ANNA'S SECRET by @MargaretWestlie #GoodReads #HistFic #Mystery

“Someone’s gone to great pains to leave her comfortable.” Angus stared down at Anna. He was a church elder, and because of his wisdom, the unspoken head of the community. The ten minutes since Neil had arrived with his news had seemed an hour.

“Aye, they have indeed.” Duncan regarded the neatness of Anna’s grey drugget dress arranged modestly around her ankles, her folded hands lying across her abdomen. “It’s more than she deserved.”

“Hush now, Duncan, it’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.”

“Yes, Duncan, she might come back and haunt you,” said Hector, his pale blue eyes quite serious.

“Och, Hector, you’re always thinking of ghosts.” Angus shook his grey head. “The poor thing probably has more to do than come back and haunt the likes of you.”

“She’s likely dancing in the hot place wishing for a bigger fan,” said Duncan.

A giggle erupted from Neil who had been hovering at the periphery of the small group of men. Angus looked hard at Duncan. “No more of that talk now, in front of children.” He squatted down beside Anna. “Is this the way you found her, Neil?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t touch her?”

“No, sir, only to shake her arm to see if she had just fallen asleep. She was stiff with the cold.”

Angus regarded Anna for another moment. “Help me turn her over, then.”

The three men knelt and turned her onto her left side. A small swarm of flies rose from their feast of sticky blood left on the pillow of yellow straw that had supported her head.

“It must have been someone who cared about her to take such trouble with her remains,” said Hector.

“Aye, it’s as if she was being put to bed,” agreed Angus.

“One more time,” said Duncan.

“Who’s going to tell Ian?” asked Hector.

“I will,” said Angus. “He’s my own cousin and we’ve known each other since we were schoolboys.”

“But we’re his cousins, too,” said Duncan.

“Nevertheless, I will tell him. You two will follow with Anna’s remains.”

“We need something to carry her on,” said Hector.

“There’s the door to Murdoch’s house that’s fallen in,” said Neil.

“Run, then, and be quick about it. Go with him, Hector, he’ll not be able to carry it by himself.”

Hector and Neil set out across the field where they had worked side by side with Ian only a few days before. The oats had been thick that summer and the straw had been plentiful, its shadowy roots home to field mice and grass snakes and crickets. Murdoch’s house had long stood vacant, its windows broken and its door fallen off its leather hinges. The roof had blown off in a winter gale three years ago and now the whole structure sat at a crazy angle not quite ready to fall into its cellar.

“You’re lighter than I am,” said Hector. “Go in and get the other end of the door, but mind where you step, it’s none of it very stable.”

The floor creaked and moved even under Neil’s slight weight. A few moments of careful manoeuvring freed the door from its bed of fallen rafters. In a few minutes Hector and Neil returned to the others.

Neil watched as Hector, Duncan and Angus loaded Anna’s remains onto the grey planks of the door. A smear of blood darkened the wood as they positioned her head for the journey home.

Hector shuddered. “Old Annie said this door would be smeared with the blood of the just.”

“Will you stop it, Hector,” said Duncan. “When did she say that?”

“The winter before Murdoch left for the Boston States.”

“That’s years ago, and Annie’s senile.”

“Not then she wasn’t. She said it as plain as day. I was there and I heard her.”

“And what did Murdoch think of all that?”

“There’s some say that’s the reason he left the Island.”

Anna Gillis, the midwife and neighbour in Mattie’s Story, has been found killed. The close-knit community is deeply shaken by this eruption of violence, and neighbours come together to help one another and to discover the perpetrator. But the answer lies Anna’s secret, long guarded by Old Annie, the last of the original Selkirk Settlers, and the protagonist of An Irregular Marriage. Join the community! Read Anna’s Secret and other novels by Margaret A. Westlie.

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Genre – Fiction, mystery, historical

Rating – G

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Website http://www.margaretwestlie.com

John Smith Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars by Roland Hughes #Excerpt #Dystopian

This is definitely my kind of book, the kind that messes with your head and I can't wait to start reading it. Thank you Mr Hughes for sharing an excerpt from your recent release - John Smith Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars 

SK:      Can we talk about the Microsoft Wars now?

JS:       Orwell was right.  Everyone was forced to read his book and yet, it still happened.  In reality, that is all anybody needs to know.

SK:      Orwell?

JS:       <sighs> Back in 1949, an author by the name of George Orwell published a novel titled 1984.  It was a look into the future and basically created the concept in society of Big Brother.  This Big Brother was a government, any government really, which would watch over you like a child.  Your life would be monitored and controlled 24 hours per day.  The dictionary would not grow in size, but shrink, as words and thoughts were continually restricted.  Anyone who possessed a thought against the government, system or the way things were being run would be turned in by friends/family/neighbors as a thought criminal.

One by one, various ministries were set up to control every aspect of life, all for the betterment of society, and most had some plausible excuse bringing them into existence.  There would be monitors installed everywhere, so you were continually watched and controlled.  It was one of the best- selling and most widely talked-about books of all time.  Many movies were created showing various flavors of the book.

SK:      Well, if everybody knew about it, then it surely didn't happen.

JS:       Not in 1984, no.  The final vehicle for control wasn't  chosen until the early 1990s and it took a while to roll out globally.  Sometime during 2010, the governments around the world achieved 95 percent of what they wanted.  The vast majority of citizens carried with them a 24-hour monitoring device, which could be accessed remotely and would, via GPS, give a complete picture of their travels.  Each one had a unique ID.  Best of all, the devices were marketed in such a way as to make people think they were nothing unless they had one and kept it with them at all times.

