When Destiny Calls

On July 19, 2021July 18, 2021 By Sherrie CroninIn features and reviews, history, women5 Comments

Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Tricia McGill and her time-travel romance novel, When Destiny Calls.

Author’s description

From one crazy period in history to another.

Whisked by some unseen force from the Covid-19 ridden world of 2020 in Australia, to an equally horrific time in the past, carer Chloe Simpson finds herself in North London during the Blitz of 1940. Could be that Chloe became too immersed in the stories related to her by Minnie, a woman in the Australian nursing home where she cares for elderly people? Stories about the dreadful days and nights endured during the Blitz.

Engrossed in the stories surrounding photographs in 98-year-old Minnie Clacton’s cherished album, back in time Chloe meets up with the young Minnie plus her own Great Great Grandmother Aggie.

In the midst of an air raid, Chloe is discovered, wet and confused, by a man and his dog. A man and his canine companion who coincidentally appeared prominently in the photo album alongside the young Minnie and Aggie. Did Chloe simply answer the call of Destiny?

My Review

This is a difficult book to review without giving too much away, so I’m going to start out by saying it is a well told story with likable characters and then approach it in chunks in hopes of doing both the story and my review justice.

First, I loved the opening chapter. I’ve got a soft spot for compassionate care givers like Chloe and the set up was well done. I’m going to love this book, I thought.

Then in the second chapter, Chloe hits her head and goes back in time. Really? I suppose there are only so many non-technical ways to move characters about in time, but as life-long science fiction reader, I’ve had it with this one. Ugh, I thought. Am I going to make it through this book?

In the next several chapters, we get two things. One is a fair bit of fish out of water humor as Chloe deals with the seamed nylon stockings and sanitary pads of the 1940s. The other is a surprisingly hot sweet romance. (As in you don’t see them do much but it really works. ) I flew through this part and I think most reader’s will.

Then, you get chapter after chapter of Chloe’s life. It’s a pleasant life, with some ups and down, but it’s not the sort of life that makes for much of a novel. She’s likable, he’s likable, and I was delighted the two of them were happy, but at this point I’m turning the pages to find out what I really want to know. What’s the deal with the time travel? What is the universe doing? Why did this happen? What’s the meaning of life? I want answers.

Suffice to say, I didn’t feel I got them. I know, explaining how the universe works is fraught with problems, but this author didn’t try.

Then I realized she never intended to. She wanted to write a sweet romance book that started in the 1940’s and ended up with lots of happy people. The going back in time (I wouldn’t call it time travel) was an artifact for making the story happen.

I wanted to read science fiction (which I prefer over romance) and I wanted intricate explanations of the nature of time and the cosmos. So, I didn’t get the book I wanted.

However, I do think the author did a fine job of writing the book she wanted to write. I DNF a lot of books, and I made it to her last page based not only on my curiosity, but also on the likability of her characters, her competent story telling, and the sweetness of the world she created. I suspect those more inclined to overlook the entire time travel thing and enjoy the author’s focus will love this book!

About the Author

Award winning author Tricia McGill spent her early days in Highbury, London, England, and moved to Australia many years ago, settling near Melbourne. The youngest in a large, loving family she was never lonely or alone. Surrounded by avid readers, who encouraged her to read from an early age, is it any wonder she became a writer. Although her published works cross sub-genres, romance is always at their heart.

Tricia’s love of animals has always shown up in her books. Tricia devotes as much time and money as she can spare to supporting worldwide conservation groups and is passionate about supporting those who do all they can to preserve our wildlife for future generations. She also volunteers for a local community group that helps disabled adults and children to connect to the internet with provided computer equipment. When people ask what she does in her spare time, she is heard to ask, “Spare time, what is that?”

Find the Author

http://www.triciamcgill.com
http://triciamg.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/authorTriciaMcGill

Buy the Book

https://bookswelove.net/mcgill-tricia/
http://www.triciamcgill.com

Yes, there is a giveaway

The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Enter here to win.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

My Favorite Excerpt

I shivered. The cold seemed to seep into my bones. How long had I lain there in the rain? I clutched Minnie’s album to my breast. Right now, it seemed the only normal thing in this crazy scenario. Feeling as if I should say something to break the silence, I blurted, “I just had a thought. Perhaps they put me in my car and then decided to dump me here near a farm before they took off. Is it your property?”

All I heard from him was a soft noise that sounded like a cough or could have been a huff of disbelief. I stumbled and he caught my arm to stop me falling. It was still too dark to see his features well, and his peaked cap was pulled down low on his forehead. I had a fleeting feeling that I might be dreaming and he was a figment of my imagination. “My name is Chloe, by the way,” I said. “What’s your tag?”

Turning around, I caught a grin and wondered if he was laughing at me. “You don’t talk like anyone around here, miss. Where do you hail from, and I am Bill, by the way. You already know Tiger there.” He carried on walking.

We seemed to be getting no nearer to a homestead, so I asked, “As a matter of curiosity, where are you leading me? Oh, I’m Australian—obviously,” I tacked on as if it needed explanation.

Thank you!

Tricia McGill — we appreciate your sharing your book When Destiny Calls with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.

And the winner, she is ….

On August 24, 2019August 27, 2019 By Sherrie CroninIn women6 Comments

The world of science fiction has changed. When my father introduced me to his favorite books decades ago, there was not a female author to be found. Not long after, I discovered Ursula Le Guin, Kate Wilhelm and Vonda McIntyre on my own. So, women could write this stuff. Well then, that was what I was going to do someday, because I ‘d already been told my first career choice of becoming an astronaut was “not realistic.”

