There are moments I’ve curated lists rooted in the official topics of this meme as shared by the host whereas at other times, I’ve gone a bit rogue like other book bloggers wherein we curate our own topics to respond to during the weekly share of #TopTenTuesday. I’ve also re-spun this meme to participate in blog tours and/or featured events within the blogosphere which are as follows:
Top Ten Reasons Why “Pride and Prejudice”
never fails to win a reader’s heart even as its respun by Elizabeth Adams
Top Ten Secrets Behind the Tobacconist’s Wife by AnneMarie Brear
Bending Time and becoming a time traveller
during the 10 years of #SciFiMonth or outside of it | Hostess List
Image Credit: SciFiMonth artwork is by the amazingly talented Simon Fetscher.
A bit about why I love reading stories of Time Travel,
Time Shift & Time Bent narratives in Science Fiction
or across genres of interest where writers fuse
time into the backbone of their stories:
I originally tackled this topic during #SciFiMonth when I shared this post about why I love travelling through time and what it is about time travel narratives in all their incarnations which locks me into their vortexes as a reader. That was written during the first year of @SciFiMonth in [2013] and I have expanded on my JOY of this section of Speculative Literature in the ten years since I wrote it. This post will explore those stories I’ve discovered and those writers who have continued to give me wicked good reads whilst travelling through time and bending my bookish heart into evocative stories which celebrate and champion our pursuit of travelling outside of our own lifetimes through fictional encounters of time winders and benders.
As aside from reading time bending narratives, I’ve also hosted an array of guest features and posts by writers who write these stories as well. In case you wanted to hop through my archives to find out which stories and authors were featured – here is a quick guide:
You might also take stock of the fact I happen to read a heap of time narratives within the context and construct of Historical Fiction moreso than I actually do in Science Fiction. Although I would lament that ALL time narratives are part of Science Fiction on some level because of the ways in which time affects and intervenes on behalf of the characters and their journeys within those stories. However, I do hope I can start to read and seek out more time bent, time shift and time travelling stories within the main sphere of Science Fiction a bit more moving forward as I do have the tendency to become smitten and charmed by the writers of Historical Fiction who are giving me wicked good time adventures!
Image Credit: SciFiMonth artwork is by the amazingly talented Simon Fetscher.
Top tens for our tenth year
We loved having weekly Favourite Fives for Wyrd & Wonder’s fifth birthday, so it’s only right to go full Top Tens for SciFiMonth’s tenth! But what are those weekly topics?
Previously, On SciFiMonth: SFnal books / films / shows / games you enjoyed or were introduced to during SciFiMonth in the past
Turn Back Time: feature tales about time travel or shout about classic SF titles
To Boldly Go: contribute to RunalongWomble’s excellent #SmallPressBigStories initiative with a top ten focusing on stories published by independent and small presses
One Small Step: sure we love a sprawling space opera, but this week is for celebrating short stories, novellas and novelettes
Can’t Stop The Signal: SciFiMonth is all about the community – share your favourite SF blogs we should follow
As you can tell, I read an incredible amount of time bending stories as a book blogger & as a reader who appreciates seeing how writers elect to bend time within their story and world. It is an interesting concept and everyone has a different spin on enticing us into their time slip, time bent or time travelling narrative. Narrowing this list down to a Top Ten List was most difficult because some of the stories I’ve championed in the past I decided to let shine in the background this time round and chose instead to feature other stories I’ve discovered in more recent years that are equally ringing true to me as being top favourite reads in this particular genre of interest.
You’ll also notice a bit of a trend – whereas I am sure others who are participating in this post challenge might be focused more on Science Fiction time bending stories — I’ve taken a bit of a different route of exploration! Mostly because a LOT of my travels in time are through the Historical Fiction realms moreso than Science Fiction! I’ve chosen to link to other reviews in the top half of this post in case you wanted to see which stories I’ve read which also parlay into this subject of interest and perhaps expand your own TBR as well. I decided to include guest features in case you wanted to see which authors responded to my topics and/or of whom conversed with me on different subjects interlinked to their stories.
