Paul Andruss, Thomas the Rhymer and more films NOT to watch right now

Tags

#Contagion, #YA fiction, 12 Monkeys, Fairy tales, films, Jack Hughes Books, Newbook, Thomas of Ercildoun, Thomas the Rhymer

 

 

PAUL ANDRUSS.

Firstly thanks for having me over y’all. My favourite apoc-oc-o-liptical movie and boxset of all time might sound familiar. It featured at the top of the list of Shey and the Dudes last post. The visionary Twelve Monkeys. No matter how hard you try, you cannot escape a future already written in your past. Time will always correct itself. Throw in a plague, time paradoxes and Terry Gilliam at the helm (Time Bandits, Brazil and The Fisher King), what’s not to like?

Paul Andruss.

No. I believe in owning any sensitive intelligent creature is tantamount to slavery.

PAUL ANDRUSS

Yes. Absolutely. In fact, they perform a pivotal role holding the whole thing together. But as one would expect from such highly evolved beings they work secretly behind the scenes to sprinkle their magic. And so are not mentioned once. I fully understand you doubt me, and I don’t blame you.. As I’ve yet to say my new books is about fairies …and don’t you have your very own fairy godmother……….

PAUL ANDRUSS

You see??? As for your next question, ‘What drew you to Thomas the Rhymer?’ even though you haven’t asked it yet, as a kid I got a big book of Celtic folk stories for Christmas. I have been mining it ever since. My first novel, where I cut my teeth, was a sprawling sci-fi Irish mythological saga about Finn Mac Cool and that came from reading those childhood stories. Finn is due to be published by Black Wolf Books, once the Jack Hughes trilogy is safely out. The Scottish tale of Thomas the Rhymer and the Queen of Elphame was also in the book. It tells how handsome Thomas follows the queen of Elfland to her home. When he leaves three days later, the lady gives him the gift of poetry and prophecy. He arrives home to find a score of years have passed.

PAUL ANDRUSS

Thomas the Rhymer is based on a real person, the 13th century prophet Sir Thomas of Ercildoune, named in contemporary legal documents as Thomas Rymour de Ercildoun. Thomas allegedly predicted the Scottish King James VI would rule from the English throne after Elizabeth’s I death. The second thing that led to the book is personal. I was living in Turkey after my brother was diagnosed with a brain tumour. We were close when I lived in England. It was a bad time to be separated by thousands of miles. We skyped, but it wasn’t the same. Conversations often turned to reminiscing. One incident always made us laugh.

David went missing at the age of 7. I was about the same age as Jack, funnily enough. Unlike Jack’s brother, David was not stolen by the fairies.

After a visit from the police and a sleepless night. David arrived home with my Gran the next day. Taking umbrage at something Mum said, he decided to run away. The only place he knew was Gran’s, twenty miles across town. David sneaked on a train, avoided the ticket collector, and walked two miles to Gran’s house. By the time he got there it was too late to bring him back. In those days we didn’t have a phone or a car. Few people did. And gran couldn’t afford the taxi fare.

The story got me thinking about what happens to a family when a child is missing. Something clicked. I would like to say the novel flowed seamlessly from that point. It didn’t. It took years to hone the ideas. My biggest regret is David never lived to see it published.

PAUL ANDRUSS

You ask such interesting questions.

PAUL ANDRUSS

This is a whole philosophical argument. How do you define living? A question scientists are asking about viruses, which are nothing more than scraps of DNA. Technically they are not alive, but that doesn’t seem to stop them, does it? Or, do you mean intelligent, or conscious? Alan Turning, a computer scientist, said such concepts are hard to define. How will we ever know if a machine is thinking? Psychic researchers claim some hauntings are simply memories recorded in in houses by a sudden burst of psychic energy such as violent emotion. Given all that why shouldn’t a fairy queen weave a living tapestry to record memories as they do in Jack Hughes and Thomas the Rhymer?

It made perfect sense to me that a culture as ancient & global as the fairy race, largely ruled by women, would choose to pass on information through the ancient skill of weaving. The first evidence of weaving is a 70,000-year-old fabric impression.

