Hello lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Bishop
& Fuller and their new book, “Blind Walls”!
For other stops on their Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click
on the banner above or any of the images in this post.
Be sure to make it to the
end of this post to enter to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Conrad
and Elizabeth, aka the authors Bishop & Fuller, and to increase your
chances of winning!
This book is on SALE
for ONLY $0.99 at Smashwords during the book tour!!! Currently this book is ONLY available
for pre-orders as the book is NOT officially published until June
1st. If you purchase this
book for pre-order you will receive your copy of this book as soon as it’s released. Please note that after the pre-order book
sale the price of this book will increase to $2.99. See below for more details.
Thanks for stopping
by! Wishing you lots of luck in this
fabulous giveaway!
Blind Walls
by Bishop & Fuller
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GENRE: Urban Paranormal
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BLURB:
It's
a monstrous maze of a mansion, built by a grief-ridden heiress. A tour guide,
about to retire, has given his spiel for so many years that he's gone blind. On
this last tour, he's slammed with second sight.
He
sees the ghosts he's always felt were there: the bedeviled heiress, her
servants, and a young carpenter who lands his dream job only to become a
lifelong slave to her obsession. The workman's wife makes it to shore, but he's
cast adrift.
And the tour guide comes home to his cat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TESTIMONIALS:
The
pairing of Bishop and Fuller is a magical one. . . . It’s a brilliant opus,
melding the past, present, and future with intimate, individual viewpoints from
a tightly arrayed cast of believable characters in as eerie a setting as might
be dredged out of everyman’s subconscious searching. . . . Blind Walls offers a
weird alternative world, featuring a blind man with second sight and an acerbic
wit as its charming, empathic hero.
~ Feathered Quill
These
characters are so well developed that one has to think of them as live people –
laughing with them and crying with them, even getting old with them. This is an amazing story based on the
Winchester Mansion and told with such quiet, compelling, raw humanity that the
reader simply can’t stop until the entire tale is told. A wonderful, spooky look into others lives
and what may or may not happen on any given day.
~ Dog-Eared
Reviews
Bishop
and Fuller have constructed a story rich with imagined detail and visionary
ideas about life’s possibilities. The cast of ghostly characters, servants,
workman, and family light up the story with dramatic effect as their actions
and choices are observed. . . . The authors’ prose is effortless and moves
easily from humorous to weighted seriousness. The dialogue is perceptive,
giving voice to compelling characters and particularly to the tour guide whose
second sight he confers on the readers. The latter will not want to look away
from the myriad rooms of Weatherlee House.
~ US Review of Books
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EXCERPT TWO:
She
gave a querulous wave. “Well, it’s not working out. I seem to be building these
corners. Corners by the dozens.”
“Well,” he ventured, “a room’s got corners.
You build a room you build four corners.”
“As
a small child I was terrified of corners,” she said, again with quiet glee.
“The things that accumulate there . . .” She took a folded sheet of watercolor
paper from beneath the book and held it out to him. He crossed the floor as if
treading on fragile skin, took it from her and studied the new plans.
“And
my baby’s bedroom, eclipsed, like gazing into the maw of a ravenous orchid.”
She brushed at the strand of hair. “Because it came clear to me that my father—
Not my father, my father-in-law, lovely man, he was like a father to me, but
all the fathers, whoever— It became clear that they were guilty of so much. All
the young boys. The wars that made us our fortune, that built us this lovely
ballroom.” Marty scanned it. “How easy was it, do you think, for a young woman
to reconcile that? To justify her own comforts, her privilege, her futility?
How easy, Marty?”
“How
easy was it?”
“Very.
No trouble at all.” She smiled. She likely enjoyed this sort of banter. “But
no, my father-in-law was strongly opposed to war, spoke on the subject, spoke
out against it despite his reliance on it. He might not have done so, I
suppose, if men had actually been listening.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GUEST POST:
Fierce Female Characters
C.Bishop
here. I work in collaboration with my mate Elizabeth, who’s likely the fiercest
female character I’ve met, also an actress who’s created many roles in our
plays—most of our career having been in theatre. But people tend to equate
“strong characters” with “role models,” and that’s not remotely our stock in
trade. If we were writing Wonder Woman, she’d probably be subject to serious
panic attacks at the very least.
In BLIND WALLS, Sophia Weatherlee is a
grief- and guilt-ridden heiress obsessed with constructing a mansion of over
300 rooms before an earthquake edits it to 160. The role model for a monster,
perhaps, and yet she’s deeply troubled by her own monstrosity, the cruelty she
perpetrates, and the utter absurdity of her life’s mission. But, like a
character we created in 1975—an impoverished single mother involved in child
abuse—we see the sources of her behavior and her inability to stop it. But not
a role model: at least we hope not.
