A Life Singular. By Lorraine Pestell
Blog Tour Stop, hosted by Fire And Ice Book Tours
Serial Blurb
“A novel in six parts, serialised as e-books and paperbacks, "A Life Singular" tells the story of a successfu celebrity writing his autobiography, after the tragic loss of his wife.
In essence a love story, "A Life Singular is about the triumph over menta illness, the choices we make between right and wrong, and how the one affects the other. Some of life's lessons are harder to learn, and some amazing opportunities easier to take. The trick is always to understand the consequences of our choices, before it's too late...”
Sales proceeds go to two Australian not for-profit organisations helping disadvantaged children:
the School Volunteer Program ( http://www.svp.org.au) and The Smith Family ( http://www.thesmithfamily.com.au )
Part One Blurb
“What do you do when you lose the one who gave your life meaning? You write about it. You tell the world how amazing it is to love and be loved by someone so special, what love helps you achieve and how it makes you stronger.
adulation and wealth by making the right choices for the right reasons. He lived by the law of reciprocity, a lesson learned on the streets as a teenager with nothing but an unquenchable thirst for knowledge Plagued by the scars of a violent childhood, he created his vision and fought for it. And once he no longer needed to fight for himself, he fought for others.
Yet when Jeff’s dream girl was taken from him and their children by the ignorant act of a jealous misfit from his own home town, the millionnaire realised just how far he had come. Why had he succeeded when so many like him fail? It wasn’t complicated. The secret lay in the endless pursuit of love and wisdom; life’s two magic ingredients. Now Lynn was gone, he resolved to use his remaining days to account for their life in a way that would inspire young people to make his type of choice rather than García’s.
Then after their story was written, he would be free to go after her, to begin the whole incredible journey over again. Everyone has a life singular. One. Unique. Extraordinary.”
Excerpt:
<Scene: Our protagonist, Jeff Diamond and his daughter, Kierney, have arrived home after the trial of his wife’s killer. Kierney has gone to bed, leaving her father alone to contemplate the future.>
“That night, safely back in their Melbourne apartment, the widower lay on his bed in the dark and resumed his own life sentence. Running through his mind were all those years during which Lynn had helped him break out of the obsessive “now or never” anxieties which had gripped him in his teens, as a result of the betrayal and abandonment he had suffered as a child.
How long had it taken before he started to believe in the new mantra of“There’s always tomorrow” which had been bestowed upon him by his beautifu best friend?
Yet there wasn’t always tomorrow, was there? García had seen to that twenty-year sabbatical from his old fears, but now the boy with the death wish was back. For the sake of his children, he knew he must find a way to rise above the despair, or at least make a damned good show of doing so Ryan and Kierney deserved to think positive thoughts about the future, even if he had no interest in it.
Unable to sleep, the loving father quietly walked into the office to switch on his computer and then into the kitchen to make some coffee.
One of the e-mails Jeff had missed while away in Sydney was a summary of the various tribute records that were steadily being released by other prominent artists, all keen to acknowledge the influence Lynn had had on their careers.
Like the memorial service, the list contained virtually every chart-topping musician, including some from Africa and even a couple from China. Once again, the grieving husband felt humbled by the love the world had for him and his dream girl.
In addition to these instant hits, the Melbourne Academy students had written to him to announce their intention to make a film tribute to their favourite School.
Governor, and Qantas had sought permission to use video footage of Lynn and the family, for a tribute to be shown for a month on all in-flight entertainment, just before each news bulletin.
The widower scoffed bitterly at his assistant’s request for approval for these projects to go ahead, and he typed a suitably restrained response to indicate that he could hardly put a stop to people expressing their grief, even though it might be seen to prolong it for everyone else.
Meaning him, he insinuated.
The list of senders’ names in his e-mai inbox also resembled a catalogue of contemporary public life, and the boy from Sydney’s western suburbs still found himself affected deeply when being counted in their number.
All these Very Important Persons had taken the time to write to him about the death of his wife, to express support for the trial and to find out how he was faring.
He couldn’t decide whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. He was grateful for their concern but mostly wished he could simply disappear for the next six months, unti the plight of his family had been relegated to the inner pages of the world’s newspapers and magazines.
The forty-three-year-old leaned back in his black leather executive chair and stared at the ceiling.
