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HARRY’S TRUTH – A Play in One Act

Are there cosmic truths?

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Are there cosmic truths? Harry thinks there are and he's discovered one which will make life easier, simpler and more fulfilling. He wants to share this epiphany with those he loves but not only do they not want to share in his enlightenment, they feel threatened by what he has to tell them.Much is at stake – careers, lifestyles, power – if Harry pursues his truth.

For Deidre, his wife - all her life she has worked to overcome the stigma of being the daughter of the neighbourhood drunk. She has struggled for social status, “respectability” and to have “nice things”. Now she has attained it and more is within her grasp. She can’t allow Harry to jeopardize it.

For Philip, his partner - his aggressive manner, lack of sophistication, short stature, balding pate, pudgy midriff and loud ties have made him a subject of derision among his colleagues, but landing this multi-million dollar client will change all that. Soon Harry’s condescension and the humiliation of his marriage will be overshadowed by the respect and power corporate success will bring. The “truth” is he only needs Harry to keep it together until the deal closes. After that, he can goddam well wander off into the wilderness if that’s what he wants.

For Joan, Phil's wife - the bitterness of her affair with Harry twenty years ago in college has shaped and defined her life, But not Harry’s. No, he just up and left her in search for “the truth” and she had to survive as best she could on her own. Now he’s about to do it again – turn her world upside down with the same selfish, irresponsible behavior. Maybe she can’t stop this middle-age flight of fancy but she isn’t going to let him influence her teenage daughter with all his nonsense about “following your heart”.

For Alexus, Joan’s daughter - her parent’s marriage is empty of love but filled with material possessions. How could “Uncle Harry’s” truth make anything worse? Her mom’s pushing her to go to college but that’s just more “preparing for life”. Uncle Harry’s truth sounds far more appealing. Better to fill your life with experiences than just more “stuff”.

"A quick and good read, and a play five actors can produce...One can read Harry's Truth as it were a short story."

"New money, fashionable clothes, a lot of work for Harry and Philip, the two business partners who started off selling doves to Chinese restaurants and slowly made it big. Now they're past forty and Harry has had enough. Enough, that's the keyword here: He wants to downsize the firm and his expenses because he knows that more money can't make him happier anymore. "...the interactions between the five of them let us have a glance at everybody's past. A lot gets revealed in every scene. I like the detailed stage instructions and the symbolism in the last scene. One can read Harry's Truth as it were a short story. I'd really like to see this play on stage someday..."

FIVE STARS, C. Widmann, Goodreads review

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 So I took a break from my regularly scheduled October menu of horror reading and read LIFESTYLES OF GODS & MONSTERS for this blog tour, and it was like stepping into an alternate reality. It's a YA fantasy, but it almost defies categorization because of how it brings the old world into the present and breathes new life into ancient myth. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Author: Emily Roberson

Pub. Date: October 22, 2019

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Pages: 352

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD

Sixteen-year-old Ariadne’s whole life is curated and shared with the world. Her royal family’s entertainment empire is beloved by the tabloids, all over social media, and the hottest thing on television. The biggest moneymaker? The Labyrinth Contest, a TV extravaganza in which Ariadne leads fourteen teens into a maze to kill a monster. To win means endless glory; to lose means death. In ten seasons, no one has ever won.

When the gorgeous, mysterious Theseus arrives at the competition and asks Ariadne to help him to victory, she doesn’t expect to fall for him. He might be acting interested in her just to boost ratings. Their chemistry is undeniable, though, and she can help him survive. If he wins, the contest would end for good. But if she helps him, she doesn’t just endanger her family’s empire―the monster would have to die. And for Ariadne, his life might be the only one worth saving.

Ariadne’s every move is watched by the public and predestined by the gods, so how can she find a way to forge her own destiny and save the people she loves?

MY REVIEW

This is an astoundingly clever mash-up of Greek mythology, celebrity culture (think 'Keeping Up with The Kardashians'), and the Hunger Games; altogether the story of Ariadne and Theseus is told, where the gods are under the lens 24/7 just like Khloe and Kim, and ratings are always king. The monster is the Minotaur, Ariadne's brother, a tragic character, who is supposed to be killed by whoever solves the maze. Ariadne is caught between helping her new-found love or helping her family, with everything having been written by the gods.

