Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale by Bill Zarchy - Book Tour - Book Sale - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!

Hello, lovelies!  It gives me great pleasure today to host Bill Zarchy and his new book, “Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale”!  For other stops on his 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 $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!!!  Also, come back daily to interact with Bill and to increase your chances of winning!

This eBook is on SALE for ONLY $0.99 during the book tour!!!  See below for more details.

Thanks for stopping by!  Wishing you lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!

Finding George Washington:

A Time Travel Tale

by Bill Zarchy

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GENRE: Historical-Time Travel-Baseball Thriller

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BLURB:

On a freezing night in 1778, General George Washington vanishes. Walking away from the Valley Forge encampment, he takes a fall and is knocked unconscious, only to reappear at a dog park on San Francisco Bay—in the summer of 2014.

Washington befriends two Berkeley twenty-somethings who help him cope with the astonishing—and often comical—surprises of the twenty-first century.

Washington’s absence from Valley Forge, however, is not without serious consequences. As the world rapidly devolves around them—and their beloved Giants fight to salvage a disappointing season—George, Tim, and Matt are catapulted on a race across America to find a way to get George back to 1778.

Equal parts time travel tale, thriller, and baseball saga, Finding George Washington is a gripping, humorous, and entertaining look at what happens when past and present collide in the 9th inning, with the bases loaded and no one warming up in the bullpen.

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EXCERPT TWO:

A new freeze gripped the valley, and a few inches of virgin white covered the now-frozen ruts in the roads. When the soldiers first arrived at this winter encampment two months before, rain and cold had compounded the misery of the men. Lately it had been freezing and snowing, making the hardened ground easier to traverse than the sleety, slippery mud had been.

A small farmhouse made of tan and brown fieldstone sat in flat bottomland near the creek. The back door opened and a splash of warm light lit the new snow. From inside came the sounds of a party—a fiddle, laughter, and high-energy conversation. A tall man in a heavy cloak and three-cornered hat stepped off the small porch at the rear of the house and into the cold. A sentry snapped to attention.

“Just getting some air, lad, stand easy,” the Gdeneral said. “No need to follow.” He trudged off north, away from the house, enjoying the brisk chill.

Ah, he thought, it’s fine to have my dear wife here with me these past couple of weeks! She and the other wives provide such a boost to the morale and hopefulness of the men. It’s worth a wee party to celebrate the difference they make … and my birthday.

The dreadful winter weather and the spread of disease had cost him one-fourth of his army in the early going, but at last there were signs of hope. Foraging for food was still a daily struggle, but now the men were finally housed in hundreds of hastily constructed wooden huts.

The eager effervescence of the Marquis de Lafayette for the past half year; the appearance of the Polish nobleman Pulaski a few months before; the continued loyalty of so many of the troops; the imminent arrival any day now of the Prussian Baron von Steuben; and the General’s wife coming to stay with him during the winter encampment—all these events gave him hope.

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GUEST POST:

Finding the Cover for Finding George

I knew from the beginning what I wanted on the cover for my debut novel, Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale.

It’s not an easy story to characterize. Genre: a fine sci-fi blend, with notes of history, baseball saga, and action thriller. But I had lived with it for long enough to have some images in mind.

I knew I wanted to feature a picture of George. Not the old marble-faced George on the dollar bill, but a younger version, George at 45, his age in my story. A Revolutionary War George, in uniform. The one who disappears from his own time and shows up in 2014 on the shores of San Francisco Bay.

I knew I wanted to show a baseball field with some players in the background, because baseball is a central theme and metaphor in Finding George. I wanted a shot of a locomotive, because trains are important in the story.

I wanted to show the green-handled sword Washington carried into battle, as well as his headquarters, the stone house where he lived during the Valley Forge encampment in winter 1777-78.

And I knew I wanted the cover to reflect a contemporary sensibility, with a bit of an old-timey feeling. Not old-fashioned or outdated, but stylized to suggest an amalgam of traditional and modern.

I had pictures of all these elements from my research travels. I selected photos of a painting of Washington at the Smithsonian, a baseball field in Philadelphia, an Amtrak train, the headquarters house, and the sword.

I put together a few rough versions of cover art in PhotoShop. They had all the elements I had in mind, but had no depth to them, no life.

