The Warehouse by Rob Hart Blog Tour

Today is my stop and closing the blog tour, for my stop I have my review, this book really makes you stop and think!




ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Hart has been a political reporter, the communications director for a politician, a commissioner for the city of New York and is currently a publisher. The Warehouse is his first standalone novel.

Find Rob on Twitter @robwhart and Facebook

About the book




‘TO BEAT THE SYSTEM, YOU NEED TO BE INSIDE IT’

An immersive dystopian thriller set in an America addicted to consumerism; gun violence, climate change and unemployment have ravaged the nation, and an online retail giant named Cloud reigns supreme. Rob Hart has taken our current reality and transformed it into a terrifyingly recognisable future.

Paxton never thought he’d be working Security for the company that ruined his life, much less that he’d be moving into one of their sprawling live-work facilities. But compared to what’s left outside, perhaps Cloud isn’t so bad. Better still, through his work he meets Zinnia, who fills him with hope for their shared future. Except that Zinnia is not what she seems. And Paxton, with his all-access security credentials, might just be her meal ticket.

As Paxton and Zinnia’s agendas place them on a collision course, they’re about to learn just how far the Cloud will go to make the world a better place.

The Warehouse is brilliantly devised and fantastic world-building. Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business–and who will pay the ultimate price.

Perfect for fans of The Circle, The Martian and Ready Player One.

Available to buy NOW


The Warehouse by Rob Hart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 2 days

Pages - 368

Publisher - Bantam Press

Source - Review copy

Blurb from Goodreads

Cloud is a company which likes to keep its secrets – and it guards them well…

A near-future thriller set in an America addicted to consumerism; gun violence, climate change and unemployment have ravaged the nation, and an online retail giant named Cloud reigns supreme.

Cloud brands itself not just as an online storefront, but as a global saviour. But, beneath the sunny exterior lurks something far more sinister.
____________________

Paxton is a would-be inventor put out of business by Cloud. He’s had his one shot at success ripped away from him – and now he’s urgently in need of money and a job.

Things get more complicated when Paxton meets Zinnia. He can’t work her out. She says she’s a teacher down on her luck, but she doesn’t look – or act – like a teacher. And she seems to have a plan all of her own.

With their agendas putting them on a collision course, they may both learn that the machine is just too big to be beaten.


My Review

Cloud is the ultimate company, if you mess up there you can pretty much kiss off a chance of working anywhere else. They own so much, fingers in all pies, they are the giant company that covers all your consumer needs. We meet their newest employees, Paxton and Zinnia, Paxton has his own reasons for getting a job with the company that ruined his business and Zinnia, Zinnia has her own reasons for getting into Cloud!

We get a glimpse into the corporate machine, Cloud gives one face to the world and it's workers see something else. Targets that impact on their health, Cloud seems to be too good to be true and someone wants to see if it is indeed all it portrays itself to be.

I really liked Paxton and see how his journey progresses as he wants to do a good job but has his own conflicts in doing so. Zinnia also wants to make good on her performance and targets but for different reasons to Paxton. They are so polar opposites and it is intriguing to see their development and how they go about their day(s) and their growing friendship.

I enjoyed the aspect of this super company, the power it has over consumers, workers, peoples lives and it makes you look at what is in our own world. We know of a company that is huge, we can order pretty much anything online but don't really think about what goes on for the workers. Obviously this is a book set in the future with conditions that are almost unthinkable in our current lifetime. That said look at some of the things that are being allowed currently, a scary prospect and one you can imagine, some parts of the story, not being so unrealistic. Certainly makes you think! 4/5 for me this time, this was my first dance with this author but it won't be my last!

View all my reviews

The Deaths and Afterlife of Aleister Crowley by Ian Thornton blog tour

Today in my stop in the blog tour for The Deaths and Afterlife of Aleister Crowley by Ian Thornton.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Ian Thornton




Ian Thornton’s debut novel, The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms (How One Man Scorched the Twentieth Century, but Didn’t Mean to) was published by Simon & Schuster Canada in September 2013. Harper Collins published worldwide on June 28th 2014 to coincide with the centenary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the pivot of the novel. It was translated across Europe and taught at the Sorbonne.