A very hard list to compile this week – not to mention the fact it was doubly hard with a severe migraine which pushed me offline and kept postponing this to be shared! It was one of those sledgehammer migraines which affects me for days and takes more days to recover from — even by Saturday (the 12th) as I was working on the edits for this and backposting it to Tuesday when I originally wanted to have it featured — my head was throbbing and driving me bonkers! Yet, it proved to be a distraction I needed, and I took several breaks to give my head a break from the computer in order to get this finalised.
I look forward to visiting with others who have responded to this prompt, and I hope they will spend a bit of time on this response as well and let me know if any of the stories I’m featuring might become #nextreads of their own!
No. 1 | Christmas Once Again by Jina Bacarr : Historical Time Travel
There are moments in our readerly lives where we discover a story and a writer who change our perception of how a story can both be told and experienced. I learnt a lot about this novel ahead of reading it but when my library purchased it for me in [2019] it was truly the gift I needed as a reader because I knew I didn’t have the ability to purchase the novel myself at that time. I still haven’t had the chance to gather a copy of this novel for myself — something I both regret and realise just couldn’t have happened at the time of its original release. It is definitely a book I want to gather as soon as I can however since I’ve read it and had such a strong connection to it as a reader – the title of the novel has changed to Her Lost Love.
And, yes, I suppose that makes sense – both in title and in the fact, I had a feeling it was done for marketing reasons as sometimes holiday specific titles are overlooked by certain readers (or so I’ve been told, this doesn’t apply to me personally!) but for me, the original title is truly at the heart of the story and what pulled me into the realms of the story itself. Sometimes I wish stories can just remain as they were and be celebrated as they are rather than having to become re-packaged. It is my goal to find a copy of this novel in its original state and hopefully one day it will be on my personal library shelves.
As soon as I finished reading #GillianPugsley’s story, I felt so connected to the heart and spirit of the characters’ of whom had entertained my mind for so many lovely moons of a stay, I did not wish to depart them. Even though I knew my time with them was coming to a close, I wanted to learn a bit more about the back-story of how this particular novel was composed so eloquently but also, how real-life provided such a hearty level of inspiration, as there are points within the novel’s scope of depth where you can feel quite attune and attached to the author’s journey inasmuch as her characters!
This is one of those special novels which becomes an experience of it’s own to read – where you feel inter-connected through time and the pages of where words bridge the gap between what can be well-envisioned of a lived life and where fiction tucks in the differences and grants us a personal glimpse of ‘what could have been’. Such is the beauty behind “The Particular Appeal of Gillian Pugsley” as you are treated to such a heart-moving story about a granddaughter’s search for the truth about her grandmother’s life!
I was overjoyed when Ms Örnbratt was open to an interview, as there were questions which were coming to me as I read the story and some came after I concluded the final bits which left my cheeks watered with tears and a choking realisation all is known, and all is quite a bit lost except for the happiness of having crossed paths with both Gilly and Gillian Pugsley! Two women who should leave an impression on each woman who reads their story, for they had such a legacy of words, love and a voice of a life lived whilst in pursuit of finding one’s voice and owning the path you choose.
Here is the conversation the novel inspired me to compose
and the responses on behalf of Ms Örnbratt I believe will inspire you!
She has written a heart-centred story befit for granddaughters who achingly miss their grandmothers whose close-knit connection was a dear part of their lives. This is a story told from a granddaughter’s perception about their grandmother’s story – as Gillian is best understood through the graceful wisdom of Gilly; two women who share not only a name but an old soul mentality about life, living and the circles of love. It has such a powerful thread of story, you do not realise at first how hard-hitting #GillianPugsley will be until you tuck yourself inside it’s chapters and fear for the moment where your fingers turn the ending pages, revealling not only the fuller scope of what you’ve consumed but the theory you first realised when you began reading it.