Then I hired Matthew Félix for line editing, publication services, and book design, one of my best all-around decisions. I told him what I had in mind for the cover. He sent me a list of 100 sci-fi bestsellers and suggested I select my ten favorite-looking covers, as a way of conveying the style I had in mind. This was a fruitful exercise. I noticed immediately that I was drawn to the covers that had prominent images in the foreground, plus distant views in the background of landscapes or cities or other places. Covers with depth.

From these, and with the images I provided, he put together four prototype covers, and I promptly picked one. I had been thinking of using the picture of George full length, but Matthew cropped it into a head-and-shoulders shot, with an informal half-smile and good eye contact. He split off the word “Finding” from the rest of the title, placing it into an orange, isosceles triangle that, on first viewing, resembles a sports banner. On closer examination, we see it also looks like a headlight beam emanating from a blue locomotive. The background for the cover is a shot of the infield and the stands at the ballpark.

“Finding” is in a traditional-looking script font, “George Washington” in an old-timey font that looks like it belongs on a baseball jersey. The subtitle “A Time Travel Tale” is prominent, per my request, as I want potential readers to know what they’re getting into. It’s not a biography. The subtitle and byline are both in Optima bold, a mid-20th-Century font that adds a modern flavor.

The first draft also included the headquarters house, but it crowded the cover. Not worth it. The sword never made it onto the cover either. Too much clutter.

Best of all, Matthew came up with a couple of visual ideas that added hugely to the cover’s appeal. First, he bought stock photos of a baseball and crossed bats and placed them just under George’s image. And he added a traditional clockface with Roman numerals, as a round “medallion” behind GW’s head and shoulders. The clock numerals are repeated concentrically four or five times, adding a sense of movement, vibration, and disconcerting instability to these still images. This suggests time travel in a simple and effective way. (When I overthink it, of course, time travel is more about calendars than clockfaces, but the image still works.)

In one of Matthew’s other cover prototypes, George was wearing a baseball cap. I loved it. Though it was jaunty and appealing, I decided it was probably too cute, even too goofy, to put on the cover of a book like this: a fine sci-fi blend, with notes of history, baseball saga, and action thriller.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Bill Zarchy filmed projects on six continents during his 40 years as a cinematographer, captured in his first book, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil. Now he writes novels, takes photos, and talks of many things.

Bill’s career includes filming three former presidents for the Emmy-winning West Wing Documentary Special, the Grammy-winning Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, feature films Conceiving Ada and Read You Like A Book, PBS science series Closer to Truth, musical performances as diverse as the Grateful Dead, Weird Al Yankovic, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and countless high-end projects for technology and medical companies.

His tales from the road, personal essays, and technical articles have appeared in Travelers’ Tales and Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies, the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers, and American Cinematographer, Emmy, and other trade magazines.

Bill has a BA in Government from Dartmouth and an MA in Film from Stanford. He taught Advanced Cinematography at San Francisco State for twelve years. He is a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area and a graduate of the EPIC Storytelling Program at Stagebridge in Oakland. This is his first novel.

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CONNECT WITH BILL:

Website:

http://www.billzarchy.com

Website:

https://www.findinggeorgewashington.com

Blog:

https://www.findinggeorgewashington.com/blog

Email:

billzarchy@gmail.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Finding-George-Washington-A-Time-Travel-Tale-by-Bill-Zarchy-112403433952296

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/billzarchy

BookBub Author Page:

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/bill-zarchy

BookBub Book Page:

https://www.bookbub.com/books/finding-george-washington-a-time-travel-tale-by-bill-zarchy

Goodreads Author Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5819226.Bill_Zarchy

Goodreads Book Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55992275-finding-george-washington

Amazon Author Page:

https://amzn.to/32BNdKJ

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BOOK BUY LINKS & BOOK SALE INFO:

**The Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale eBook is on SALE for ONLY $0.99 during the book tour!!!**

Amazon Kindle eBook:

https://amzn.to/3v5YD60

Amazon Paperback:

https://amzn.to/3v87NP4

Apple Books eBook:

https://books.apple.com/us/book/finding-george-washington/id1541743641

Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/finding-george-washington-bill-zarchy/1138366946

Barnes and Noble Paperback:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/finding-george-washington-bill-zarchy/1138338533

The Book Depository Paperback:

https://www.bookdepository.com/Finding-George-Washington-Bill-Zarchy/9780984919123

BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:

https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Finding-George-Washington/Bill-Zarchy/9780984919123

Kobo eBook:

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/finding-george-washington

Smashwords eBook:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1053144

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

Bill will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

**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**

This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions.  Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.