An eerie shadow of himself moving among the furniture, elongated by the angle of the illuminated desk lamp, conjured up memories of the nights he would sleep as a boy, behind the piles of contraband stacked up in his family’s living room on the Stones Road unable to face the short journey down the corridor and past his mother’s bedroom door.
OK. That was enough. What had happened to Juan Antonio García’s mother? Why hadn’t she arrived off the boat in Sydney with her husband and sons? Why did he even care? Jeff shook himself out of the obsessive train of thought. The man had killed his wife, and this evening he had received a life sentence to prove it. The widower knew he must learn to accept the guilty verdict as justice. Somehow.
So with what did society expect justice to furnish the partner of a murder victim? The Queen had succeeded in removing one more killer from the streets. Big deal! There were plenty of far more dangerous criminals still roaming free, and with a much greater likelihood of striking again.
The Sydney Mafia remained alive and well, for example, Jeff had no doubt.
What would justice have meant to him, if he had been able to choose its form? This was a tough one. Definitely not financial compensation; a concept that never ceased to intrigue the intellectual when reading about other cases. Was a couple of million dollars really going to ease the suffering after losing a loved one? No amount of money could bring his children’s mother back, and the Diamonds had more than enough money as it was. Their financial whizz-kid, Gerry Blake, had seen to that.
Buy Links
Website (sales proceeds of softcover and e-books go to charity)
Amazon (Kindle version):
http:// myBook.to/ALS1-on-Amazon
Amazon (softcover version)
http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/ SKU-0503662049/A-Life-Singular--Part One.aspx
About the Author
Lorraine Pestell was born in London and has had a successful career as an Information Technology professional in the UK, US, Europe, Singapore and more recently Australia.
She currently resides in Melbourne, Victoria with her 13-year-old dog, Jed. Writing has been a lifelong passion, for work by necessity but mostly for pleasure.
Although working full-time, Lorraine is a passionate volunteer for severa organisations, including serving on the Boards of non-profit organisations being a mentor for The Smith Family's iTrack program and providing project management assistance to The Schoo Volunteer Program. She finds that volunteering time and energy to those less fortunate is an effective antidote to persistent depression and the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The idea for "A Life Singular" originated when Lorraine was 14 years old born out of a fascination for celebrity and the popular music scene.
As life continued, bringing with it significant mental health challenges Lorraine decided to incorporate these experiences into the story.
It has been almost four decades in the making and she spends as much time as possible writing it, whenever time and life events permitted.
Her ambition is to publish a Part of the serial every six months; two down, four to go!
Author Links Website:
Blog:
Facebook:
ALifeSingular Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ LorrainePestel
Book Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=JKN84O5We0o
Giveaway
Author Lorraine Pestell will be giving away ebook copies of A Life Singular– Part One and A Life Singular – Part Two for every day of the tour! Enter with Rafflecopter.
Code:
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Fire and Ice Book Blog Tour
- Guest Post for Books & Chocolate
Lorraine Pestell, author of the
“A Life Singular” serial Rejections, I Renounce Thee
Thank you very much for inviting me to guest post on Books & Chocolate.
I have to admit that my mouth immediately began to salivate at the prospect of such a delicious combination, being a confirmed chocoholic whose other loves are writing, reading, red wine and my ancient, creaky dog!
I am Lorraine Pestell, a native of London who has been living in Australia since the turn of the millennium. Since becoming an author in 2013, my remoteness from the vast majority of readers has been a topic of much soul-searching. This distance manifests itself in many ways.
- By the time most of you read this post I will already be well into tomorrow-
I am a whole lot further south than any American state or European country, even those describing themselves as “deep south”-
It is a blisteringly hot mid-summer for me right now, so while most of you are cuddling up with a good book by the fire, many of our communities are actually ON FIRE- Book blogging is in its absolute infancy in Australia and neighbouring New Zealand.
The majority of North Americans and Europeans never make the journey to discover Australia’s culture, lifestyle humour (and spelling J- With a population only 7% that of the USA living on a continent of the same size as the USA, I am restricted by the lack of local choice of publishers, literary agents, writers groups and of course lovely readers.
Therefore, I am very grateful for the opportunity to showcase my beautifu adopted country in the context of my writing journey. I really hope you enjoy exploring the territory and am looking forward to reading any comments or questions you might wish to post.
As you see from the title of my article, it’s all about rejection.