It wasn’t many years at all before women did go into space. As I grew into adulthood, the list of women who wrote speculative fiction grew by at least an order of magnitude. In fact, it has now increased to the point where five of the six 2019 Hugo nominees for best novel were women. Wow.

One of the presenters was artist Afua Richardson, comic book illustrator for Marvel’s World of Wakanda

Check out the list of nominees below.

It should also be noted that Artificial Condition by Martha Wells took best novella this year; If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again by Zen Cho won best novelette; A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harrow won best short story and best series went to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers books. Yes, they are all women.

The Calculating Stars Mary Robinette Kowal	Winner
Spinning Silver Naomi Novik	Nominee
Revenant Gun Yoon Ha Lee	Nominee
Record of a Spaceborn Few Becky Chambers	Nominee
Space Opera Catherynne M. Valente	Nominee
Trail of Lightning Rebecca Roanhorse	Nominee

It’s hard to find a simple explanation for this change. One could guess it is because the world has become more welcoming to women pursuing dreams of all kinds. But that should result in something more like woman being half the nominees, not most of them.

It is true women that as a group tend to be more verbal than men. (Yes, men tend to be more mathematical. I’ve no quarrel with statistics, only a quarrel with extending those generalizations into making assumptions about individuals, or to making assumptions about why the tendencies exist in the first place. Life is complicated.)

Anyway, today’s world of SFF writers could, in part, reflect the fact that women make up a larger percentage of the writing and the reading community in general.

Another theory is that society is more supportive of women then men who write variations of speculative fiction that shade into romance. This gives women writers (for once) a larger menu of styles and subject matter to chose from. I can see this perhaps accounting for a larger number of female SFF writers over all, but few if any of the female-authored pieces nominated for awards could be considered part of this hybrid romance genre.

Maybe it’s this simple. Most of the best SFF last year was written by women, and that’s that.

I was happy that my particular favorite, The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal, won best novel. For those of you not familiar with it, it is part of collection of stories (and two novels) set in an alternate world in which women were admitted into the USA’s initial space program. Guess you can see why I’d have a fond spot in my heart for this premise.

I watched Mary Robinette Kowal’s acceptance speech from my perch in the spotlights. (I was a volunteer running the spotlight for the show.) Astronaut Dr Jeanette Epps was on stage with her and it was a one of those weird maybe-all-is-right-with-the-universe-after-all moments. I loved it!

(Read more about my Worldcon adventures at An Irish Worldcon: I’m here!, at Feeling at home, at A New Irish Experience and at Forward into the Past.)

Better or worse?

On October 7, 2014 By Sherrie CroninIn women

One of the unexpected advantages of deciding to write novels is that even introverts like me find themselves making “writing buddies” online. These kindred souls are often at about the same point in the journey, and they often write in a similar genre and have compatible philosophies about writing and maybe even about life. You might read and critique each others works, you certainly exchange “how to” information and encourage each other, and then you often move on. I remember each such buddy and remain thankful for their camaraderie as I strode into a frightening new world.

Brian Rush was one. I liked his fiction; it tended more toward sword and sorcery fantasy than mine and it impressed me that while he was clearly a guy, his tales included strong believable females who had parts in the story that went well beyond merely love interest or spirit guide. He also writes a small amount of non-fiction, published and on his blog and I have enjoyed some of it at least as well.

Working full time and writing part time doesn’t leave room for a lot else, so I don’t communicate with these folks very often now. Yesterday I had occasion to read Brian’s blog. Looks like he has done a lot of writing lately, which is great, and lo and behold there he was posting about one of my favorite topics: Are things getting better?

I was once asked if I had a time machine and could go anywhere in history, where would I go? Well the first answer is that I would never under any circumstances get into a time machine, and if you want to know why you will just have to read my novel z2. But if forced into one at gunpoint, I’d set the dials for the future. There really isn’t a time in the past in which I would care to live.

My family was incredulous at my answer. (I should point out that this was a discussion being held over Thanksgiving dinner). We had people at the table lined up for ancient Greece, Victorian England and somewhere when the druids were running things in Ireland.

“You have no idea what horrible things you might be heading into,” I was told. This is true. In the past the air was cleaner, the food was natural, and nobody checked their cell phone fifty times a day. We also had scurvy, slavery, open sewers, and societies in which religious tolerance was considered the work of the devil.

“Hello,” I said. “Has anyone noticed that I am female?” “Good point,” my daughter said, catching on quickly and reconsidering her one way ticket to the Italian Renaissance.

“There has not been a single point in history of which I am aware in which I would have been granted the rights, opportunities and respect that I enjoy today,” I elaborated for the rest of the group, whether they wanted to hear it or not. “Not that today is perfect. It’s just somewhere between better and a whole lot better.”

I said something like that anyway. I do believe it, too. In spite of the many stupid things we continue to do as a species (and my new book d4 coming out in two months is about this very subject!) we are improving. Learning. Becoming more tolerant and compassionate. Optimism is hard to maintain when you pull out the magnifying glass and examine the day to day news. On the other hand, it is impossible not to feel, when you step back and look at history.

Brian apparently agrees. He has written a great series of four blog posts about why he chooses not to write dark fiction beginning here and ending with this post on optimism. He concludes that “today, fewer people die from violence as a fraction of total deaths than ever before. Famine and epidemic have both declined as well. The general trend is that things have gotten better, and barring a collapse of civilization, we have every reason to expect that they will continue to get better. Take someone from 500 years in the past, pop him into a time machine to the year 2014, and his first impression on seeing the world of today would be that he had found Utopia.”

Well said, Brian. I’ll take my chances with implanted chips, genetically engineered food and climate change any day, as long as I get to be a full-fledged person when I get out of my time machine. Give me the freedom to be what I choose, and I can always use my influence to fight for a better world.