F J Curlew - The Unravelling of Maria

Welcome to week four of my lockdown book blog. Today, we're heading to Scotland's east coast and Estonia with F J Curlew thanks to her latest novel The Unravelling of Maria. 

First, what a blurb!

Lovers separated by the Iron Curtain.

Two women whose paths should never have crossed.

A remarkable journey that changes all of their lives.

Maria's history is a lie. Washed up on the shores of Sweden in 1944, with no memory, she was forced to create her own. Nearly half a century later she still has no idea of her true identity.

Jaak fights for Estonia's independence, refusing to accept the death of his fiancée Maarja, whose ship was sunk as she fled across the Baltic Sea to escape the Soviet invasion.

Angie knows exactly who she is. A drug addict. A waste of space. Life is just about getting by.

A chance meeting in Edinburgh's Cancer Centre is the catalyst for something very different.

Sometimes all you need is someone who listens.

Review

The Unravelling of Maria opens with an elderly woman making a frantic, rather manic night-time escape from a hated institution. She’s planned it meticulously, conditioning herself over months by counting steps and pacing the grounds till she’s ready, but she hasn’t factored in heavy rain and darkness. She hasn’t factored in bitter cold, and the danger she might fall in a sodden and muddy roadside ditch. It’s in the extremes of this episode that the reader first meets Maria, and wonders – who is this woman? Has she lost her mind? Will she be able to survive?

Angie is the polar opposite of the elderly woman she first meets in an Edinburgh cancer clinic.  That woman’s dress, manners and diction set her apart from the ordinary people there. She’s obviously an aristocrat. But Angie feels a class apart as well. Junkie, prostitute, abandoned as a child, abused and battered – Angie’s had to deal with it all.

From the random chance of sitting together when they’re anxious about diagnosis and treatment, these two women bond, gradually overcoming mutual reservations and drawing strengths from each other. And as their relationship develops, we learn something of Maria’s surprising backstory. At least, the part she knows. Because Maria has no recollection of the first two decades of her life. This is where the novel’s title makes us really think. What exactly is unravelling?

I absolutely loved this book. At times upbeat, at times pained, it’s the perfect blend of adventure and emotion, of harsh life conditions meets fellow-feeling, companionship and security. And love.

There’s a third character in the story. Through following Jaak’s experiences over the decades, we unpack a grisly history of war-time abuses, Siberian labour camps and the struggle for Estonian independence. Fiona Curlew has us follow each character’s inner voice to experience first-hand their traumas and their triumphs.

It’s a big job, dove-tailing all the time-frames, backstories and desires, with all those aches, dreams and losses, but Curlew does this with assuredness. More than that, she has the reader willing her characters on. I found myself earnestly yearning everything would work out for them with each new risk they took, and with each new adversity they encountered.

Does it all work out in the end? You’ll have to read the book to find out. You’ll be so glad you did. 

Author F J Curlew

 

Q & A

I could hardly wait to chat with F J Curlew to find out more about The Unravelling of Maria.

CMcK: Thanks for joining my lockdown book blog, Fiona. I thoroughly enjoyed your novel. The two women main characters are so different from one another in terms of their histories. What inspired you to write about them, and to unite them in one story?

FJC: Thank you for having me Carol!  I’m so glad you enjoyed the book. I’ll be honest, the characters took a very long time to show themselves. I had spent fifteen years teaching in international schools, predominantly in Eastern Europe. Seven of those years were spent in Estonia. Over that time my love for the little country flourished as I learned of their struggle, their resilience, their love of nature, and how song helped to keep their culture alive. Their hope alive. I knew that it was something I wanted to write about, but how? I wrote and rewrote, wrote and deleted. It just wasn’t coming to me. I began to despair and gave up for a while, focusing instead on writing a different book. When that was finished I tried again. Nope! I wrote another book. Perhaps now? Finally, Maria and Jaak said hello and began telling me their stories. But it wasn’t enough. Finally, Angie dropped into the cancer centre and from then on it just flowed. I hadn’t planned to have two such diverse characters interacting with each other, but they clicked and I loved writing them.

