FORWARD TO CAMELOT
Susan Sloate & Kevin
Finn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Time Travel Thriller
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
RETURN
TO A VANISHED WORLD, in this new edition of the beloved time-travel thriller:
Extensively
researched, filled with real but still unknown tales of history, FORWARD TO
CAMELOT takes readers on a grand adventure, filled with danger, deceit and
real-life heroes.
October
2000
Soap-opera
actress Cady Cuyler knows she is not brave, adventurous or accomplished; that's
Sheila, the glamorous EMT she plays on TV. But too many other people think
she's Sheila, which Cady doesn't understand: Recently divorced from her agent,
Cady's life consists of playing Sheila and providing a safety net to her mother
Sandra, who has hardly noticed her since her birth; she's still lost in grief
over the disappearance of her husband years before in Dallas. Cady's deepest
wish is to somehow earn her mother's love and attention.
When
a profound tragedy alters her own life and her job abruptly ends, Cady is
offered the chance of a great adventure: She agrees to recover the Bible owned
by JFK, which was used to swear in LBJ as president, on November 22, 1963, the
same day her father, whom she idolized, disappeared forever. To do this, she
must travel back in time to the Dallas of 1963, a dangerous world filled with
dangerous secrets, and meet the man with the most dangerous secret of all--he
plans to assassinate President Kennedy during his upcoming visit to Dallas.
For
the first time in her life, Cady, the armchair adventurer, can live an
adventure more exciting than anything Sheila ever did. She might even change
her own destiny... if she dares.
Time
can be altered. Lives can be altered.
History
can be altered...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt
Two:
John gazed around the room. “I don’t believe history is
written in stone. I think if you add or take away certain elements—well—you’d
have to be looking at a whole different outcome. Not the big events,” he said
hastily. “I don’t mean you could stop a war or anything, but if your father
hadn’t disappeared, your mother would have been a lot happier, wouldn’t she? I
mean, that’s why she—why things happened the way they did.” He seemed to be
having trouble presenting the idea, and it made me like him. “If you could
prevent your father’s disappearance, then your own life could be—” He gave me a
quick glance, and I felt as though he knew every heartache I’d felt in the last
20 years. It was exhilarating, it was extraordinary… it was frightening.
I thought of Mel telling me I could fly on my own.
I thought of the lack of opportunities that awaited me
elsewhere.
I thought of this man who had dropped into my life, the
first one in years who had aroused any feelings in me that could be called
passionate.
I looked at him, and I could feel a warm, inviting smile
stretching across my face. I had a direction. I had a plan. I had a
chance—which is all we can ever ask. “All right,” I said. “Where do I sign?”
John’s face lit with relief, and Mel, seeing that smile,
began to sing “Fly Me to the Moon”.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Review: Cady was an actress on a daytime
drama series. Unbeknownst to her, she had shot her last scene for the show,
killing off her character for good. Now what?
The next project she’s offered was
the role of a lifetime: a treasure hunter in search of John F. Kennedy’s bible
from 1963. For real! What?! Like actual time-travel? Cool! But the real reason
she whole-heartedly agreed to this was for the chance to stop her father from
mysteriously disappearing in 1963—the day the president gets assassinated.
Intrigue!
Right away, this had an
interesting premise. Some of the scientific stuff got a little too technical
for me and some of the narrative can be way too long. But I do like a good
time-travel story. Imagine travelling to 1963 and meeting your parents before you
were born. Cady really gets into the mystery that leads to her father’s
disappearance and the reader eagerly follows along. Surprisingly, the man Cady
meets in 1963 was not the father her mother boasted about. The man she was a
cold, domineering, promiscuous brute that hated the president. What was going
on? Could the missing woman from the company be connected to the dead woman?
What was her father’s company hiding that caused their downfall?
A surprising twist was Cady
meeting and confiding with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man that would be responsible
for the president’s assassination.
This story was generally
compelling, but it was a long and somewhat complex read. About halfway through,
you become a little daunted by the lengthy narratives and trivialities, which
brought this down to a 3.5 for me. When does she start looking for the bible?
I would’ve liked this to have been
shorter and quicker as this was much too long. Also, the cover was so simple
that it could’ve been spiffed up to be more eye-catching and alluring. But,
overall, this story kept me reading from page-to-page for a good portion. Good
concept and pretty good read!
Rating: 3.5 stars
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
SUSAN
SLOATE is the author or co-author of 24 published books, including 2 previous
editions of Forward to Camelot, the #2 Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release
Stealing Fire and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new
genre: the self-help novel. The original 2003 edition of Forward to Camelot
went to #6 on Amazon, was honored in 3 literary competitions and was optioned
by a Hollywood company for film production.
Susan
has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s
biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way, which won the silver medal in the 2007
Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to
her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest for The History Channel. She
has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, edited the popular Kyle &
Corey young-adult book series, managed two political campaigns and founded an
author’s festival in her hometown outside Charleston, SC. Visit her at
https://susansloate.com.
A
Bronx native, KEVIN FINN began his professional writing career as a television
news- and sportswriter just six months out of high school, moving on to produce
& report for daily news shows, features, documentaries and live sports
events. Over the past thirty years, he's established himself as a screenwriter
and has mentored young writers for the American Film Institute's Writer's
Workshop Program, as well as being a noted freelance script consultant and a
novelist.
Equally
adept as a cameraman and editor, he currently produces and films local media
content in the Princeton, NJ, area, while continuing to mentor new and younger
writers, including the heralded web series The News Kids. His first Young Adult
novel, 200 METERS, will be published later in 2016, and the long-awaited novel
BANNERS OVER BROOKLYN is scheduled for release early in 2017.
Follow
Kevin on Twitter @finnkv.
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