The ‘particular appeal’ of #GillianPugsley is she’s an ‘every woman’ character, writ solid with a dimensional story arc not limited by time nor country. Hers is a story of fortitude of strength and a zest for adventure; where accepting limitations is not her mantra and where embracing life as it arrives is part of her nature. She’s particularly appealing because of her moxie and her deep commitment to living life on her terms. She softens by love and she is renewed in the spirit of living by the one man she never had to explain herself too as he already understood her quirky nature. If war and time had not been erased of the clock, you start to wonder – would their lives have been writ differently?
This is a story written from the living hours straight through to the resolution of the tomorrow Gilly captures from her grandmother. It’s an ode to grandmothers and granddaughters of whom intrinsically know more than they let on about each other.
From the opening sequences of the novel, I instinctively felt the poems were the foreshadowing of this story to be layered through autobiographical data left behind and/or passed down to you. How did you approach crafting the story out of the poems, as this was also a measure of Gilly’s journey as well? Were the two connected or did you expound a bit away from your own living truth?
Örnbratt responds: The poems are autobiographical. Of this, I have no doubt. How I interpreted them on the other hand, was left to my imagination. Indeed, they foreshadow much of the story and yes, I drew bits and pieces from my own and my grandmother’s life, eg. setting (London, Tobermory, Berkshire), my grandmother working as a nanny for a maharaja of India, a sister named Beaty, etc. But the actual story is fictional.
I had a general idea of where I wanted the story to go. In this way, the crafting was rather loose, at least far from rigid. I let the feeling of the poems drive the story. My writing was very much connected to them through the entire process. At times, I would write a chapter and the poem I had originally chosen to accompany it, fit better somewhere else. There was shifting throughout which was easy to do because I understood there was a common thread through all of them. They were about love, passion and commitment. This worked well for the story’s purpose. I drew from between those lines. Even if my interpretation wasn’t my grandmother’s actual history, I could imagine some of the poems deriving from a first love and others, the settled, familiarity of marriage.
Gilly, the granddaughter’s journey is definitely connected to the poems. It is a journey that also mirrors my own in ways. Both my character and myself as a writer became reacquainted with a grandmother and the writer neither of us knew she was. As I learned that my own grandmother had a past, that she was once a young woman filled with passion and dreams, so did my character. Read More
Acquired Book By: One day in June I ducked inside #LitChat and discovered a hearty conversation about Indie Publishers and the stories they publish. There were two publishers in attendance, with Light Messages Publishing being the one who happily corresponded with me a bit after the chat concluded. Whilst in communication with their publicity department, I was encouraged to look through their beautifully lovely catalogue and see if one of their upcoming Autumn releases might suit my bookish curiosities. I picked two which fancied me the most, one of which was not mentioned to me but I discovered on my own: “Tea and Crumples” by Summer Kinard, who had attended the chat. If your curious about the Small Press Showcase #LitChat I attended you can replay the conversation in whole by visiting the Nurph Channel for LitChat where it’s archived.
I love hosting Indie Publishers and Press on Jorie Loves A Story, as it speaks to the wicked quality of editing and crafting of stories in today’s book market. I nearly read more Indie authors on a yearly basis than I do Major Trade, a credit to being a book blogger whose bookish world has tenfold increased since she started blogging. You get further into the book world as a blogger and I’m incredibly blessed due to the connections I am making in the twitterverse.
This marks my first review for Light Messages Publishing and I will be following it with a review of “Tea and Crumples”. After which I am hoping to make a new selection and continue to support the writers and team behind this inspirational Indie Publisher! I received a complimentary copy of “The Particular Appeal of Gillian Pugsley” direct from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
A bit of an introduction to Light Messages Publishing:
Light Messages is a family run publishing company founded in 1998, and we began expanding to general trade in 2011. We now have close to 100 titles in our catalog and release 6-8 titles per year. We pride ourselves on publishing meaningful books by emerging authors.