CMcK: Both main settings are lovingly depicted, and there’s a subtle hint that spending time in these calm, natural environments is good for the characters’ healing. Is writing about the natural world something you enjoy? How important were the wide beaches of East Lothian and Pärnu to your characters, and to you?

FJC: Absolutely essential! I love nature and it plays an important role in all of my books. One of my readers described my writing as, “Human experience impacted upon by political situation, interwoven with a love of nature.” That pretty much sums it up perfectly! I also accredit my own survival to being fortunate enough to have beauty right on my doorstep. Places to breathe, to recharge, to recover. Many hours have been spent strolling along Scottish and Estonian beaches contemplating life. I lent Maria that bit of me.

CMcK: Maria and Angie have very different living conditions when they meet. Both have suffered terrible constraints emotionally and physically. While Maria’s story is the primary one in the novel, Angie’s is pretty gritty and harrowing. Which was more difficult to write?

FJC: Without doubt, Angie’s. She had so many challenges to face and as I wrote I didn’t know if she was going to pull through. The idea of her was based on a young woman I met in the 1980’s. Her life was harrowing, heart-breaking, made even more so by the anger in her and the dismissiveness which she cast at the world, masking what was really going on; hiding her true feelings. Maria, on the other hand, always has a positivity to her which made it easy to be inside her head. Angie’s? No. Not so much. It was quite a scary place to be!

CMcK: I’ve said there are three main characters in the book, but actually there are four. One who gives and receives unconditional love. Tell me about Albie!

FJC: All of my books have dogs in them. I can’t help myself. What’s a life without a dog in it? My second book, Dan Knew, is the story of 15 years of my life and travels, told through the eyes and in the voice of one of my rescued Ukrainian street dogs. So, yes, Maria had to have a dog. Something feisty and full of character. I observe people all of the time (if only they knew!) and on my daily dog walk there are a couple of Border Terriers who were the inspiration behind Albie. I won’t say that I stalked them but, well, I sort of did!

CMcK: It’s been so interesting hearing about your writing. Where can we buy The Unravelling of Maria and find out more about you and your other novels? What’s next for you?

FJC: The Unravelling of Maria is available through Amazon and The Book Depository. I am hoping to expand on that in the near future. You can of course check out my website for updates, or follow me on Twitter. Novel number 5 is just beginning to show itself to me, I think! It might be a thriller. It might be a love story. It’ll probably be both. As always, I’ll know once the characters show themselves to me and are telling me their stories. Not quite there yet!

CMcK: Thank you, Fiona!

Check out F J Curlew's author website at https://bit.ly/3okI3MV.

She’s on Twitter @FJCurlew

Her books are available here https://amzn.to/333mCr2

Emily Donoho - In the Canyons of Shadows and Light

In today's Lockdown book blog I'm in New York City courtesy of Emily Donoho, whose book In the Canyons of Shadows and Light I strongly recommend.

Extract

Washington Heights bustled around him: men in suits and women in heels with professionally arranged dreadlocks hustled to work; mothers stood on the stoops with a baby on their hips and a toddler in tow; teenage gangsters in clothes three sizes too big slouched off to school or maybe not; the homeless and the dope fiends, their eyes haunted and faces hollow, wafted hungrily through the crowds. They melted together like snowflakes in a blizzard, minding their own business in the way only New Yorkers knew how in the swirling, fast-paced melee of street life. (p. 243)

 

Review

A mesmerising, atmospheric novel set in New York in the years immediately following 9/11, In the Canyons of Shadows and Light weaves its way back and forth through time as it charts the psychological meltdown of its main character, Alex Boswell. Mid-forties, overweight from a diet of ice cream and fast food, Alex shares the stereotypical characteristics of TV detectives we’ve grown familiar with. Booze combined with irregular hours and the emotionally searing demands of the job have driven Alex’s wife and family away. But Emily Donoho has crafted a character who is different, too. Alex Boswell is an individual. He’s in chronic pain from a 1987 shooting. He misses his colleague and mentor who ran into the Twin Towers just before they crumpled. And there’s a case Alex thought was tied up which comes back to haunt him – a cop killing. This is the background to In the Canyons of Shadows and Light. It’s intense. It’s got twists and complications and subplots that hold the reader’s attention right through its 445 pages.