Oh no! No-one likes rejection. Least of al we writers who fall in love with our characters and immerse ourselves in their adventures, hoping that someday many others might do the same.
When I started focussing more time on writing, which had previously been a hobby and a boring, necessary evil at work, I used to dream of what it would be like to be picked up by a traditional publishing house.
Six-figure advances, to be able to resign from my job, to travel the world making endless public appearances and most importantly, to devote so much more energy to my story.
I began to follow other authors on socia media, finding out that even the best-known celebrity writers I admire had been able to wallpaper their houses with rejection letters before finally having a manuscript accepted Another revelation was attending writers festivals in Perth, Western Australia, where I lived for the last five years before returning to my spiritual home of Melbourne, 4000 kilometres to the east, on the opposite coast.
Perth is the world’s most isolated city which takes even longer to wise up to new inventions! It became painfully apparent at the writers’ workshops that e-books, digital readers and the whole sordid underworld of self-publishing was still frowned-upon by academics and other literati leading me to pursue a life free of rejection. I renounce thee, I renounce thee, I renounce thee!
Since anyone can self-publish at a very reasonable cost, those who fear rejection have many options these days Yet there are still pitfalls to trip us up, and early lessons taught me that it’s definitely unwise to rely on glossy website marketing spiels!
By the way, I am writing a six-part nove serial, “A Life Singular” ( http://www.ALifeSingular.net), which has truly been my life’s work. The first two parts are available, and I’m feverishly trying to stick to my schedule of publishing the remaining four in six-monthly intervals. This will mean that the story’s events wil conclude in contemporary times.
Now I’ve been working in IT for nearly thirty years, which means I know almost nothing about the publishing industry.
Therefore my first instinct was to select a self-publishing company which would hold my hand (albeit cheaply!) through the intricacies of the process: manuscript preparation cover design, deciding on content for the synopsis and biography, et cetera I made my choice based on the information on their website, paid their not insignificant fee and prepared for stardom.
Once I got to grips with the different working style of my Philippino publishing partners, for which my IT career had already given me a headstart, I then had to convince them not to call me in the middle of the night! Australia?
No-one actually lives in Australia, right? That must be a mistake… For the most part, after these initial glitches had been ironed out, the process was fairly painless and I was pleased with the result: total flexibility on content, format distribution and marketing.
But then the fun started! Part Two of my serial was censored Self-publishing houses censor writers work? That wasn’t what I signed up for! What they had omitted to provide was their policy on what they termed“under age sex”; the strict Catholic culture of the Philippines mixed with outdated US moral policing resulted in a character over the age of consent being ruled impermissable. How does that work? People are legally allowed to so something that it’s illegal to write about? Really? Well, yes apparently!
My story absolutely depends on this key character being under eighteen since one of the serial’s key themes is the relentless passage of time and the varying level of control it has on us as we age.
This interpretation of an archaic censorship policy completely negated the premise of Part Two of my storyline, leaving me with a one part serial J.
Lesson number two: ask for the policies read the fine print and ask questions before you part with your money! Despite being promised a partial refund, my credit card is stil waiting…
Undaunted, I turned to Amazon’s CreateSpace to publish Part Two. What an unbelievably smooth process, and free too! Free, free, free! Even ordering printed copies and shipping them to the opposite end of the world was much cheaper. No censorship, no delays, no bizarre misunderstandings and no telephone calls in the wee, smal hours.
I have now employed a wonderfu Norwegian lady at Amygdala Designs to create covers for all six parts and am in the process of re-publishing Part One via CreateSpace too.
My serial is back on track, and I am wiser for the experience: I have more refreshed waking hours to write Part Three and guest posts such as this, more time to eat chocolate and read books, and more time to exercise the chocolate and the slothful but delightfu behaviour away.
But don’t get me wrong, if a large, multi national traditional publishing house wants to offer me a six-figure advance to give up work and write to my heart’s content, who wouldn’t want to be JK Rowling?
Thank you again for sharing my liberating journey to a world free of rejections.
Sales proceeds from my books go to two Australian non-profit organisations helping disadvantaged children: The Smith Family ( www.thesmithfamily.com.au) and the School Volunteer Program( www.svp.org.au) Best wishes from tomorrow.
Thanks for allowing Books & Chocolates to take this journey with you! Best Of Luck!
Thank you so much for featuring my serial on your blog. Best wishes to you and your readers from the hot Melbourne summer!
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