Prior to becoming a novelist, Ian worked for Broadcast magazine in London and also for Variety. He is a co-founder of the global television industry publisher, C21 Media and www.c21media.net.

He covered the Royal wedding in London for CTV, Canada's premier independent broadcaster, and has recently written for Wisden Cricketer, The Guardian, The Hindu and for the Soho House magazine, House. He also wrote on the football World Cup in South Africa for the Canadian sports channel, The Score, and has worked for Queen’s University in Ontario, where his project was presented at the White House as part of President Obama's new media initiative.

Ian is the official biographer of the Compton cricket club in California and has been a judge on the largest Latin American film festival, Expresion en Corto. He is currently producing a feature documentary.

Originally from Leeds, Ian currently resides in Toronto with his wife Heather Gordon and their children, Laszlo and Clementine.

About the book (how fab is that cover!)




Aleister Crowley, also known as the Great Beast, is one of the most reviled men in history. Satanist, cult leader, debauched novelist and poet, his legacy has been harshly contested for decades.

Crowley supposedly died in 1947, but in Ian Thornton's new novel, set in the present day, the Great Beast is alive and well and living in Shangri-la. Now over 130 years old, thanks to the magical air of his mystical location, he looks back on his life and decides it is time to set the record straight.

For Crowley was not the evil man he is often portrayed as. This was just a cover to hide his real mission, to save the twentieth century from destroying itself and to set humanity on the road to freedom and liberty.

The Death and Afterlife of Aleister Crowley is an epic novel that will make you see this notorious figure in a completely new light, as he encounters an impressive cast of real-life characters including Timothy Leary, The Beatles, Princess Margaret, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock.

For my stop I have my review, enjoy.

The Deaths and Afterlife of Aleister Crowley by Ian Thornton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 4 days

Pages - 400

Publisher - Unbound

Source - Review Copy

Blurb from Goodreads

Aleister Crowley, also known as the Great Beast, is one of the most reviled men in history. Satanist, cult leader, debauched novelist and poet, his legacy has been harshly contested for decades.

Crowley supposedly died in 1947, but in Ian Thornton's new novel, set in the present day, the Great Beast is alive and well and living in Shangri-la. Now over 130 years old, thanks to the magical air of his mystical location, he looks back on his life and decides it is time to set the record straight.

For Crowley was not the evil man he is often portrayed as. This was just a cover to hide his real mission, to save the twentieth century from destroying itself and to set humanity on the road to freedom and liberty.

The Death and Afterlife of Aleister Crowley is an epic novel that will make you see this notorious figure in a completely new light, as he encounters an impressive cast of real-life characters including Timothy Leary, The Beatles, Princess Margaret, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock.


My Review

I had never heard of Aleister Crowley before reading this book, a man refered to as "Beast" by his own mother and reveled in being called "Great Beast" as his notoriety grew. He denounced his religious background and started up his own "religion" encouraging people to do what they want basically. He was interested in the occult, satanism and widely documented his insatiable appetite for enjoying all the pleasures and perversions the human body can offer.

So, it was more than an eye opener when I started reading this, told from Aleister as being the narrator he tells the reader, warts and all, his life and journeys. Exposure to sexual acts as a young child by adults in his care, bestiality in rituals, drugs, alcohol pretty much anything and everything. I had to keep putting the book down to goggle him and see if this stuff was true, it was. He made a name for himself, his exploits, he was featured on the band "The Beatles" album cover. There is no denying he lead an eyebrow raising life to put it politely. Some of the exploits I felt I needed to wash my eyes and brain in holy water after reading!

Whilst the book doesn't go into masses of details for the debauchery there is plenty for you to know exactly what he is talking about. Some of his poems, featured, include bodily fluids, this is not a book for the faint hearted or easily offended. That said it makes for interesting reading, the guy was rumoured to be a spy. What Thornton has done is taken well known historical events and woven them into Crowley claiming to have influenced, averted or been present when X event happened.

