Fabulous and Brunette: Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale by Bill Zarchy - Book Tour - Book Sale - Guest Post - Giveaway

Hey, lovelies!! It gives me great pleasure today to host Bill Zarchy and his new book, “Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale,” here on FAB!! 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: Sci-Fi / Alternate History / Baseball Saga / Action 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 ONE:

Aurora

The General watched as the Northern Lights spread, shimmered, and swirled through the sky like the smoke from God’s own cigar, now rising, now dipping, now twirling and pulsing.

Though soldiers often considered the aurora a bad omen, at that moment it thrilled him. To the east, he could see the glow of sentry fires of some of the closer regiments, the troops hunkered down for the night. A short distance to the south, the men of his personal guard occupied their own group of makeshift huts within sight of the farmhouse.

It’s cold. I should get back before Patsy and the staff begin to miss me.

He paused and took a deep breath of the night air. He was a durable and determined man who had survived cold and wintry weather during his early life as a surveyor and, later, as a British officer. He would show his Continental Army troops that the cold didn’t bother him, that staying strong was a state of mind. Certainly they had it worse than he did, but they respected that he had refused to move out of his tent into the stone farmhouse until his men moved out of their tattered shelters into log huts.

The fluid, ethereal display of light in the skies danced and pulsated. Before he could climb down the hill and head back toward the farmhouse, the ground under his feet began to shake and rumble, providing a steady, geological drumbeat to accompany the green and red light in the sky. The terrain rolled. He lost his footing on the ice, just at a point where a crisp moonbeam seemed to hit the patch of turf he was crossing.

The earth came up to meet him, and he banged his head on the frozen ground. Woozy and lightheaded, teetering on the edge of consciousness, he felt a great sadness, felt the bones in his body melt in the shard of moonlight, even as, in his remaining awareness, he realized the moon was not out that evening. He felt his body scooped off the ground, as if by a vengeful wind, then tumbled in a heap onto something hard and unyielding that swept him along at a great rate of speed. All went dark.

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GUEST POST:

My Office: On Creating a Pleasant, Comfortable Environment for Writing

When I was younger, I could work anywhere — studying amongst a gaggle of chattering roommates, laying out and editing the campus daily newspaper in the midst of a chaotic office filled with the din of self-righteous student journalism, or writing my first stories at the dinner table after meals, still surrounded by cavorting kids and loud TV.

But that changed some years ago. My attention is now easy to shatter, yet I long resisted my wife’s suggestion, once he was out on his own, that I make my office in our older son’s room. It took me a while to move in, and another year or two before I adopted it as mine, painting the walls and buying a good quality desk with working drawers.

That space is now sacred for me. Though I do keep a TV in there, it’s not a man cave for relaxation. I spend most of my office time working on my current pursuits — writing, photography, or storytelling.

I’m very lucky. My desk is next to a sliding door to our deck and garden. Molly the Boxer is often there to greet me. I can hear trains sounding their horns as they clatter along, one mile to the west, near San Francisco Bay.

The desk is made of cherry wood and includes a built-in tray for an external keyboard, so that I don’t have to reach up to hit the keys. My main computer is a Mac laptop, which sits on a raised stand that brings its display up to match the height of a second large monitor next to it.

These days, as we come slowly out of the pandemic, the desk also has on it a number of tools useful for Zoom meetings: a professional-quality mic on a stand, an upgraded webcam mounted on the large monitor, two small task lights to light papers I’m working with, a small “tap-it” lamp which adds warm glow to the desk area, several small lights that illuminate artwork on the walls, an illuminated globe with blue oceans, and two ring lights to brighten me up when I’m on Zoom. Yes, it’s true: on the desk, I have eight different light sources!

I have framed, 20x30 posters for both my books — my memoir, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil, and my debut novel, Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale. The latter was published during the pandemic and all the launch and tour events to date have been virtual. The two posters make a good, colorful background behind me on Zoom calls, if I raise them up on three stacked copies of George. The rest of my background is intended to look like the office of a writer, and I think I’ve succeeded pretty well there!

Elsewhere in the room, I’ve got another illuminated globe (this one with tan oceans, reminiscent of old maps), two floor-to-ceiling glass-door bookcases, a second, L-shaped, cherrywood desk, other globes and lamps, wooden blinds, busts of GW and FDR, and a bobble-head of George. I can also see at least nine clocks from where I’m sitting right now, about half of them mid-century mechanical digital clocks I collect. Not all of them work.

On the walls and bulletin boards — a watercolor of a fisherman painted by my dad when he was 19 years old, lots of San Francisco Giants paraphernalia, many pictures of George Washington, the subject of my debut novel, and FDR, the subject of the sequel. Photos of me with various film crews (from my long career as a cinematographer), posing with Bill Clinton in New York, Jimmy Carter in Atlanta, Gerald Ford at Rancho Mirage, U2’s Bono in Dublin, Morgan Freeman at Cannes, Joe Montana in the Napa Valley, and Ken Griffey Jr. in San Francisco.

Also — a certificate noting that the Documentary Special I shot for The West Wing on NBC some years ago won an Emmy for Outstanding Special Class Program (beating out an episode of Survivor and an I Love Lucy special). And pictures from my travels in France, Japan, Uganda, Chile, and Bonneville Salt Flats.

And some of my favorite possessions: Two framed book covers: Model Railroading and Stamp Collectors Guide, both by my dad Harry Zarchy, who wrote and published over 30 books on crafts, hobbies, and the outdoors. I appear on both covers in a red shirt (though the books were seven years apart) along with a friend (no, that’s not my dad).

And finally, my tit. After a shoot in England featuring new computer systems at the offices of the Lincolnshire police, the cops decided to take our whole crew out for dinner and presented us each with a Bobby’s helmet, which I smuggled home in my laundry. They called it a tit. I still wear it sometimes for Halloween.

All of this stuff is essential. It’s important for me to have the right setup for imagination, creativity, ego boost, validation, and staring off into space. Best of all, when I need to stop for food, rest, or clogged brain, I don’t have to move my computer and notes to set the table. I can usually just save my document, stand up, and walk out. When I come back to my office later, my work is just as I left it.

And that’s huge!

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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://billzarchy.com

Website:

https://findinggeorgewashington.com

Blog:

https://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:

http://amzn.to/3v5YD60

Amazon Paperback:

http://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.