieve their greatest desire? And what if that world they want is not the one that’s best for them?  University lecturer in medieval studies, Dr Viv Dulac, is devastated when her partner walks out (and with her best friend too!) and threatens her home.  Drunk and desperate, her world quite literally turns upside down and she finds herself in the body of the fifth century Lady Vivianne, who is struggling with the shifting values of the Dark Ages and her forced betrothal to the brutish Sir Pelleas who is implicated in the death of her parents. Haunted by both Lady Vivianne and by Viv’s own parents’ death and legacy, can Viv unravel the web of mystery that surrounds and connects their two lives, and bring peace to them both? A haunting story of lives intertwining across the ages, of the triumph of the human spirit and of dreams lost and found.

About Julia Ibbotson

shape

Award winning author Julia Ibbotson lives with her second husband in the heart of England in a renovated Victorian rectory, and, their four children having grown up, she is now suffering from empty nest syndrome. She is obsessed with the medieval world and concepts of time travel (and chocolate) (and cakes …).  She read English at Keele University (after a turbulent but exciting gap year in Ghana) specialising in medieval studies. She wrote her first novel at 10 years of age, but life (and later the need to earn a living as a single mother) intruded and she became a school teacher, and then, on gaining her PhD as a (very) mature student, a university lecturer. Julia has written a memoir The Old Rectory: escape to a Country Kitchen (with recipes) and a children’s book S.C.A.R.S (a fantasy medieval time slip), before embarking on her Drumbeats trilogy (which begins in Ghana).  Her latest novel, A Shape on the Air, is a historical (medieval) time slip romance. Clearly, she is obsessed …  Apart from insatiable reading, she loves travelling the world, singing in choirs, swimming, yoga, baking, and walking in the English countryside.

Author page on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Julia-Ibbotson/e/B0095XG11U/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1377188346&sr=1-2-ent

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Ibbotson-author/163085897119236

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/JuliaIbbotson

Goodreads Author Page:  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6017965.Julia_Ibbotson

LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-julia-ibbotson

Blog:   http://www.juliaibbotsonauthor.com

Website:  http://www.juliaibbotsonauthor.com

Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/juliai1/

 

STOP PRESS: Want to join the review tour 14th August – 25th August? Then email brookbooks@hotmail.co.uk to be part of the tour!

GIVEAWAY

An e-copy of either The Old Rectory or Drumbeats if you sign up to Julia Ibbotson’s newsletter mailing list on her website.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

While I Was Waiting by Georgia Hill ~ BOOK PROMO

while I was waiting

While I Was Waiting

By Georgia Hill

 

while I was waiting

Genre: Historical/time-slip romance

Release Date: 2/7/15 (e-pub) 10/9/15 (print)

Publisher: Harper Impulse

Tired of her life in London, freelance illustrator Rachel buys the beautiful but dilapidated Clematis Cottage and sets about creating the home of her dreams. But tucked away behind the water tank in the attic and left to gather dust for decades, is an old biscuit tin containing letters, postcards and a diary. So much more than old scraps of paper, these are precious memories that tell the story of Henrietta Trenchard-Lewis, a love lost in the Great War and the girl who was left behind.

BUY LINKS

AMAZON UK

AMAZON US

ABOUT GEORGIA HILL

while I was waiting

I used to live in London, where I worked in the theatre. Then I got the bizarre job of teaching road safety to the U.S. navy – in Marble Arch!

A few years ago, I did an ‘Escape to the Country’. I now live in a tiny Herefordshire village, where I scandalise the neighbours by not keeping ‘country hours’ and being unable to make a decent pot of plum jam. Home is a converted Oast house (Old agricultural building used for drying hops), which I share with my two beloved spaniels, husband (also beloved) and a ghost called Zoe.

I’ve been lucky enough to travel widely, though prefer to set my novels closer to home. Perhaps more research is needed? I’ve always wanted to base a book in the Caribbean!

I am addicted to Belgian chocolate, Jane Austen and, most of all, Strictly Come Dancing.

AUTHOR LINKS

https://www.facebook.com/georgiahillauthor/

https://twitter.com/georgiawrites

http://www.georgiahill.co.uk/

https://www.pinterest.com/georgiawrites/

GIVEAWAY

A print copy of the book (Open Internationally)

a Rafflecopter giveaway