My history knowledge is terrible so I would put the book down to read up on X assassination or X war to get the documented events on what happened then read on to how Thornton placed Crowley in among it. It is an interesting, colourful (blue) and shocking read, sexual exploits that will shock you (unless you already know his history). I would love to have a Q&A with the author as I can't even imagine just how much went into the research for the book before then crafting a well known figure and creating a history or actual events and slotting him into them. Why that character, was it a challenge and the creative process for pulling all of that together. I can honestly say I have never read a book like it, if you know of Crowley I would love to hear your thoughts on the book and if like me this is your first introduction to him what did you think?



View all my reviews

Senseless by Anna Lickley Blog Tour

Today is my turn on the blog tour for Senseless by Anna Lickley, please check out the other stops as we all offer something different, today I will be sharing content.





About the book

K E Y N O T E

Senseless is at heart an illustration of the messy unpredictability of love and life and the resilience of the human spirit.

D E S C R I P T I O N

Beth’s partner, Dan, inexplicably vanishes from her life and nine years later she is still struggling. In the intervening years, she has learnt British Sign Language (BSL) and got what she thought would be her dream job, supporting deaf students in college. However, she finds she still feels dissatisfied with just about everything: from working life to sex life, domestic life to social life, it’s as if the traumas of her past will forever mar her future. Through her work, Beth meets a group of strong-minded, pragmatists who show her how they’ve adapted to challenges of having a disability. Is Dan’s disappearance the primary source of Beth’s sadness? Can her new friends help to shift her perspective on dealing with life? Will learning BSL prove to be significant after all? And what really happened to Dan? The answers may be quite unexpected. The themes and characters of Senseless are moulded by the challenges of deafness and disability but the book is not ‘about’ disability per se. More succinctly, it’s about ordinary people bumping through the ups and downs of life like we all are.





About the author

Anna’s adult life has been moulded a great deal by challenges on her physical health and needing to adapt to them. She was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) in the 1980s when she was 16. NF2 is a complex genetic illness involving benign tumours developing on nerves throughout the body, usually in the brain or spine. As a result, she went deaf whilst at University and began to learn British Sign Language to help with communication. She loved the language immediately and went on to became fluent enough to teach it.

In the last 5 years, Anna’s vision has deteriorated and she is now registered deafblind. That and other health complications led her to stop working. Although sad to leave a job she loved, she is now relishing having more time to write and much of her writing is greatly influenced by her desire to share the realities of living with disability.

Anna wrote and self-published a semi-autobiographical novel called Catch it Anytime You Can in 2012 and has in mind a title and plot outline for a further novel. She is in-house writer for Can You Hear Us CIC, a social enterprise dedicated to the needs of people with NF2 and also loves writing poetry, short stories and articles. Senseless is her first full-length work of fiction.

Outside of writing, she loves horse riding and competes at dressage with the RDA (Riding for the Disabled Association)





You can read more about Anna at Unbound's website and on Twitter

And now for my content, enjoy


Chapter 4

Sam,2007

Sam Owens was sitting at his kitchen table, trying to talk to Kim while feeding Ollie. Unfortunately, Ollie had other ideas and seemed intent on making as much noise as possible by banging his flat hands on the table of his highchair. ‘Oh, stop it, Ollie!’ Kim turned to face her son, ‘Just shut up for once and eat your food!’ She bent to lift his hands away from the table and Ollie seized the opportunity to grab a strand of her long dark hair. Sam knew that Kim had just spent at least half an hour washing, straightening and styling it. ‘Ollie, get off! Sam, can’t you control him for one second?’ ‘What?!’ Sam tried not to shout; he was fed up with Kim’s seeming inability to understand that a baby is a baby. Babies puke, shit and wail in equal measures. Ofcourse, Ollie started to wail now as Kim prised his hands from her hair and ran to the tap to wash out the baby food mush he’d left there. Sam lifted Ollie from his seat and sat him on his lap, bouncing him up and down and letting him play with the straps of his hoodie. When Ollie grew quieter, Sam gave him a rattle from the table to play with. He took advantage of the lull and said: ‘I’m getting the results of my tests today. The GP wants me to go in and see him.’ ‘What tests?’ ‘The ones I told you about.’ She looked at him blankly. ‘Kim! The tests I had after I’d seen the doctor about the tingly feelings in my hands and feet.’ ‘Oh that!’ she said dismissively, ‘Couldn’t he just give you some pills?’