Life's tricky when your dad is King of Crete.

It's kind of nauseating to read about Greek gods and goddesses caught up in the trappings of modern life, of cell phones, celebrity gossip, and social media, BUT its also really fun. Suspend your disbelief for a little while and imagine Ariadne with an iPhone. She is also a strong heroine in this novel who carries the whole storyline, making you root for her the whole way through.

Author Roberson is making Greek myth accessible for a newer generation at the same time questioning the way we value celebrity; she has written something decidedly clever and unique. Her writing is provocative without being too obvious, fand it's both funny and intelligent.

Purists may have a hard time with a book like this but it's hard not to get caught up in the idea of it. If you liked the Hunger Games, like Greek myths and can see the funny side of celebrity culture, give this is a go.

ABOUT EMILY

EMILY ROBERSON is the author of LIFESTYLES OF GODS & MONSTERS (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2019). She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Emily has been a bookseller in Little Rock, a newspaper reporter in Vicksburg, a marketing manager in Boston, and a writer in Chapel Hill and Dallas. She graduated from Brown University and has a master’s degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin. She now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with her husband, three sons and no pets.

You can find her on the web on instagram @robersonemilym and on twitter @RobersonEmily.

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Image by: Laura Kellerman photography

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ENTER THE GIVEAWAY!

3 winners will receive finished copies of LIFESTYLES OF GODS & MONSTERS, US only.

ENTER HERE!

*Thank you to Rockstar Book Tours for this blog tour!

Lethal Lifestyles

by LynDee Walker
Book 6 of A Nichelle Clarke Crime Thriller

I'm having a hard time deciding how to feel about this book.  On the one hand, this was an exciting, fast-paced read where the action just keeps the story moving forward.  On the other hand, you once again get Nichelle spending a lot of her time racing against the clock, the upper administration, her rivals, and now other mysterious higher powers, to find the truth in a murder mystery.  And once again, law enforcement is conveniently absent with no power to do any true investigating.

While I love that Nichelle is such a strong, resourceful heroine, I'm also exhausted after reading this book (and not only because I kept at it when I probably should have been sleeping).  There was SO MUCH going on in this book, and so much going on in Nichelle's life already, that I'm frankly kind of getting tired of the constant upward battle that she's facing off with with her weasel-y publisher.  And while I understand that the rivalries are fierce and probably necessary between her and other ambitious reporters, sometimes the battles get a little too catty for my liking... and maybe too repetitive.

BUT, on the other hand, I really DID enjoy the mystery in this book; sans all the office drama, I think I would have really loved all the action, the investigation, and all the strange twists that were thrown in.  I also loved that Nichelle and Kyle could team up and investigate the case together without romance or hurt feelings getting in the way--they DO make a pretty good team.

Unfortunately, speaking of the romance, I'm STILL not feeling Joey, the mysterious mafia love interest, now serious significant other.  I just don't see enough of him and don't know enough of him to care about this love story.  It's been six books into the series, and Joey is really taking the tall, dark, mysterious, and handsome love interest trope to a new level.  At some point, I feel like we need to start getting to know Joey more if I'm to believe that Nichelle and Joey are having a serious relationship outside of physical attraction.  And because of that, I'm actually warming up to Kyle a little bit more... even if I still like Nichelle's co-worker Grant Parker more.

At least we get to see Kyle on a more personal level and we're getting to know him better with each book.  His cockiness is also starting to grow on me, even if his over-protective streak is a bit tiring.

Apparently I'm hard to please.

As far as the series itself goes, I'm still very much enjoying it, so I'll definitely continue reading, even if I'm not planning on jumping into the very next book right away.


***

Booklikes-opoly 2019

Roll #20:
Square: The Stay-cation 6 | Read a book set in your home town, state, or country, or that you checked out of your local library, or that has been on your (physical) bookshelves since last summer.

How it fits:  This book takes place in my home country (U.S.A.)
Page Count: 372
Cash: $3

How I came to write my sixth novel, Abandoned Dreams

Son or daughter, sibling, spouse, parent, employee, employer - these are just some of the roles we have either been born into, had bestowed upon by us by others or have even sought out for ourselves.