 

PAUL ANDRUSS

As an aspiring writer, who am I to give advice? Instead of turning out the same old pony, everyone is sick of hearing, including me, let me pass on sage snippets from a successful published writer, with years of experience. When I started writing I joined a peer review group. The advice mainly consisted of … I would not write what you wrote the way you wrote it. I would write it this way. Of course you would, I thought. We are different people.

An established author confirmed my cynicism in an article. “Beware of taking advice from other aspiring authors. They are in the same boat as you and just a clueless. Take advice from someone who knows the business.”

When an established professional was kind enough to offer advice, I bit her hand off. Don’t panic, it wasn’t her writing hand. It was the other one. I was writing a blog to publicise myself. She said, “Decide if you want to be a blogger or an author.” It took a while to see I was down a rabbit hole, spending all my time writing quality blog and guest blog articles with nothing left to write anything else. When I realised, I knew I had found a gold mine.

Here is some of her advice.

“This is a hard business. You are up against a lot of talent and competition. Take your work seriously, work hard. Have self-belief, coz you’ll need it. Know your market and write for it.” I have seen aspiring writers unwilling to brutally examine their work. Instead they give excuses; clever explanations about why they wrote it that way and who they wrote it for.

How do I know?

I was one of them.

She read some of my draft and said, “Your point of view is all over the place.”

I protested. “I wrote it like a movie where you seamlessly move from character to character.”

“It’s called head hopping,” she replied, “and it’s amateur.”

PAUL ANDRUSS

I knew I needed to listen. But, Goddamnit, it meant rewriting the whole bloody novel! Muttering like Dick Dastardly’s Muttley in Wacky Races, I set to work. Guess what? She was right absolutely totally and utterly right. It put the book in a different class.

My advice for aspiring authors?

Listen to people who know what they are talking about.

 

PAUL ANDRUSS

Work, work, work. Thank God. I need to publicise the book release. So if any of you have a blog and want a good quality barely used post in exchange for publicity, THINK OF ME.The 2^nd and 3^rd books of the trilogy are edited and having a final reread prior to publication.

I have a 100-page novella ready to go. A comic noir murder mystery set in the golden age of Hollywood. I need to Edit Finn Mac Cool and pass it over to Black Wolf for input.Finish the second novella in the series. Porcelain, set during the Glam years. Sort out the short stories for publication with Black WolfFinally, and this will be news for Black Wolf Books, I have a two back to back novels half drafted that are sequels to the Jack Hughes Trilogy.

If you enjoyed this don’t to visit http://www.jackhughesbooks.com/

Explore the story of Thomas the Rhymer. http://www.jackhughesbooks.com/story-of-the-book.php

Download the posters http://www.jackhughesbooks.com/art-gallery.php

Read some pre-release reviews http://www.jackhughesbooks.com/thomas-the-rhymer.php

And listen to some music courtesy of classical composer Patrick Hartnett, who loved the book so much he wrote music for it. http://www.jackhughesbooks.com/music.php

 

Fairies took his brother…

When Jack sees a sinister woman kidnap his bother Dan, he knows his parents will never believe him. Nor will the police. Not when he says Dan vanished into thin air. If Jack wants to see Dan again, he has to save him. And not just him …

 If he ever wants to find Dan, first he must save Thomas the Rhymer from a wicked enemy.

Bravely embarking on a rollercoaster adventure into the dark fairy realm, Jack and friends face monstrous griffins and brooding tapestries with a life of their own, learn to use magic mirrors and travel on ley lines that whip them off faster than sound

 

Even if he returns Thomas the Rhymer to his selfish fairy queen, she might make Jack her prisoner. With the odds stacked against him, can Jack succeed in finding and freeing Dan?

 

 Or will he lose his brother forever?

EXTRACT. The first meeting with Thomas

A moment later Jack turned to Catherine. “Run while I keep him busy.”

“No Jack,” she muttered, horror-struck.

“Jack,” echoed the tramp as if he heard her. “Master Jack, Cracker Jack … Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.”

“Is he mental?”

“No, he’s fairy,” Jack reminded her.

Ken nodded in agreement.

“Here I am,” Jack said, bravely stepping out from behind the skip.

“No,” Catherine wailed.