‘He said he could but he wanted to give me some tests first. We talked about this, Kim!’ She didn’t seem to register or react, still focused on combing out her hair with her fingers. ‘I’m getting really tired and it’s affecting my job,’ Sam pushed. ‘We all get tired!’ ‘Yeah well, you have to be completely on top of your game to fight fires.’ ‘I bet it’s because Ollie is keeping you awake.’ ‘It’s more than that, it’s like I’m not functioning properly.’ ‘Right.’ ‘Are you even listening, Kim?’

‘Ofcourse I am,’ she said, rooting in her handbag for her lipstick. ‘You go to the GP and get some pills and you’ll be right as rain. Don’t forget to pick up my dress from the dry-cleaners, will you? I’ve got Pilates after I drop Ollie with his childminder.’ ‘Kim! There’s more to life than picking up dresses from dry–cleaners.’ ‘Of course there is,but why do you need to become so dull?’ ‘Dull?! Are we even speaking the same language?’ ‘Ever since Ollie, you’ve been getting so dull, Sam. We never go out.’ ‘It’s called being a parent! One day we all have to grow up.’ Kim scoffed and picked up Ollie. Sam went silent and just looked at her in disbelief. Everything had been so different before Ollie came along. She was 22 and gorgeous when they got together and as a tall, strong, 28–year–old firefighter, he had been exactly the action-hero sidekick she’d wanted. If they made it out of bed, he’d notice how many people turned to look at them anywhere they went together. But now? Well, he didn’t know what was happening now.

He was left to wait thirty-five minutes before Dr Longford was ready to see him. It gave him time to wonder if he should be more worried thanhewas.Intruth, hecouldn’t getKim,andthestateof their relationship, out of his head.

When his name was called, he had a sudden panic; was there a reason he’d been called in or was it just routine? He went along the corridor to clinic room number eight to find Dr Longford standing in the doorway to welcome him, his face giving nothing away. ‘Ah, Sam, hello. Sit down, sit down.’ Sam waited while the doctor got his notes up on his computer and turned back to face him. ‘Look, sorry, Sam, but I’m going to have to rush. I’m also sorry I kept you waiting. There’s a meeting I need to get to by twelve so currently I have six minutes per patient if I’m going to make it.’ Sam shifted in his seat, wishing this to be over already. He felt unbalanced by the doctor’s flustered spiel. ‘Okay, so, as you know, the results of your tests have come back.’ Dr Longford was starting to look uneasy and turned back to his computer screen, reluctant to meet Sam’s eye. Sam braced himself for the revelation that he was dying of cancer, with months left to live. ‘Go on,’ he forced out when the pause became too long.

Bone Lines by Stephanie Bretherton Blog Tour

Today I am closing the tour for Bone Lines by Stephanie Bretherton, if you missed the previous stops please check them out as everyone offers different material. Out to buy NOW, ebook and treebook format, CLICK HERE.





I do like this book cover, remember when I never used to bother with covers and now I am a bit of a cover tramp, love so many of them now!





You can find Stephanie on Twitter and on Facebook


My stop offers a wee extract post for the book, enjoy!

BONE LINES - EXTRACT


As the dawn tumbled through her tall windows and nestled beside her in the empty spaces of her bed, Eloise awoke, long before her alarm. Even before the plaintive cries of Newton, the belly-bloated old cat that seemed to love her. Although she knew this was also the kind of ‘love’ that was spread liberally around the neighbourhood and to anyone who would feed him. Eloise also knew that this was a sad old cliché. Single woman with cat. Oh well, never mind, she comforted herself in her habitual fashion. She cared little for what anyone thought of her anymore (the sabotage of self-loathing notwithstanding) and she had, for the most part, made peace with her decisions. But perhaps the time had come to consider getting a dog?