This is the official mission statement of Light Messages as a publisher and one that is aptly suited to their publishing house. One of the takeaways I took from my interactions with them in the #LitChat I attended and the research I did on their publishing website, this is a publisher whose entire focus is on crafting uplifting stories rooted in heart and soul story-lines. They give specific attention to their authors and their stories whilst being open-minded about book bloggers and reviewers who are seeking stories to review. They are a gem of a find if your a blogger, as similar to my admiration for World Weaver Press (on my review of FAE and on this post) they give us a lot to work with whilst we’re hosting their authors!
The flexibility to read through their catalogue of front list and backlist titles is one that I appreciate, as this reminds me of my readings of ChocLitUK; where your are not limited to front list selections. I enjoy getting the opportunity to read the stories which nestle into my imagination long before I pick them up as a bit of a precursor of what I might find inside their chapters. Reading for review is a bit like sorting out which writer and which story not only appeals to you in the moment of discovery, but one that will have a lasting curiosity by the time you sit down to read it. Oft-times we’re making selections a bit ahead of our blogging schedules (by three to six months!), and the beauty for me is finding the stories which are uniquely individualistic to both their authors and their publishing house. This is in part why I love reading Indies, they have their own styling and their own written voice which sets them apart from Major Trade.
I have blogged in the past about being a hybrid reader of both Mainstream and INSPY (my shortened endearing name for ‘Inspirational Fiction’ as found via the twitterverse or most directly the INSPY Awards) novelists and the selections I’m making via Light Messages speaks to that particular appreciation of reading across literary boundaries. I love being uplifted by hard-hitting story-lines which speak to the human condition and the state of humanity. (hence why I read a heap of war dramas!) At the very same time, I love the lightness and joyfully blissful story-lines where the drama is lightly touched upon and comic moments intersect the character’s lives. I am eclectically happy experiencing my literary wanderings and I am quite thankful I discovered Light Messages as they are creating a balance of what I appreciate out of both ‘umbrellas’ so to speak of literature.
Equally lovely is how they do not limit the kinds of stories their authors are writing, as I happily found selections in a cross mixture of genre and styles of literature, including science fiction and suspense!
The Particular Appeal of Gillian Pugsley Subtitle: a love story
To satisfy her wandering feet, eighteen-year-old Gillian McAllister is sent from Ireland to Canada in the summer of 1932. She arrives with her Irish ways intact, determined not to let the wiles of crop duster Christian Hunter woo her into submission. Yet as the summer unfolds and the sweet taste of love grows,
Gillian’s appeal lures more than she anticipates, shattering the life they’ve built. From the shores of The Great Lakes to the slums of Bombay and a tiny island in between, this love story takes the reader on an intimate journey to unravel a family secret that’s laid hidden for generations.
I am not even sure I grabbed all the tweets I referenced over the months I spent with this novel as I used this shortened tag quite a heap as it was a way to convey a short code nod towards what I was reading but also, to bring to light a name shared by two characters!
I loved the premise of this meme {WWW Wednesdays} due to the dexterity that it gives the reader! :) Clearly subject to change on a weekly rotation, which may or may not lead to your ‘next’ read which would provide a bit of a paradoxical mystery to your readers!! :) Love the concept! Therefore, this weekly meme was originally hosted by Should Be Readingwho became A Daily Rhythm. Lovingly restored and continued by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. Each week you participate, your keen to answer the following questions:
What are you currently reading!?
What did you recently finish reading!?
What do you think you’ll read next!?
After which, your meant to click over to THIS WEEK’s WWWWednesdayto share your post’s link so that the rest of the bloggers who are participating can check out your lovely answers! :) Perhaps even, find other bloggers who dig the same books as you do! I thought it would serve as a great self-check to know where I am and the progress I am hoping to have over the next week!
*Titles were blog tours I missed hosting over the Summer.
