{"id":518,"date":"2017-08-24T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T04:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.melanierobertson-king.ca\/wp02\/?p=518"},"modified":"2017-08-21T06:43:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-21T10:43:32","slug":"shape-air-julia-ibbotson-guestpost-timeslip-giveaway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.melanierobertson-king.ca\/wp02\/2017\/08\/24\/shape-air-julia-ibbotson-guestpost-timeslip-giveaway\/","title":{"rendered":"A SHAPE ON THE AIR by Julia Ibbotson ~#guestpost #timeslip #giveaway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Julia<\/a>A Shape on the Air<\/span><\/h1>\n

by<\/span><\/h1>\n

Julia Ibbotson<\/span><\/h1>\n

\"Julia<\/a>Genre: <\/strong>historical time slip romance<\/p>\n

Release Date: <\/strong>28th <\/sup>July 2017<\/p>\n

Publisher: <\/strong>Endeavour Press<\/p>\n

Buy link: AMAZON <\/a><\/p>\n

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?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

EXTRACT<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

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 \u2026<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

She felt herself cry out. But it was a cry, not for help, but of despair.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

My little Lady Vivianne.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

A deep male voice came faintly from far away and slowly entered her consciousness.<\/p>\n

\u201cLady Vivianne!\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat \u2026? In heaven\u2019s name \u2026?\u201d\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t remember being around the mere. It seemed wilder than it should have been.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n

She looked wildly around her. The other men were dressed likewise in tunics, though not so fine.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 What was going on? Her brain didn\u2019t 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 \u2026 her peculiar-feeling body \u2026 these people.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSir Roland,\u201d murmured one of the men, holding out to the dark-eyed man a\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Embarrassed, she turned away.<\/p>\n

Research and the time-slip novel<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

I love the historic novels of Philippa Gregory. I\u2019ve 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 \u2018take\u2019 on characters of history. I do know that she has done her research, even though you may disagree with some of her interpretations!<\/p>\n

All the authors I know do a lot of research before and during writing their novel, but it\u2019s 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 \u2013 and that\u2019s understandable. Readers want to see the novel, even if it\u2019s a fictionalised account of the time or place, as an authority.<\/p>\n

For A Shape on the Air<\/em><\/strong>, 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\u2019d 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\u2019t 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 \u2018dig\u2019 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019s going mad when she thinks she\u2019s had a dream but brings back a real golden key from 499 AD! And her \u2018dream\u2019 is so real she begins to wonder if she\u2019s 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 \u2026!<\/p>\n

About Julia Ibbotson<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

\"Julia<\/a>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 \u2026).\u00a0 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\u2019s book S.C.A.R.S (a fantasy medieval time slip), before embarking on her Drumbeats trilogy (which begins in Ghana).\u00a0 Her latest novel, A Shape on the Air, is a historical (medieval) time slip romance. Clearly, she is<\/em><\/strong> obsessed \u2026\u00a0 Apart from insatiable reading, she loves travelling the world, singing in choirs, swimming, yoga, baking, and walking in the English countryside.<\/p>\n

Author page on Amazon:\u00a0 <\/strong>http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Julia-Ibbotson\/e\/B0095XG11U\/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1377188346&sr=1-2-ent<\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Julia-Ibbotson-author\/163085897119236<\/a><\/p>\n

Twitter:\u00a0 <\/strong>https:\/\/twitter.com\/JuliaIbbotson<\/a><\/p>\n

Goodreads Author Page:\u00a0 <\/strong>http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/6017965.Julia_Ibbotson<\/a><\/p>\n

LinkedIn:\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/dr-julia-ibbotson<\/u><\/p>\n

Blog:\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>http:\/\/www.juliaibbotsonauthor.com<\/u><\/p>\n

Pinterest<\/strong>:<\/strong>\u00a0 http:\/\/pinterest.com\/juliai1\/<\/a><\/p>\n

GIVEAWAY<\/span><\/h1>\n

An e-copy of either The Old Rectory or Drumbeats (outside UK) Or paperback (UK only) if you sign up to Julia Ibbotson\u2019s newsletter mailing list on her website.<\/p>\n

\"Julia<\/a>\"Julie<\/a><\/p>\n

a Rafflecopter giveaway<\/a>
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