A haunting Anglo-Saxon time-slip of mystery
and romance
“Julia does an incredible job of setting up
the idea of time-shift so that it’s believable and makes sense” - Amazon review
“Viv/Lady Vivianne … lovely identifiable
heroine in both time periods….I love her strength and vulnerability. And
Rory/Roland is simply gorgeous!” – Melissa Morgan
“gripping … a very real sense of threat and
danger, an enthralling mystery … a wholly convincing romance, across both
timelines” - Anne Williams
Purchase Link - http://my.Book.to/ASOTA
Excerpt
A Shape on the Air is
the story of two women 1500 years apart. Can they help each other to achieve
their greatest desire? And what if the world they want is not the one that's
best for them? University lecturer in medieval
studies, Dr Viv DuLac, is devastated when her partner walks out and threatens
her home. About to lose everything,
drunk and desperate, her world quite literally turns upside down as she finds
herself in the body of the fifth century Lady Vivianne, who is struggling with
the shifting values of the Dark Ages and her forced betrothal to the brutish Sir Pelleas. He is implicated in
the death of her parents. Haunted by both Lady Vivianne and by Viv's own
parents' death and legacy, can Viv
unravel the web of mystery that surrounds and connects their two lives,
and bring peace to them both? A haunting story of lives intertwining across the
ages, of the triumph of the human spirit and of love lost and found.
This extract from my
book A Shape on the Air is from the second chapter, when Dr Viv DuLac,
devastated by her partner’s betrayal, has fallen into the dark Cooney’s mere at
midnight and finds herself in a different time …
A deep male voice came faintly from far away and slowly entered her consciousness.
“Lady
Vivianne!”
Viv
felt a strong arm grip her waist and then she was floating, being drawn gently
through the water. She gasped for breath as she rose, and her mouth filled with
balmy air, sweet and fragrant. Oddly, it was light, and the sun was just
starting to sink into dusk.
“What
…? In heaven’s name …?” Viv spluttered,
as the man lifted her up and over his broad shoulder and, splashing through the
shallows, carried her to the bank. The world swirled around her and she found
it hard to focus. She tried to draw in her breath but her chest felt too tight.
She was trapped against him. Her body felt strange, her dripping sleeves seemed
wider than they should be, her jeans somehow flapping against her legs. She was
soaked through but yet the mere seemed to be calling her back again. She tried
to twist round to it but the man only held her tighter and laughed. She grabbed
hard at his shoulder and a piece of wet cloth tore away in her hand. It felt
strange, not a fabric she was familiar with, thick and closely woven, but not
rough.
He
lowered her to her feet and grinned down at her. His eyes were dark like smoke,
skin olive and exotic, and he ruffled his long dark curly hair to flick away
the water that soaked it. She stared at his large wide mouth and the dark
shadow that swept his chin and upper lip. His smile was intimate as if they
shared a secret. For a moment, Viv felt her brain somersault. Her mind was
drifting in and out of consciousness.
She
was aware of movement around her and she tore her eyes away from him. There
were people, men, their figures moving out of focus behind him, their voices
echoing as if from far away. There were trees that she didn’t remember being
around the mere. It seemed wilder than it should have been. Yet everything within a few feet of her was
exceptionally bright and clear, the light picking out all detail: the veins on
the leaves, the knobbles and crevices of the tree bark starkly sharpened in
high relief. Beyond that, all she saw was misty and swirling.
As
she clenched her hands into fists she realised that she still held the torn
fragment of cloth, and made to thrust it into the pocket of her jeans. The
pocket was no longer there. She looked down and saw that she wore a long skirt,
the dark wet fabric clinging to her legs. Good god, what was happening?
Viv
looked back at the tall figure before her. He was dressed in some kind of loose
cream tunic, dripping with lake water, with a brown leather belt that was
finely tooled in gold, and as she stared he pulled on his boots that he had
left at the water’s edge.
She
looked wildly around her. The other men were dressed likewise in tunics, though
not so fine. There were horses higher up
on the bank-top; she could hear their loud snorting and feel the juddering of
the earth as they stamped their hooves.
What
was this? What was going on? Her brain
didn’t seem to be working properly; she felt confused, dull-witted. The sun was
sinking behind the trees, leaving a trail of bloody streaks, red and orange, in
the sky. Yet she had stumbled into the lake in the dark. She distinctly
remembered the church clock striking midnight. She recalled staggering, a hand on her back, clutching for
the branches to halt her fall into the dark water, floundering, or being
pushed? But now, her clothes … her peculiar-feeling body … these people.
Her
hand found a pouch hanging from her waist within the folds of her soaking skirt
and she thrust the fabric into it, automatically hiding it, though she had no
idea why she needed to.
“Sir
Roland,” murmured one of the men, holding out to the dark-eyed man a large heavily embroidered crimson cloak which
her rescuer swept around his shoulders and pinned with a huge gold brooch,
covering the torn seam. As he did so, he glanced at Viv and smiled intimately
again, his glance insolently drifting down to the clinging folds of her skirt
and the pouch where the fragment of cloth nestled. Then his eyes lifted to find
hers. Embarrassed, she turned away.
Author Bio
–
Julia Ibbotson is fascinated by the medieval
world and the concept of time. She sees her author brand as a historical
fiction writer of romantic mysteries that are evocative of time and place,
well-researched and uplifting page-turners. Her current series focuses on early
medieval time-slip/dual-time mysteries. Julia read English at Keele University,
England, specialising in medieval language/ literature/ history, and has a PhD
in socio-linguistics. After a turbulent time in Ghana, West Africa, she became
a school teacher, then a university academic and researcher. Her break as an
author came soon after she joined the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme in 2015, with a
three-book deal from Lume Books (Endeavour) for a trilogy (Drumbeats) set in
Ghana in the 1960s. She has published five other books, including A Shape on
the Air, an Anglo-Saxon timeslip mystery, and its two sequels The Dragon Tree
and The Rune Stone. Her work in progress is the first of a new series of
Anglo-Saxon mysteries (Daughter of Mercia) where echoes of the past resonate
across the centuries. Her books will appeal to fans of Barbara Erskine, Pamela
Hartshorne, Susanna Kearsley, and Christina Courtenay. Her readers say:
‘Julia’s books captured my imagination’, ‘beautiful story-telling’, ‘evocative and
well-paced storylines’, ‘brilliant and fascinating’ and ‘I just couldn’t put it
down’.
Social
Media Links –
Amazon Author page: Author.to/JuliaIbbotsonauthor
Author website & blog: www.juliaibbotsonauthor.com
Facebook
(author): https://www.facebook.com/JuliaIbbotsonauthor
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/JuliaIbbotson
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julia.ibbotson
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/juliai1/
Goodreads author page: https://www.goodreads.com/juliaibbotson
Thank you for featuring my novel, A Shape on the Air, today. It's the first of the Dr DuLac series and I hope that you and your readers enjoy it and also the next two published so far! Much appreciated!
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome! :)
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