At the sight of Jack, the tramp started crying.

“Master Jack, Tom’s a lost. Master Jack, Tom’s a cold. Master Jack, don’t be cross. Master Jack, take Tom home. For I did dilly and did dally, dally and did dilly, lost my way and don’t know where to roam. Now you can’t trust a story like old Jack-a-Nory, when you can’t find your way home.”

Jack stared stupidly at the tramp.

“It’s all right, he won’t hurt you,” Ken shouted.

“You’ve changed your tune,” Jack shouted back.

“I was wrong. He’s not trying to scare us. He’s scared. The noise, the people, he’s not used to it. It’s driving him mad.”

Coming from behind the skip, Ken walked to the tramp with hands held in front of him as if feeling the air around the man.

“He’s living rough. I don’t think he’s had a good night’s sleep for weeks, or a proper meal, been eating out of bins. Oh dear, he could do with a bath.”

“I know he pongs,” Jack agreed.

Putting his head to one side, the tramp smiled.

“There’s something else, he might look older than us, but inside he’s about our age.”

The tramp smiled again, saying proudly, “For a year and a day I grew away, and I grew straight and I grew tall, and I was the fairest of them all, and she did love me, love me do, but now I’m lost. It’s sad but true.”

“Hello,” said Catherine, from behind Ken.

“Good day to you mistress mine, Thomas am I, Thomas of Rhyme.” The tramp gallantly bowed.

“Thomas? That’s what she called Dan. She was looking for you, wasn’t she?” Jack said.

“Aye, that she were,” Thomas wailed. “Though she loved me most, kissed my cheek and stoked my hair, a new Sir Thomas does she boast and on him lavish all her care. And I am gone, like those before, belovéd once, beloved no more.”

“Why?” asked Catherine.

“Though I both complain and moan, ‘tis no one’s fault but my own. She warned me true when she did say not to dally on the way. Off went the court with my good queen too. Tom followed on but what did Tom do?” he shrieked, slapping his own face and shaking his head wretchedly.

“Tom did dilly and did dally, did dally and did dilly, lost his way and don’t know where to roam. Now Tom’s afraid and all alone, and can’t find his way home.”

With outburst over, Thomas blew his nose noisily on his sleeve and smiled a brave little smile.

Available now in ebook and paperback Amazon. Worldwide.

The Time Mutants’ Guide to Time Travel with Paul Andruss

Tags

Jack Hughes Books, Paul Andruss, Regency, sci-fi, The Viking and The Courtesan, The Writer and the Rake, Thomas the Rhymer, TIme Mutants, Time Travelling Dynasty, Time-travel

 

The Mutants Guide to Time Travel  by Paul Andruss.

Please… settle down.

If you let me talk, everything will be explained.

I know this is unsettling.

But it is not your first unsettling experience, is it?

 

That got your attention!

 

Many of you fear you are going mad or perhaps caught in some nightmare; which is unsurprising after your recurring vivid dreams and the recent dislocation experience.

You are frightened and alone. Let me assure you. You are not alone. We have all been through the same thing: because each of us is related.

I see you looking at the different styles in the room, clothes, hair, cosmetics, and wondering if I joke. You think you know your family: parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins. You were brought up to view family as those around you. You do not to think in terms of deep time: about generations past and those to come. But you will learn. Believe me.

Why am I here? You want to ask.

We all carry a double recessive gene from our common ancestress that makes us time travelling mutants.

Oh dear! How to put this simply?

Genes are what make you look like your parents or grandparents. If grandparents, you may have been told it skipped a generation: this is a recessive gene. Over centuries, families separate. Generations later, distant relatives meet and fall in love. When this happens often enough, you are the result.

Our common ancestress lived in the early 21st century. Her name was Brittany Carter. She wrote romantic fiction distinguished by the fact her heroines time travel: her granddaughter to the Viking age and another, in a thinly veiled autobiography, to the 18th century.

I know many of you read her classic novels when studying English Literature, and perhaps experienced a thrill of recognition in their pages. No doubt you were taught they were written by that literary giant Shehanne Moore. A pleasant fiction I am afraid. Brittany Carter wrote these works. Shehanne Moore was merely her nom-de-plume. A ruse used at the insistence of her publishers.