Dogs had been the consistent company of her childhood. Her surrogate sisters and brothers, how could her parents have denied her? Often these had been strays adopted at some foreign archaeological dig, against all advice, against all reason and always with the warning that she (and the poor bewildered hound) would suffer through six months of quarantine to bring it back to England. But Eloise was nothing if not determined when it came to saving things – and it always felt more than worth the trouble in the end. Especially with Won Ton, the mangy but determined little mongrel rescued from a cage at the back of a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur one summer, while on their way home from a sweat-soaked dig in the Bujang Valley.

This love of animals had been painfully tested along the scientific path and some terrible compromises had been made, even if Eloise had always been persuaded of the ‘greater good’ and, wherever possible, had avoided that kind of research. She could not deny, however, that innocence had been lost – and she felt unworthy these days of all that trust. All that unquestioning love.

Even when Newton had come into her life and chosen to stay it had seemed like his decision more than her own. Was she ready for a trip to Battersea, for a tour of the adoption cages and the agony of choosing? Oh Lord, she asked herself, how on earth would Newton cope with a canine interloper? Probably by deserting her for good in favour of less treacherous neighbours. No. No dog, not yet. Better not. Not with the start of this exhilarating new endeavour. Eloise knew she would be unable to offer the kind of dedication that such genuine devotion deserved.

Was it so important to be loved, she wondered? Better to be respected and remembered, surely. To be of service. (If not always agreed with.) Certainly her work as part of the team that had unravelled the human genome had not always been well-received. The full picture had confirmed not only how closely humanity was related but also how recently connected by common ancestry, indicating a global population crash, or series of crashes, in particular between 70,000 and 80,000 years ago. No one cause for this was clear but geological and climatic volatility, or other natural crises, seemed to have reduced humanity to barely viable populations at times. It seemed incredible that Homo sapiens had succeeded as a species at all. And yet, it was these kinds of genetic ‘bottleneck’ and ‘drift’ events that had influenced both DNA and human destiny so profoundly.

At first, colleagues in China had not been best pleased with some of the revelations from the genome project, local orthodoxy preferring to believe they had evolved entirely separately, from a much older stock of humanity. But most had acknowledged a more recent shared heritage with stoicism, if not complete conviction. For apart from tiny traces of DNA from archaic hominins who’d made earlier explorations, it was clear that all modern humans owed the majority of their blueprint to those few Homo sapiens in Africa who’d survived such crises, before spreading out once more.

Yet controversy arose with each new piece of the archaeological puzzle. Eloise was given to despair on several occasions as fringe elements found excuses in the latest evidence to interpret or justify some cherished belief. And as for the die-hard racists, how could they ever accept that we all owed so much to a handful of African mothers? That we remained so similar, so brotherly bound and demonstrably equal in potential. The New Age fantasists, although well-intentioned at least, were little better in her estimation, with their hare-brained hallucinations about extra-terrestrial or angelic intervention.

To Eloise, the knowledge of our tightly knit kinship was priceless. Mere fractions of differentiation. She might be growing increasingly grumpy with each diminishing ovum, but she remained a humanitarian at heart. Obviously the fundamentalists, of any faith, were out of the equation before you could say Darwin (or Dawkins) but ultimately, with time and the opening up of minds, she hoped that this molecular siblinghood would bring only good. Unity in diversity, the Galapagoan bequest. Perhaps in only another generation or so?

Eloise peeled herself away from the creamy tangles of her bedlinen, keen to prepare for a momentous day. Newton, aware now that something had shifted in the mood of this large and well-loved but little-changing home, followed her around with an insistent curiosity.

Hard Return by Rosie Claverton Blog Tour

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Hard Return by Rosie Claverton, all stops are different so please check out the other stops.