In many ways, this is a standard police procedural. Alex works for Manhattan North Homicide. Over seventeen years, he has earned respect from his team and team leaders alike. The District Attorney trusts him and they have a strong working – and socialising – relationship. Alex is drawn into a big murder investigation – another cop killing – and this is the main meat of the detective story.

What makes this different from standard police procedurals is the focus on Alex as a character. As the plot unravels, so, too, does Alex. First, he’s tormented by the sentence of death by lethal injection for the cop killer. Then he suffers yet another failed love relationship. He mourns his old work partner, who was transferred for a misdemeanour. The new one – Ray Espinosa – is a clean-cut, health-food-eating, God-respecting family man and sometimes it seems there’s a gulf between him and Alex, who is a tightly-leashed alcoholic and serial womaniser. In Ray’s eyes.

Alex’s disintegration makes for fascinating reading. It’s during the course of his long struggle against it that we see his true strengths, and also the strengths of his relationships with those around him. As his police caseload builds and climaxes, so, too, does Alex’s physical and psychological crisis. The book ends with a satisfying crescendo that reaffirms our faith in the justice system and in our human capacity to care.

Emily Donoho

I invited author Emily Donoho to tell me a bit about the background to writing the novel.

CMcK: Hi, Emily. Thanks for joining me on my blog. I loved In the Canyons of Shadows and Light! I’m a slow reader, but it totally engrossed me. Each time I surfaced from reading, I felt a sense of dislocation, because I was so deeply ‘in’ New York through your descriptions. What does the city mean to you? 

ED: I live in Scotland now but I spent a lot of time around New York City as an undergraduate in Massachusetts and lived there briefly. I loved it. I was drawn to its energy. It has a magic, wild vibe that I’ve never found anywhere else. But it is also totally impracticable for me to live there because of other interests, like owning horses. Unless you have more money than God, keeping a horse and living in NYC are mutually exclusive. Even owning a car in NYC will give you a nervous breakdown. But I can write about people who live there, still engaging with the city in my head – that will have to do.

CMcK: The police procedural aspects – forensics, lividity in dead bodies, legal requirements and so on – all seemed convincing to me. Alex Boswell’s psychological meltdown is also compelling. Do you have a background of work in these areas, or does your understanding come from research?

ED: All of the above. I did a couple internships in District Attorney’s offices - Boulder, CO and Brooklyn - so I know my way around the criminal justice system and where to look when I need information. I also did a psychology degree as an undergrad, and my PhD is in the history of psychiatry in the Scottish Highlands. That’s nine years of researching mental health stuff, most of it at a high academic level.

CMcK: Fascinating! Now, as you know, my lockdown book blogging project is trained on indie and self-published books. So I’d love to know something about your decision to pursue a more literary focus on the character and his meltdown, rather than focus on a purely genre police procedural novel. Did this make it difficult to place the book with a genre publisher, for example?

ED: I wrote a 130,000 word PhD thesis, proof I can’t achieve brevity even when I try. It was always going to be a literary novel because that’s how I see myself as a writer. I also felt like the world needed a more accurate police novel – one that turned away from the usual crime genre tropes, where either the detective has a personal connection to the case they’re investigating, or all the cases are interconnected. Those tropes are endemic. They’re everywhere. I gave up on the BBC series Luther after the second episode, where Idris Elba’s detective slept with the serial killer he was investigating. In the real world, that isn’t what happens, and I was trying to capture that. On the other hand, standard crime novels that tick all the genre boxes are easier to publish with traditional publishers, but those aren’t what I want to write.