But time travel I hear you protest, surely you need a machine like the fabulous TARDIS of legend, or perhaps a sacred circle of standing-stones to concentrate the Gaia force. Not at all! Our research at the Institute, shows time travel is simple. It is caused by the relatively common ability of psychokinesis: the power to move objects with the mind.

Historical records show many of you experienced poltergeist activity when you hit puberty. Would it shock you to learn poltergeist activity is in fact involuntary outburst of psychokinetic energy, brought on by hormonal changes? As you grew older you no doubt noticed the violent outbursts subsided.

About the same time lucid dreams began. Lucid dreams are a psychological term for vivid dream states where your conscious mind remains aware making it seem you are actually experiencing the dream as reality. If it seems so, it is because you are.

Such dreams are a psychokinetic by-product; a telepathic bond with your ancestors and descendants. It is widely known Brittany Carter wrote about her granddaughter, Malice, under the influence of such dreams. This is why we time travel during moments of heightened sensation, usually, but not exclusively, during sexual arousal.

At this point I need to tell you everything you understand about time is wrong. From an early age you were taught to view time as a progression of events paralleling birth, growth and gradual decline towards death.

Here are some ancient flick-books, please take one and pass the rest on. See how each photograph, taken exactly a year apart, shows the person moving from birth to death at a fixed rate.

 Normally we do not question this.

But think for a moment, even identical twins do not die at exactly the same time. Age is relative. It depends on a series of complex interactions governed by genes and environment.

In the 20th century the oldest person on the planet died at the age of 140 – which is nothing now; while children with the disease progeria died of advanced old age when no more than ten. Some individual cells, like cancer, never die. Others can be indefinitely held in suspension, such as the 5,000 year old seed from a Chinese tomb that grew into a magnolia tree when planted by archaeologists.

Aging is not due to minutes flowing into hours; days into years.

Aging is not time travel. The minutes and hours of your life merely mark the earth’s revolution on its axis and the year its orbit around the sun. Even a light year is a measure of distance, 5.9 trillion miles to be exact.

Stephen King claimed time particles, or chronons, were formed by the past colliding with the present and evaporated when the present dissolved into the future. Michael Moorcock agreed. Moorcock envisaged humans, called Time Dwellers, evolving to live permanently within a single moment. For Moorcock the only answer to the question: ‘What is the time?’ was ‘The present’.

Einstein, the father of science, did not believe in time. He said it was nothing other than a measurement of space like height, width and depth. To him we were no more capable of seeing the bigger picture than a word printed on the page can read the novel it belongs to. Like fish in a barrel we cannot see or understand the world outside, never mind swim in it. He explained it thus:

If a fish swims in a tank at 4 miles per hour, inside an airplane travelling at 500 mph, that is flying across the earth rotating at 1,000 mph at the equator, and orbiting around the sun at 68,400 mph, in a solar system spiralling around the Milky Way at 515,000 mph, in a universe expanding at 158,000 mph. How fast is the fish swimming? The answer is 4 miles per hour. That’s relativity.

If we stepped outside relativity, we would see the past, present and future happening concurrently. It would be like looking at a road from a hilltop. This is how Brittany saw her granddaughter’s life 800 years in the past.

You must understand atoms are not like specks of dust. They are infinitesimal amounts of electrical energy clustered into a nucleus of protons and neutrons and orbited by electrons. If the nucleus was the size of a tennis ball, the atom itself would be four miles across. This means most of the universe is empty space.

The universe expands in every direction at approximately 158,000 mph; as does every atom in it. Think of drawing two circles on a balloon then blowing it up. The bigger the balloon gets the more distant the circles become and the bigger they get.

If we could compact or expand an atom, it would automatically shift to the point when the universe was at the same density. In other words it would time travel.

The electro-magnetic force holding the universe together is the same as Gaia, the life force within every living creature. Outbursts of psychokinetic energy are measurable electric currents. This is how we time travel. Psychokinetic outbursts cause our atoms to contract or expand, hurling us through time.

The final question I am asked in this introductory session is: Am I immortal?

Yes and no.