But do these roles, these facades really represent the person we are - our hopes, dreams, fears, and insecurities. In accepting these roles are we masking our real personalities - intentionally or otherwise.

Sometimes roles are thrust upon us because of circumstances or our own mistaken actions.

When I was eighteen my best friend got his girlfriend pregnant. Today you would say my best friend and his girlfriend got pregnant, but back then it was different. Quickly, and not necessarily of his own choosing he took on the roles of husband and father.

Roles can change your life. Suddenly you're a different person - or are you?

What if you had the opportunity to start over, or more precisely take up where you left off?

This is a theme that has haunted me for a long time and one I took on in my sixth novel Abandoned Dreams. Here's the story:

At twenty-seven years-old, George Fairweather is “the voice of his generation”, a poet whose talent has garnered him accolades from the literary establishment and homage from the disenfranchised “hippie” youth of the late 1960’s.

George is the embodiment of the times with his long hair, rebellious attitude and regular use of mind-expanding psychedelic drugs.

Then the sudden and tragic death of Fallon, his friend, his muse and his lover shatters his world, his sanity and nearly ends his life.

Katherine is the one person who stands between George and destruction. A hanger-on, a groupie, a go-for, she’s a woman George never considered – for anything. Katherine idolizes George and makes it her personal mission to keep him alive, doing whatever it takes, twenty-four seven.

Because of Katherine’s sacrifice and devotion George slowly begins to mend his soul and rebuild a life. But guilt and gratitude make it a much different life then he’d previously led.

Thirty-seven years later, George Fairweather is a husband, father and grandfather and a successful copywriter at an advertising agency. Another death, his wife Katherine’s, is about to change his life again.

Can dreams be resurrected? Can a life abandoned be taken up again?

Will they let him? Is it worth it?

I wanted a challenge with this novel. I wanted to stretch myself as a writer. Because of the nature of plot I decided that the narrative would almost entirely be told by people other than the protagonist, George Fairweather. I wanted George to be an enigma. Different characters would see him differently depending on the role they cast him in - father, grandfather, lover, friend.

In the end, his true personality would emerge - or not. I wasn't sure.

I wanted to present a scene and then have different characters interact and reflect on it in their own voice. To achieve this I needed to develop deep character profiles apart from the novel.

The characters I created were complex and multi-dimensional as well as being different ages and genders and having different motivations.

Then I outlined the plot, dropped them in and hung on.

Abandoned Dreams apparently didn't wake anyone up. It has garnered less response than any of my previous books - and that's saying something.

I've been a HUGE fan of this series from the word go, and I keep waiting for a mediocre book because statistically, every series has at least one.  Lethal Lifestyles wasn't it, although at the beginning, I thought it might be.

I'm not a fan of friend-in-peril storylines; they are the most used trope in cozy mysteries and I was over them years ago.  I'm also not a fan of weddings as a setting, so when chapter 1 starts with a dead guy at a rehearsal dinner and the friend is in peril by the end of chapter 3, I figured I was going to have to work at this one.

Uh-uh.  Not even a little bit.  The wedding theme was tucked firmly to the back after 5 or 6 chapters and what came next was just more of a thriller than a cozy mystery.  Not in the non-stop, bullets flying, TSTL kind of way, but thriller in sense that this is an incredibly complicated mystery and one of the first ones I've read that comes close to how difficult I imagine it must be in real life to solve a crime.  Nichelle would find one thread of the mystery, follow it, and find instead of an answer, another thread that took of in another direction.  This was NOT a linear plot, - there were at least 4 motives for this guys death - but man, it was NEVER boring.

I deducted a half-star because there was one small moment that felt way too coincidental, so it stuck out, and because there was a pivotal moment when the motive (if not the killer - had no idea about that until the end) became clear and it took Nichelle much longer to clue into it than it should have.  But these were small things.  The editing was, as far as I could tell, perfect.

In general, I can't say enough good things about this series; as a crime reporter Nichelle is in the perfect position be an amateur sleuth and she gets most of her facts from following the paper trails and doing legitimate interviews with people she reports on.  She has a lot of strong female friendships and a great romance in the making.

The only drawback is having to wait another year for the next one.