CMcK: What drew you to writing?

ED: I have always written. I wrote stories as a kid, for fun. Then I played about with fan fiction as an undergrad (should one confess to that?). I started writing original fiction a couple years after finishing my PhD.

CMcK: Fan fiction seems to be an excellent training ground! So, what’s next for you? Will we see another Alex Boswell story?

ED: Yes – in the near future! I’ve been working on the sequel to this for some time. It’s an even bigger, more ambitious novel, sprawled between timelines – five years after the events in Canyons, and then about fifteen-to-twenty years before it. It’s about the crack epidemic, miscarriages of justice, why good people do bad things, Alex’s ongoing mental health issues, his life in general.

CMcK: Excellent! Thanks so much for joining the blog. Where can people buy your books and find out more about you?

ED: The book is available on Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, all the usual suspects. I’m really terrible at the social media thing, but I have a Facebook page which doesn’t do a whole lot. I might make a fresh one. https://www.facebook.com/Emily-Donoho-977662978933470

CMcK: Lovely. And here are links to In the Canyons of Shadows and Light in those stores

Amazon

Waterstones

Barnes and Noble

 

 

 

Jacqueline Smith - Slaves of Men and Gods: Book One (Obroni Tales)

 

I'm running my lockdown book blog from January till March, and this week I'm delighted to tell you about a super indie-published book by Jacqueline Smith - Slaves of Men and Gods: Book One (Obroni Tales)

http://bit.ly/wordsmith-jacqueline

Extract

Krisi tried to turn her head to look around the hot shack she was in but she was stuck, unable to see much now that the light had gone and unable to move. Her arms were aching from the tension in the rope pulling them behind her back. She was sure the mosquitoes had been making a meal of her too, since she was itching in a few places she had no way of reaching to scratch. How was she going to get out of this? Anxiety flared again making her pulse thrum and jitter. In fact, how did she get herself into this in the first place? She was only trying to help a friend and look what had happened.

Review 

Fifteen-year-old Krisi is abruptly and unwillingly uprooted from life in urban Scotland when her father removes her from her alcoholic mother to live with him in Ghana. Here, he is undertaking a PhD on traditional African herbal medicine. Krisi’s culture shock is a window on the rapid urbanisation of Ghanaian life and the fast-paced changes in attitudes as traditional beliefs and western ones jostle for supremacy.

Krisi is feisty with a strong sense of outrage at something she sees as not right, like the physical abuse meted out to frail and overworked local girl Gifty. Krisi’s quest for justice takes her into situations she doesn’t understand, like the goings-on at the railway embankment when the bustling market day ends and girls dance under the close scrutiny of pimps and against a backbeat of drums. Soon, Krisi herself is in danger, prompting motorbike and car chases through the cramped and crowded city streets.

Jacqueline Smith has created credible, complex characters in school friends Kofi, Wisdom and Kuukuwa, who champion Krisi when she needs them most, and who show Krisi, and the reader, that good and evil are not the preserve of any one social structure or belief system.

Slaves of Men and Gods is a bold work of crossover fiction that will appeal to adults and older teens alike.

I got in touch with Jacqueline for a chat about it.

Trailer for Slaves of Men and God: Book One (Obroni Tales)

CMcK: Hi Jacqueline. Thanks for appearing on my blog with your novel Slaves of Men and Gods:  Book One (Obroni Tales). I was hooked on it. It’s a fast-paced contemporary adventure with a strong sense of right and wrong, but one of the things I enjoyed most deeply was the portrayal of Ghana itself – whether that was the traffic in the city streets, the open sewers in the desperately poor areas, or the lushness and red earth Krisi encountered when she made the trip to the outlying villages. What’s your connection with Ghana?

