Blog Tour: FORWARD TO CAMELOT by Susan Sloate & Kevin Finn

FORWARD TO CAMELOT

Susan Sloate & Kevin Finn

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GENRE:  Time Travel Thriller

 

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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...

 

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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”.

 

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 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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GIVEAWAY 

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