A beautiful mixed bag of readerly delights await me, as I tackle the stories I had meant to read and review over the Summer (June – September) whilst dipping into my first reads for Autumn! As you might have noticed I have an appreciation for stories during the war eras and for war dramas in particular, but I took a chance on a non-fiction piece that is set around redemption and solace when I elected to read Ruth W. Crocker’s book. The Tulip Resistance will be taking me behind the lines of war from a Dutch perspective whereas I generally enter through the World Wars through the British or French lines of perception. Read More
Week of Thursday, 26st of September through 1st of October, 2015 | Hostess List
I’ve honestly wanted to start participating in this weekly meme in 2014, however, I would always seem to get distracted during the hours leading up to Thursdays OR completely forget to compose my thoughts for this meme until into the weekend; at which point, the time had come and gone. I like the fact we can exchange thoughts percolating in our minds that run the gambit of the bookish world, creative outlets, or thoughts we want to share that might show a bit more about who we are behind the bookish blog we maintain. I am going to attempt to thread the journal of my 10 Bookish / Not Bookish Thoughts by order of the entries arrival into my life rather than a preference of 1-10.
No, your eyes did not lie to you, this is No. 6, No. 2-5 will be released this Autumn.
No. 1 | Corvidae + Scarecrow | Anthologies by World Weaver Press
As you might have recalled I happily devoured the stories in Rhonda Parrish’s first anthological series debut FAE, wherein I found myself quite delighted to find stories of the fae represented in such a uniquely clever collection of inspiration and craft of story-telling. After concluding my review on behalf of FAE, I wasn’t quite sure what I should request next via World Weaver Press, when happily their publicist Ms Wagner suggested I follow FAE with the next two anthologies in sequence:
What is so wicked awesome about these two anthologies is there is a serial short between them, which outside of pulp fiction and the classical serials found in zines decades inside the early 20th Century, I haven’t come across serial shorts inside anthologies! I’m quite a newbie to anthologies of the 21st Century, and thereby, each time I make a discovery I am wicked excited by the possibilities of what I am about to read!
I am now piqued with keen interest to read Sanctuary and Judge & Jury! I had agreed knowingly with the reviewer – sometimes you come across a short so profoundly moving, if you never found another you loved dearly as much, the collection was worth it’s weight in gold! This happened to me once in another anthology where I found a writer so tapped into the human condition and the emphatic heart we all have within us, I was forever moved! Shorts despite their length are powerful in what they convey! The four I focused on myself from FAE are still with me, even now.
I must confess, this fellow book blogger out here in the book blogosphere is as keenly passionate about these anthologies as I am, as it’s his reviews on behalf of these two anthologies that encouraged me to take the plunge into reading them myself!
I must admit – reading the reviews on Tangent in combination with reading the Press Kits helped make my decision because Tangent has bloggers who knit out the heart of each story and give me ‘just enough’ to whet a thirst of interest.
Do visit his reviews, ahead of my own which will be arriving in October!
And, dear hearts guess what!? Parrish isn’t yet done with her Magical Menagerie! She’s putting together a new collection entitled: SIRENS! Eek. Can you just imagine!? Watery stories of EPIC MYTHOLOGICAL loveliness?! I’m not sure about you, but World Weaver Press has bewitched me!
No. 2 | Being a part of DAW’s blog tour for This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie E. Czerneda
I initially thought my path had crossed with Ms Czerneda during Sci Fi November 2014, until I ran a search for our tweet convos and realised it was a bit earlier in 2014 during the Sci Fi Writer’s chat! Who knew!? I used to duck inside the #sffwrtcht on a regular basis, as I have a healthy appetite for SFF whilst getting the opportunity to talk to writers who are enveloping us in worlds that are a jolt outside our own realities to the brink of epic intraspace proportions! As we do not just jettison ourselves off of Earth or into the orbit surrounding Earth, we sometimes traverse the divides of time itself whilst visiting territorial systems beyond our line of sight. Then, there is the hidden joy of writers who write an arbitrage of stories contained on Earth herself but within the light years of time ahead of our own living futures, taking us both on land and sea to explore new frontiers and the plausiblilties of life therein. Read More
The Particular Appeal of Gillian Pugsley