JS: Hi Carol, thanks for the invite. Yes, Ghana is a great country with excellent music, often apparently of extremes while people’s positivity and resilience is evident everywhere from urban cities like Accra to rural Mafis (villages) like Seva in the lower Volta region and beyond.

I fell in love with the people and country after volunteering with the Ghana Homeopathy Project (GHP) as a clinical practitioner and lecturer in June 2014. It was a whirlwind fortnight spent visiting all aspects of the project around the Central and South of the country, after which I returned within six months, inspired by the work being carried out by GHP since 2008; having been appointed as the new GHP coordinator until I left the organisation in October 2017. Feels like my second home so I still visit yearly when possible.

CMcK: One theme running quietly in the background in the novel is the practice of homeopathy. Tell me a bit about your approach to including that.

JS:  As mentioned above, my introduction to Ghana was through mine and others’ provision of homeopathic training and treatment for the people of Ghana as a safe, effective and affordable (offered free by GHP) alternative to paying for conventional treatment, which so few were/are able to do. (No NHS there)

Including it in the story was second nature to me having also been a trained and qualified professional homeopath since 1997. Having successfully applied it with people in UK, India and in Ghana, I know it to be a potentially life-changing treatment for acute and chronic diseases of the individual that offers the possibility for self-healing and self-understanding. Also a great way to introduce its use in context to those unfamiliar with the system.

CMcK: Krisi and her friends are beautifully and individually crafted in the novel. I could really see them in my mind’s eye, which is the best kind of fiction. How do you find your characters? And how important was it that they be teenagers, rather than adults?

JS: Thanks for the review and compliments Carol! If that’s the case about the characters then they grew out of/through the events of the story and its homeopathic influences. Homeopathy is all about recognising peoples’ most individual characteristics in great detail, in order to offer appropriate treatment, so I’ve been trained to observe what we in the business call ‘strange, rare and peculiar’ mental, emotional and physical qualities.

Having already written novels with adult characters, I decided I wanted a fresh perspective. A more immature, questioning perspective.

CMcK: Writing about African traditional practices and religions like Christianity and Islam could have been a minefield of political correctness (or incorrectness?) and some might even accuse you of writing a story that isn’t yours to tell. Did this concern you? It’s a massive topic, which you handled with great fairness and sensitivity.

JS: I was brought up as a Catholic so am quite familiar with the pros and cons of that. I have studied world religions including Islam etc. at Glasgow Uni and been a practitioner of other eastern practices for over thirty years.

Traditions like witchcraft have existed in cultures the world over including in Scotland and about which I’ve previously written in my novel The Scottish Witchfinder (Fleming Publications 2018).

Living and working intimately on a daily basis with those of another culture affords the opportunity to observe the effects and habits of that specific culture. The biggest concern was that people would think I, like colonialists have in the past, would present the white protagonist as ‘a great white saviour’ and I don’t think I did that.

CMcK: No – far from it. Sorry for interrupting. Go on!

JS: I made a great but not difficult attempt to explore Krisi’s motives and the attitudes around her at a 15-year-old Scottish adolescent level of questioning and understanding while grappling with her own similar issues of abandonment. Krisi doesn’t save anyone in the story but she is a main instigator of pivotal events. There is no fault in questioning abuses, and adolescents are often quite judgemental in their idealism, though, if they’re brave enough, can tend to rush headlong into and create potentially politically incorrect? situations.

Krisi’s character is acknowledged from the outset as what she is in the Ghanaian context – an Obroni (foreigner). The book explores what she encounters and her own individual way of dealing with new and conflicting attitudes and practices. The story informed by my own observations and experiences as an ‘Obroni’ living in the country is mine to tell - the rest is fiction.

CMcK: You end Slaves of Men and Gods with a question mark. Can we look forward to seeing Krisi again?