The other major female character is Dee
Ratowitz, who marries her high school sweetheart. The dream job he lands turns
out to be a nightmare: it ravages their marriage and leads her into
self-destructive behavior. But she actually manages to struggle her way to
shore, accepting a need for change and finding a life that works.
Would Dee have had the strength she
finally found if she’d read our novel beforehand? Not likely, though we’d like
to think so. We ourselves constitute multiple personalities loosely stitched
together, maybe with a few more patches of super-glue here and there than we
started out with. Likewise our characters, and probably likewise our readers.
“Strength” is a matter of having the muscle and stamina that’s needed when it’s
needed—whether to fend off super-villains, strike for a living wage, birth a
baby, or just get through life’s tangles. And that Dee manages in abundance—as
did my own mother.
In one of our plays, a woman who’s a
professional photographer talks of her wedding portraits: couples who take a
happy pose and then try to hold that pose for the rest of their lives. We all
do that to a degree, but a lasting relationship—ours has gone on longer than
you really want to know—is much more a dance than a pose, and sometimes a stumbly,
toe-crunching dance at that.
Strength doesn’t require “relationship,”
of course, but that still means a lot to lots of people. With Chuck and Dee as
a couple, what’s lacking is fluidity. Chuck is so locked into his image of
“responsibility,” Dee so locked into guilt, that they find themselves in the
nightmare where the car’s brakes won’t grab. My favorite comic-book character
as a kid was Plastic Man. His one strength was that he could mold himself
instantly into any object, though even a fireplug showed the red-and-blue
stripes of his costume. He used it for deception, and his essential character
never changed: always kinda playfully dumb, as I recall. But he could be a
fireplug when the need arose.
What we try to do—we’re agreed on this,
though we debate a billion other things—is to present a range of life choices
and follow them out. BLIND WALLS has no single protagonist. One ends her days
in a rictus of terror. One embraces life as a journey of perpetual change. One
flounders in limbo. One goes contentedly home to his cat.
For us, and for those whose life-paths
we admire, it’s been that weird balance of the snake shedding its skin—constant
change—in order to keep the spine healthy and whole. That’s what we try to
suggest in Dee. But I wouldn’t say she’s a role model for girls. Men need it
more, I think, as we’ve had so many role models that are so goddamned stupid.
Though as they say on the World Wide
Web, your mileage may vary.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR BIO:
Conrad Bishop & Elizabeth Fuller’s 60+
plays have been produced Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, and in thousands
of their own performances coast to coast. Their two public radio series Family
Snapshots and Hitchhiking off the Map have been heard nationally. Their books
include two previous novels (Realists and Galahad’s Fool), a memoir
(Co-Creation: Fifty Years in the Making), and two anthologies of their plays
(Rash Acts: 35 Snapshots for the Stage and Mythic Plays: from Inanna to
Frankenstein.)
They
host a weekly blog on writing, theatre, and life at www.DamnedFool.com. Their
theatre work is chronicled at www.IndependentEye.org. Short videos of their
theatre and puppetry work are at www.YouTube.com/indepeye. Bishop has a
Stanford Ph.D., Fuller is a college drop-out, but somehow they see eye to eye.
They have been working partners and bedmates for 57 years.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CONNECT WITH CONRAD
BISHOP:
Website:
Blog:
Subscribe:
Email:
eye@independenteye.org
Facebook Fan Page:
Facebook Personal Page:
YouTube:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
Amazon Author Page:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CONNECT WITH ELIZABETH
FULLER:
Website:
Blog:
Subscribe:
Email:
eye@independenteye.org
Facebook Fan Page:
Facebook Personal Page:
YouTube:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
Amazon Author Page:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK BUY LINKS & BOOK SALE INFO:
**Blind Walls is on SALE for ONLY $0.99 at Smashwords
during the book tour!!! After the
pre-order book sale this book will cost $2.99!!!**
Amazon Paperback:
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
Kobo eBook:
The Book Depository Paperback:
BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:
Smashwords eBook:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY INFO:
Conrad and Elizabeth, aka the authors Bishop
& Fuller will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner
via Rafflecopter during the tour.
**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a
purchase is made, I may receive a small commission to help support this
blog. This does not cost you anything,
it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**
Conrad and Elizabeth ~ Good morning! Welcome to FAB! It is so great to have you both here! Congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteSounds like my kind of book!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds freakin awesome!!! I can't wait to read this!!
ReplyDeleteWhat authors do you enjoy reading?
ReplyDelete