Welcome to the Virtual Book Tour for Shelf Life!
About the Book:
Young bookseller Cathy Finn is having a bad day. First, there's the assassin's bullet. Then comes the realisation that she's been living in a work of fiction. Worse, she wasn't even the main character.
Cathy's quiet, bit-part life may be over, but her troubles are only beginning. Her last day on Earth is also her first as a citizen of New Tybet. For over four hundred years, its people have been rescuing those destined to die in other narratives, but now the system is faltering. A saboteur is at work and Cathy will have to stop him if she’s ever going to find a way home. Failure could maroon her forever and spark a revolution that sets all the worlds of literature ablaze.
Book Details:
Print Length: 338 pages
Publisher: Mirror World Publishing; 1 edition (http://www.mirrorworldpublishing.com)
Publication Date: July 17, 2019
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B07SNGW2Z7
Genre(s): Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Literary Mashup, Parallel Worlds, Comedy
Exclusive Excerpt:
Hitch had been fitter once. In his younger days he
could tear about and scurry up trees with the best of them. Now, too much booze
and too much fast food meant that eight flights of concrete steps could very
nearly kill him. By level four, his lungs were tight, his calves were cramping
and his eyes were stinging with sweat. By level six, his heart was hammering on
his ribs like an angry neighbour and his mind was beginning to fixate on all
the many inventive horrors he might one day inflict upon the building's
maintenance manager. He completed the final ascent without actually vomiting
but by the time he reached the door of room 801, he was far from the living
embodiment of youthful vim.
He retained just enough wit and energy to pause and
look about him. A thin, disdainful-looking cat regarded him from the flickering
light of the passage. Hitch stared back at it for a long moment and, after an
exchange of dark looks, concluded he could probably take it in a fair fight.
The cat seemed to agree. After an ostentatious stretch, it turned and padded
away.
Breathing hard, but feeling that he'd made his point,
Hitch watched it go - its slow retreat revealed in zoetrope motion by the
irregular winking of the lights. It wasn't nice here. The passage smelled damp.
The wallpaper curled at the corners like pencil shavings. Lacking only a taped
outline of a human figure upon the floor, it looked the kind of place where
forensic scientists might spend a lot of time.
Shaking his head, he inhaled deeply, turned to the
door and rapped out the three-two-four tattoo that announced him as a friend.
Footsteps. A second or two later, the peephole
flickered.
"Oh God. It's you." It was a woman's voice.
It lacked joy.
Hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, Hitch gazed at
the unblinking circle of glass and said nothing. Gusting sheets of rain lashed
the stairwell windows behind him - a fitting fanfare - but only silence and
inactivity ensued.
Several uneventful moments later, he began to wonder
about his tactics. He'd hoped that standing there rock-still might make him
look a little bit cool or mysterious, but now the thought occurred to him that
she might just have walked away. Cats were one thing, but he wasn't sure how
long he could keep trying to outstare a door.
At last, however, there came a series of metallic
scrapes and scratchings, the squeal of unoiled hinges and a widening rectangle
of orange light.
A cheerless face looked back at him. "I suppose
you want to come in."
"Hallie?" He followed her into an atmosphere
that was ripe with cheese, garlic, and resentment. "I thought it was you.
What are you doing in a dung-hole like this?"
"Shut the door."
Hitch bolted it shut and reset the small electronic
jammer pressed against the frame. "Nice to see you, too." He turned
to find her glaring at him, her arms folded tightly across her chest. He tried
to remember what he might have done to deserve such a greeting and conceded
that, whatever it was, it would only be the tip of a very ugly iceberg. As
such, it was undoubtedly one of those problems best addressed through a policy
of careful and continued avoidance.
He nodded to her couch and a box of half-finished
pizza. "You got any spare?"
She blinked slowly. "I'm saving it for the
dog."
Hitch glanced around. The apartment was tiny. The
living area afforded just enough room for a TV, a shabby rug, and the couch
itself, which looked like it had been lifted from the set of a fire safety
commercial. The windows were partly veiled by broken plastic blinds and, to one
side, three sheets of laminated plywood masqueraded as a breakfast bar. Beyond
them stood a selection of firetrap appliances and a rusting sink.
He looked back at her. "You don't have a
dog."
"I might get one."
Order Links:
Mirror World Publishing
Amazon US
Amazon CA
Barnes and Noble
Kobo
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Meet the Author:
Rob Gregson spent much of his youth reading fantasy novels, immersing himself in role playing games and generally doing everything possible to avoid the real world. In his defence, we're talking about the late 1980s - a time when ridiculous hair, hateful pop music and soaring unemployment were all very popular - so it wasn't altogether a bad decision. However, had he abandoned the realms of wizardry at an earlier age, he might have developed one or two useful life skills and he would almost certainly have found it easier to get a girlfriend. Rob lives in Lancashire and has two children, although he has absolutely no idea why anyone should find that interesting.
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