JS: I’ve just started working on Book Two of the Obroni Tales series with Krisi as protagonist and I’ll probably get into trouble (again!) for highlighting another stand-out Ghanaian traditional practice given the YA thriller treatment. ‘Spirit Children on the River of Return’ should be out in late 2021.

CMcK: I look forward to that! Now, I’ve been blogging about indie-published books and realising it’s a steep learning curve, going it alone. I love your video trailer! What advice can you offer about book promotion?

JS: It’s a never-ending occupation! Sorry, but it is. Publicity and Marketing are of necessity repetitive activities. Depends how keen you are to dedicate money and time. There are millions of writers all vying for an audience but others would say there’s also millions of readers out there too.

Many will also tell you about building your own audience and that takes time and effort.

I like making videos because I’m a visual person and you do need something to catch readers’ attention.

All of it is work that’s as necessary as the writing. Personally, like most of us writers, I prefer the writing.

CMcK: How can we find out more about you and your other novels?

JS: You can visit my writing website at: http://bit.ly/wordsmith-jacqueline where there’s a bio, videos and links to buy all of my books and you can contact me at: wordsmith.jacqueline(at)gmail.com And for the next two weeks the Kindle edition of Slaves of Men and Gods is on special offer at £1.99.

CMcK: Bargain! Thanks for joining me on the blog!

E-book links 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0875FRR53/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slaves-Men-Gods-Obroni-Tales-ebook/dp/B0875FRR53/

https://books2read.com/u/3LgYV7

Print book ISBN 978-1-83853-282-6 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/183853282X/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slaves-Men-Gods-Book-One/dp/183853282X/

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron Mullins - Mysteries and Misadventures: Tales from the Highlands

https://www.amazon.com/author/aaronmullins

Kicking off my three-month book blog tour is Aaron Mullins' engrossing and entertaining collection of short stories set in the north of Scotland. Highly original, yet drawing on myths and legends, there’s no doubt in my mind Mysteries and Misadventures: tales from the Highlands would make a five-star-rating popular TV drama series. It has occasional hints of Tales of the Unexpected and Inside Number 9, but this is all new, all Scottish, yet universal storytelling at its best. I loved the way it wove bang up to date characters with threads of evil and the supernatural. A kind of quirky Tam O’Shanter for the present day.

‘The Gala Queen’ starts with humour and convincing realism when a teenager drops his trousers and causes a car crash. It takes him months to get over his guilt, but then this story takes a very strange and fascinating turn.

There’s the reappearance of dead people on train seats, and terror in the mountains when a lone, lost hiker takes a break at the so-called Devil’s Bothy. Or is it all in the characters’ minds? Aaron Mullins majored in psychology, after all, and this teasing of the reader is evident throughout his collection.

Perhaps my favourite is ‘The Road Trip’. This atmospheric story set in an old house with vintage cars in its carpark, creaky floorboards and overhanging trees is brought ingeniously up to date with an internet search and a young couple’s desperate bid to escape. Excellent stuff!

As well as the dynamism of the storytelling throughout Mysteries and Misadventures is real character depth. For example, ‘Equal To and Greater Than’ features a boy who is bullied for being different. This expertly executed story should be widely read in schools. It’s really thought provoking.

The book ends with background information for each story, including a discussion of the benefits of collaborative help when editing and the difficulties of capturing local dialect (which features in dialogue in some of the stories). Aaron also recounts some of his own life experience and discusses how he has drawn on some of this in his writing.

Overall, Mysteries and Misadventures: Tales from the Highlands is a thoroughly enjoyable read with characters and scenarios that linger. 

Aaron Mullins

I asked Aaron about his entrepreneurial spirit. He’s written widely, on academic matters as well as producing a sizeable number of works of short fiction. And his own clothing brand! Does he never sit still? What made him go down the indie-publishing route?