Remember Michael Moorcock’s Time Dwellers living within a single moment? Like them we can dwell in a single moment of time and so do not age. But in that case, how did Brittany and Malice manage to live with their lovers?

That is relativity. As we cannot exist outside our immediate space-time environment, we take it with us, like a deep-sea diving suit. It is perhaps no more than an atom’s thickness but enough to keep us safe.

If you would care to get to know each other and work out your complex and often confusing relationships, there are refreshments next door. However, before you leave let me assure you, my fellow time-travelling mutants, you have long and interesting lives ahead of you, and many difficult skills to master. But master them you will. For we already know your future.

 

http://www.paul-andruss.com/
http://bit.ly/2wxqs9H

Paul Andruss is the author of 2 contrasting fantasy novels

Wanting to engage readers and build an audience 2 novels are available as free downloads in different E-books formats.

Thomas the Rhymer – a magical fantasy for ages 11 to adult about a boy attempting to save fairy Thomas the Rhymer, while trying to rescue his brother from a selfish fairy queen.

If you enjoy the Harry Potter & Narnia books & films? Thomas the Rhymer is right up your street

Thomas the Rhymer is the 1st of a trilogy.

 

Finn Mac Cool – rude, crude and funny, explicitly sexual and disturbingly violent, Finn Mac Cool is strictly for adults only

Finn mac Cool is a modern retelling of the Irish Myth cycles with a science fantasy edge.

Finn Mac Cool is a must for those with Irish ancestry or anyone interested in Irish legends and folklore. Ever since being a child Paul was fascinated by the phantasmagorical and strange. Blessed with the type of mind that squirrels away peculiar facts, he  supposed it was only natural these should become a central feature in his novels.

As Paul got older he often forgot where he found these oddities in the first place. Odds and Sods: A cabinet of Curiosities was born as an on-line notepad and sort of grew from there. Now it showcases the curious stuff he’s  come across when researching his novels. He also get a tremendous kick from sharing it with friends.

The blog includes stories from science, history, myth, miracles, occult objects & fabulous beasts.  Sample Posts:  History – Bonfire of the Vanities / Myth – Philemon & Baucis / Miracles – The Lady at Lourdes / Occult Objects – The Turin Shroud/ Fabulous Beasts – The Horse Cock / Science – Alma (Are Neanderthals still alive?)

Paul  is a guest Writer in Residence on ‘Smorgasbord- Variety is the Spice of Life’ where you can enjoy exclusive extra articles: Still Waving – the poet Stevie Smith / Marc Bolan’s Millions / Who were the Proto-Indo-Europeans? / The Truth of the Cottingley Fairies / Venus in Furs & Justine in Tears- De Sade & Masoch / Rosabelle Believe – Did Houdini return from the dead?

Why don’t you subscribe to both?

 

More Hecklers, More Hamsters and More Reviews

Tags

Book review, Dundee, FinnMacCool, Jack Hughes Books, Joh Quinn, Jute, O Halflins and hecklers and Weavers and Weemin, Paul Andruss, Play, Regency, Shehanne Moore, The Writer and the Rake, Thomas the Rhymer, Time-travel

 

 

 

http://www.paul-andruss.com/the-writer-and-the-rake/

Book Review:

The Writer and The Rake

by

Shehanne Moore

 

I can confirm Shehanne Moore is no Miss Barbara Cartland.

Now there is two ways you can take this news. If you are anything like me it will be with a lusty huzzah and an air punch. I was never one for simpering virgins and sex scenes discretely ending outside the bedroom door.

Shehanne Moore writes historical romance with a sci-fi twist that’s unapologetically smexy. For those who don’t know, smexy (her word, not mine) is a cross between smutty and sexy… raunchy romance in the raw… or is that with a roar? Cos, boy, does the gal deliver!

If you want a complex heroine, so feisty she could bitch slap you in a stand-up row, meet tough but vulnerable Brittany Carter – ‘brittle as porcelain and deadlier than shattered glass. An irresistible combination.’

If you like a ruggedly handsome man, oozing animal magnetism, you can’t go far wrong with Mitchell Killgower. He’s not so tough. Underneath them smouldering looks and icy demeanour beats a heart to make you melt. At least something will be wet by the end of the novel.