Some info for the book and author

Hard Return by Rosie Claverton
Publisher: Crime Scene Books (4 Oct. 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1912563037
ISBN-13: 978-1912563036
Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hard-Return-Amy-Lane-Mysteries/dp/1912563037/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539021880&sr=8-1&keywords=hard+return+rosie+claverton




BLURB: 12 men locked in a compound. 12 men watching their every move. 1 man murdered. When Jason's friend Lewis is trapped in a secret prison compound with a murderer, Jason must go back behind bars - but Amy won't let him go in alone. Hiding their intentions from both the convicts and their watchers, they work together to find justice for the murdered man while keeping their cover. As the danger mounts, Jason, Amy, and Lewis find there might be no escape for any of them - except in death.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rosie Claverton is a novelist, screenwriter, and junior psychiatrist. She grew up in Devon, daughter to a Sri Lankan father and a Norfolk mother, surrounded by folk mythology and surly sheep. She moved to Cardiff to study Medicine and adopted Wales as her home. She then moved to London to specialise in psychiatry.

Her first short film Dragon Chasers aired on BBC Wales in Autumn 2012. She co-wrote the ground-breaking series of short films The Underwater Realm. Her Cardiff-based crime series The Amy Lane Mysteries is published by Crime Scene Books.

Between writing and medicine, she blogs about psychiatry and psychology for writers in her Freudian Script series, advocating for accurate and sensitive portrayals of people with mental health problems in fiction.

Recently returned to Cardiff, she lives with her journalist husband and their nearly new daughter.

Website: http://www.rosieclaverton.com/

Twitter: @rosieclaverton

For my stop on the tour I have a guest post, enjoy.

Guest post When Second Fiddle Takes Over the Orchestra: Developing a Cast Over a Series

I don’t usually go back to re-read my old novels. However, when the first two novels in The Amy Lane Mysteries were relaunched this year, I spent a lot of time back at the beginning of the series. And I realised exactly how much my characters had changed and shifted over the course of the books.

At the beginning, my concept revolved around my two protagonists – Amy Lane, agoraphobic hacker, and Jason Carr, streetwise ex-con. They were complementary characters, growing together to solve crimes with aligned strengths and weaknesses.

The third POV character was Bryn Hesketh, a middle-aged police officer trying to make sense of an increasingly criminal Cardiff. His sidekick was the baby-faced Owain, an eager pup of a detective. Jason’s baby sister Cerys was a teenaged brat who had to see the consequences of her actions first-hand before she could grow up.

Hard Return is the fifth novel in the series and it marks a shift in direction. The first three novels form an arc where Amy and Jason are making and breaking their relationship, before they reach crisis point at the end of Captcha Thief. Terror 404 – the fourth novel, of course – is about reforming them as new partners, about to embark on a new journey together.

But their travel companions have also experienced trials and tribulations, victory and despair. Bryn has become more world-weary, more jaded, and has faded into the background as the younger, more volatile characters come to the fore. Owain has survived a near-death experience as a changed man, making decisions that break him apart from the group, walking the line between friend and enemy.

And little Cerys Carr became a police officer, and now the third POV character for my fifth book. She was only ever meant to be a background figure as part of Jason’s family, but readers loved her, and that made me see her differently. She also joined forces with Catriona, a character I threw into my second book as a foil within the police department, who then demanded I pay more attention to her and her sensible jumpers, her outdoor exploration, and her flaming red hair.

When I was making Jason’s criminal past, I also threw in his former best friend Lewis as part of a brief description. Little did I know that he would be opening a novel four years later! Exploring a character in depth who has been a constant presence throughout the series was a great way to explore Jason through their relationship, as well as Amy’s reactions to someone else enjoying a close friendship with Jason.

It’s hard to keep in touch with old favourites without alienating new readers. A couple of series antagonists make a reappearance in Hard Return, and I try to show how they are intimidating and powerful without rehashing all the bits of backstory that brought them to this book.

What started as a two-hander has organically grown into an ensemble cast, a family of characters that me and my readers have invested in. I wonder where we’ll be in five novels’ time!