When it became apparent that some portions of society simply couldn't afford the devices—yes, each citizen paid for their own, and gladly...they even paid to customize them—most governments came up with some kind of ministry or program to ensure each and every person falling into the “cannot afford” category was issued one under some plausible story as “medical need” or “neighborhood watch.”  This removed the poor-person-rejection-of-charity problem.  Nobody felt insulted to receive the devices, since the devices allowed them to communicate with anyone at any time, as long as they knew the other person's unique ID.

SK:      Do you honestly expect me to believe that everybody stood in line to get a unique ID for the government to monitor them 24 hours per day, seven days per week?

JS:       No. They didn't see it like that. They stood in line to get the latest and greatest cellphone with video camera, GPS, speaker phone, Internet access, and every other buzz phrase marketing could think of.  If you don't know what any of that is, it doesn't matter.  All you need to know is the more applications, called apps, it had, the more people wanted it.

Each phone had to have a phone number, which was globally unique so anyone in the world could call anybody else in the world, no matter where they were at the time. It was that “anywhere, anytime” communications capability that was a major selling point. A system of assigning phone numbers to allow for international calling had been in place for many years due to the older land line system, so it was simply leveraged.

Everyone proudly carried and used their government monitoring device.  There were even crime shows on television showing how law enforcement agencies could track a cellphone as long as it was turned on.  What they didn't tell you was that the phone would periodically report in even when turned off, and if certain instructions were waiting, it would turn itself back on, silently, so full monitoring could continue without the owner being aware.

The only thing that could truly stop monitoring was to remove the battery, then turn the cellphone on to drain the hidden reserve.  When you did that, however, the phone was of no use.

SK: So let me get this straight—you're saying that there was a communications network that could monitor every person in the country?

JS: No.  Before the middle of 2011, thanks to some production cost reductions, it was every person on the planet living in any civilized country and even many third world countries.  A basic cellphone could be manufactured and sold for under $20 retail, which put the actual production cost at about $6.  Those countries too poor or with terrain too rough used the satellite phones, which cost a bit more, but leveraged cellphone components to reduce costs.  Both networks were monitored by government agencies, even though commercial companies were providing the services to the cellphone owners.  Even children in third world countries who didn't have food to eat or a bank account in their name had a phone so they could be tracked.

"John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars" is one big interview. It is a transcript of a dialogue between "John Smith" (who, as the title of the book implies is the last known survivor of the Microsoft wars) and the interviewer for a prominent news organization.

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Genre – Dystopian Fiction

Rating – PG

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Website http://johnsmith-book.com/

A LIFE LESS ORDINARY #Excerpt by @VicBernadine #AmReading #ChickLit #Fiction

Manny laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for sleep. She plucked restlessly at the blanket and wished she could relax. Tomorrow was Steph’s first staff meeting. Today she’d reacquainted herself with everyone in the office then spent the rest of the day with Manny being briefed on the details of the work of the branch and any current issues she’d need to resolve within the next few days. That meant Manny’s own work had been delayed, and tomorrow it would be delayed again–and Manny would have to leave early in order to meet Rebecca and Daisy at the lounge for drinks before heading to the club.

Manny took a deep breath and slowly let it out. It wouldn’t be too bad, she staunchly told herself. Steph was young, energetic, and had a shrewd intelligence almost obscured by the cleavage-revealing shirts, short skirts and a figure that could stop traffic–and probably did. Manny wondered if Craig truly understood what he’d gotten himself in for by promoting Steph rather than Manny.

Cleavage and legs.

She mentally rolled her eyes at Harvey’s dry, cynical tones.

Maybe–but that’s not really fair to him, is it? He’s not a bad guy.

But he is just a guy.

She does bring a new perspective–a new way of thinking about things. She’s not a bad choice–and I can’t argue with Craig’s idea that shaking things up could make things better.

And where does that leave you?

No worse off than I was before.

And no better.

If you’re not going to be helpful…

Harvey glanced down at his suddenly ruffled shirt opened to the middle of his muscled chest and skin-tight breeches. He glanced back at her with a ruefully amused smile.

Watched the Ice Pirates again, did you?

Oh, shut up–it’s a classic no matter what anybody else thinks!

I’m just sayin’–if I was real and regularly wore pants this tight, I’m not sure I’d be of any use to you. If you know what I mean.

Manny groaned and shook her head, and Harvey blinked out of existence. She wondered when she’d managed to lose control of a figment of her imagination–one she’d eventually felt compelled to name after an invisible rabbit.

She groaned again, rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. It was going to be another long day tomorrow.

Complete with dancing.

For the last fifteen years, Rose “Manny” Mankowski has been a very good girl. She turned her back on her youthful fancies and focused on her career. But now, at the age of 45, she’s questioning her choices and feeling more and more disconnected from her own life. When she’s passed over for promotion and her much younger new boss implies Manny’s life will never change, something snaps. In the blink of an eye, she’s quit her job, sold her house and cashed in her pension, and she’s leaving town on a six month road trip.

After placing a personal ad for a travelling companion, she’s joined in her mid-life crisis by Zeke Powell, the cynical, satirical, most-read – and most controversial – blogger for the e-magazine, What Women Want. Zeke’s true goal is to expose Manny’s journey as a pitiful and desperate attempt to reclaim her lost youth – and increase his readership at the same time. Leaving it all behind for six months is just an added bonus.

Now, armed with a bagful of destinations, a fistful of maps, and an out-spoken imaginary friend named Harvey, Manny’s on a quest to rediscover herself – and taking Zeke along for the ride.

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Genre – ChickLit, Contemporary Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Blog victoriabernadine.wordpress.com