By that I mean if a ‘good man who needs saving from himself’ don’t bring a tear to your eye then you are no Brittany Carter – not matter how smexy and gorgeous you are – ‘darling!’

Brittany is a struggling historical romance writer and no simpering virgin. Like most good-looking modern women in their mid-twenties, she’s had her fair share of men; all of them disappointments.

The book opens when a stranger called Morte stops Brittany for her autograph. Or so she thinks.

To be honest she’s not taking much notice. The girl’s got a lot on her mind. Off to straighten out her finances with some crap-head she used to date – he took everything but somehow managed to leave her name on a mortgage he’s not paying.

Morte’s weird, more stalker than fan. As his ominous warning about making the right choice rings in her ears, lightning strikes him. Brittany does the decent thing: calls an ambulance; helps Morte live.

Wrong choice!

Next thing Brittany wakes up in a sixteen year boy’s dusty bed. Wound tight as a cheese wire garrotte, she desperately plays it cool, frantically struggling to keep herself together while figuring out what the hell happened?

The boy’s furious. Handsome dad’s furious too. Not with her; with each other.

All the while she’s praying it’s a nightmare and she’ll wake up. Gradually it dawns. She’s somehow travelled through time, back to 1765 to be precise. To a crumbling stately home in Georgian England and the middle of a bitter inheritance feud between handsome rakish father and puritan unloved son, and with a cow of a sister-in-law holding the purse strings and fuelling the whole debacle.

The Writer and the Rake starts at 100 miles an hour and never flags. It is an unrelenting tour de force; a dazzling pas-de-deux of searing wit and laugh out loud moments between Brittany and Mitchell. The frisson between them is tangible, popping and fizzing across the pages as they slog it out to gain the upper hand, only to have the other snatch it back.

Despite wanting to return to her own time Brittany can’t take her eyes off Mitchell; while he can’t keep his hands off her behind. So, what about Morte? Don’t worry, he’s there too. Intent on sealing his Faustian bargain.

When Mitchell sees Morte with Brittany, he’s jealous as hell of her secret lover. It’s just the spark they need for scorching emotions to boil over into reckless sex. Even if you don’t smoke, you’ll be reaching for that post-coital cigarette Brittany can never have because she ran out in the first few days.

Casual sex has consequences. Hell, Brittany knows that. But she’s not prepared for what they are. Ok it’s not the first time she’s woken in a strange bed. But this one’s oddly familiar. She’s leapfrogged forward to her own time to find she’s been missing for weeks, presumed kidnapped, and her books are now best sellers.

Bingo!

Morte picks his moment to explain it all; a drunken night out with the girls. Apparently she’s a time mutant – the mother of a dynasty. Shame she’s too pissed to take it in.

Talk about sealed with a kiss. One drunken snog with some bloke in the club and Brittany’s back to Mitchell’s crumbling house. Only one thing for it, seduce Mitchell and use the ride of her life to hitchhike through the centuries back to her duly deserved fame and fortune.

Here lies the rub.

Mitchell’s the man she wants, the one she’s been waiting for all her life. She knows it from the moment he sweeps her up in his strong arms and drops her on his big old bed. From the second he unbuttons her bodice, and she his breeches. If only he was from her time. If, if, if…

If this is her last kiss; the last time she can make love for fear of ricocheting through the ages with every orgasm, then there is no one she would rather do it with.

Life’s never that simple, is it Brittany? Not with destiny calling… loud and clear.

The Writer and the Rake is a genre-bending adventure. It confirms Shehanne Moore as an author who know today’s woman is as likely to be into science fiction, playing computer games or watching light porn as reading heavy romance. And Moore’s not afraid to give her readers what they want … without ifs, buts or apologies.

The dialogue is racy, witty and thoroughly modern. This is no cod 18^th century comedy of manners. That would get in the way of the lust and punishing pace. Her characters are real: gritty, decent and flawed as the rest of us. And ultimately, as redeemable by love we all are. Though it’s bloody hard work for them sometimes!

And in case you are thinking this is just for the girls, I’d advise you to give it a shot, lads. Cos let’s face it… it does no harm knowing what your woman wants.