AM: I analysed the pros and cons of indie vs traditional publishing and found that indie publishing was the correct route for me. Not only do I not have the hassle (or time and physical cost) of trying to find an agent and publisher, but I also don’t have to share the profits and retain complete control over my work. I can edit content, cover, price or anything else with the click of a button, instead of gaining permission and jumping through lots of legal hoops.

 

So from an entrepreneurial perspective, it just made more sense. Particularly with book marketing becoming more digital in the current climate. I feel the pandemic has further accelerated an already huge demand for ebooks and digital platforms. People are used to the convenience of it now, so there’s never been a better time to be an indie author on Amazon.

 

I find the time to do everything with lots and lots of planning! I think a lot of people write and design, then take a break from it to watch tv or a film etc… but writing and designing IS my relaxing time. I find it energising and motivating to be creative, so can justify the large amount of time I dedicate to it. The success of my previous clothing brand lead to a recent invitation to join Amazon Merch, so I am just finishing creating a range of t-shirts for authors, writers and readers, so look out for them in the next month or so!

 

 

What advice would you give someone setting out today?

 

AM: Treat writing as a job. You set the amount of time you will ‘work’ each week and stick to it. In a way, if you don’t ‘turn up’ then you don’t get paid, as with a real job. Because until the book is released, you won’t receive royalties. You will have productive days at work, and less good days, but keep going. Put the work in and reap the rewards. Or better yet, treat it as your relaxing time and you’ll never feel like it’s work at all. After all, it’s doing what we love.

 

Most importantly, as an entrepreneurial author, never incur any overheads. Writing is free. Uploading and selling on almost all writing platforms is free. Most marketing channels, such as social media, are free. There are a host of book cover design programs that are simple to learn and are free. There are even free editing tools. Never pay for anything that would only cost a few hours of time to master.

 

If you would like more information on the specific ones I use, then I’m always happy to help. Just drop me a message through my website or social media.

 What’s next for you, Aaron?

 

AM: Once the new clothing range is released, I have two projects that are close to being finished. The first is the re-release of an updated book distilling all the knowledge I have gathered over the years into a guidebook for authors called How to Write Fiction: A Creative Writing Guide for Authors. This will accompany the popular free writer’s resources available from my website.

 

I will also be completing my new Scottish detective novel, with a supernatural twist. It doesn’t have a title yet, as I normally create one at the end. A short synopsis is:

 

Detective Ellie Harper was investigating a grisly murder scene, when the victim’s body stood up. Charlie loves to kill and he’s itching to do it again. When his police escorts are murdered, he sees his chance to escape. Hannah’s parents are dead and there is a stranger in her house.

 

Summoned to an emergency meeting, Ellie learns that the world faces a new threat. A virus unleashed. With the world in lockdown, Ellie barely escapes with her life when her train home crashes. The passengers are attacked as they attempt to flee the wreckage.

 

Alone and afraid, Ellie seeks out other survivors. Together they must fight their way across a ruined city to rescue Ellie’s sister. But with the power out and danger lurking around every corner, this group of strangers are running out of time.

 

Forced to kill and on the run, can Ellie survive the horrors of this deadly new world? With a killer hidden in their group, will they even survive each other?

 

 

Sounds great! Where can we find more information and order your books?

 

AM: I love to hear from readers and fellow authors, and you can find me in a few different places, depending on your preference:

 

There’s my website, where you can find out a bit more about me and my books, contact me or have a browse through my writer’s blog:

Website: www.aaronmullins.com

 

Or you can go straight to Amazon to view my available books:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/aaronmullins

 

There’s the usual social media platforms. I’m always looking for new people to follow and support:

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/DrAaronMullins

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aaronmullinsauthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/draaronmullins

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/aaronmullinsauthor

 

Goodreads  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8091962.Aaron_Mullins

Or if you are a fan of more visual forms, check out my Youtube channel, where you will find a couple of short promo videos for my books, including the Highlands one:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AaronMullins

Thanks for joining me on my book blog, Aaron!