Tuesday, 9 September 2014
Brook Cottage Books is thrilled to be coordinating the book tour for Drumbeats by Julia Ibbotson. Drumbeats has been shortlisted in this years Festival of Romantic Fiction 'Best Author Published' category. Lets find out about the book and its lovely author. There's also a fab giveaway too so read on!
Drumbeats:
can you ever escape your past?
Drumbeats is the first novel in a trilogy and follows 18 year
old English student Jess through her gap year in West Africa. It's a rite of
passage novel set in the mid-1960s when Jess flees her stifling home background
for freedom to become a volunteer teacher and nurse in the Ghanaian bush.
Apprehensively, she leaves her first real romantic love behind in the UK, but
will she be able to sustain the bond while she is away? With the idealism of youth, she
hopes to find out who she really is and do some good in the world, but little
does she realize what, in reality, she will find that year: joys, horrors, and
tragedy. She must find her way on her own and learn what fate has in store for
her, as she becomes embroiled in the poverty and turmoil of a small war-torn
African nation under a controversial dictatorship. Jess must face the dangers of both
civil war and unexpected romance. Can she escape her past? And why do the
drumbeats haunt her dreams?
Drumbeats
Trilogy:
Drumbeats
Can you ever escape your past?
Walking
in the Rain
How do you cope when your worst nightmare comes true?
Before
I Die
Can Jess’s bucket list bring resolution to her life?
Excerpt
August 1965, Ghana
It was hotter than Jess had ever
imagined in her eighteen years. Flying in from the UK bound for Accra, she had
left the late August skies of the dull wet dreariness of an English summer. But
as she stepped off the Ghana Airways VC10, she felt the heavy all-encompassing
heat which shocked her system. Although it was only six o’clock in the evening,
it was already dark and close.
The flight from
London Heathrow had been a long and tiresome six hours and she had felt drained
as she pulled down her cabin bag from the overhead and shuffled along the aisle
behind the other travellers, nodding and swaying to the strains of the Beatles’
“Ticket to Ride” on the VC10’s tannoy system. Her mother would have a fit: her
Rulebook said no pop music; it’s the work of the devil, and no dancing: Jessamy,
anyone would think you were a slut. So in the holidays, when she was home
from boarding school, she’d listened to Pick
of the Pops furtively in her bedroom, ear pressed to the radio.
Now, as she
climbed down the steps in the heat-stifling darkness to take her first stride
on African soil, she was recharged with excitement.
She
was aware of the male flight attendant standing at the foot of the aircraft’s
steps, watching her with undisguised admiration as she climbed down. She
navigated the steps as gracefully as she could in her tan wedge-heeled sandals.
In the heat, she was glad that she had thought to scoop up her auburn-gold hair
loosely into a ponytail. She let go of
the rail with her left hand for a moment to smooth her pale pink cotton mini
dress over her slim figure. At least she wasn’t irritable and demanding like
the other passengers who pushed behind her as if they were in a great hurry.
The
flight attendant watched her all the way down the steps and then wiped his palm
on his trousers, and held it out courteously to steady her from the last step.
She took it in her own cool soft hand for a brief moment.
“Thank
you so much, John. Bye now,” she smiled as she passed him and headed for the
small wooden shack that served as an airport building.
“No
problem, miss. Welcome to Ghana.”
“How
did you know his name?” hissed Sandra, from behind her. Jess turned. She
noticed that John did not take Sandra’s hand. His eyes and grin were still
focussed on her.
“It’s
on his name label,” whispered Jess. They walked together across to the arrivals
building. “OK?”
“OK.
Long flight. Tired,” answered Sandra curtly. She had been unusually quiet
during the flight and, it seemed, almost close to tears on occasion. Jess put
her free hand on Sandra’s arm.
“It’ll
be fine. Honestly. I know you’re missing Colin.” In the short time Jess had
with Sandra after they were teamed up to travel to the same school in Ghana for
their gap years, she had learned all about the chap Sandra was leaving behind
for a year. Sandra showed her a photograph. Oh
dear, he looked a lot like Maurie. Not
fanciable. AT. ALL! She herself had said little about her own personal
life, and the guy she had left behind. She wanted to keep him to herself. Her
first real grown-up relationship. Simon. His name still tasted so new on her
lips and in her head. Had she done the
right thing in dutifully fulfilling the contract to come out here, even though
they had only just got together? Would he wait for her? They were an item,
weren’t they? She frowned and bit her lip.
About the Author
Julia
Ibbotson lives in a renovated Victorian rectory in the English
countryside with her husband (four children, now grown up, having fled the
nest), along with lots of apple trees, a kitchen garden and far too many moles.
She is an author and academic, and loves choral singing, walking, swimming,
gardening and cooking (not necessarily at the same time). She started writing
as soon as she could hold a pencil in her tiny fist and has not stopped since,
much to the bemusement of her long-suffering husband who brings her endless
cups of coffee and sometimes even makes the dinner when she is distracted and
frowning at her laptop.
She wrote her first novel when she was 10 years old, sadly
never published and long since consigned to the manuscript graveyard. She loves
writing novels with a strong sense of time and place and that is the basis of
her latest, Drumbeats, the first of
a trilogy which follows Jess through the trials and tribulations of her life.
It starts with Jess on her gap year in Ghana in the 1960s.
She has also written the story of the restoration of her
rectory in The Old Rectory: Escape to a
Country Kitchen, which also
interweaves recipes from her farmhouse kitchen and which has won a number of
international awards.
Recently she found an old manuscript gathering dust in her
drawer, one she had originally scribbled when she was still at school, many
years ago. It was a children’s story about a boy who slips through a tear in
the fabric of the universe to find himself in a fantasy medieval world. She is
currently blowing off the dust and redrafting it for her publishers to let it
loose on the world in the autumn. It’s called S.C.A.R.S.
She loves to
hear from readers (it’s a pleasant distraction from her steaming keyboard), so
do get in touch via the links.
Author Links
Author email:
Looks like a very good read!! Thanks for the chance!
Thank you, Julia Floyd (must be a nice lady, we share a name!). I do hope you enjoy it. And thanks to JB for featuring me today and for hosting this amazing book blog tour with Drumbeats!
Sounds interesting