HI guys!
Welcome back to Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers.
Today, we're popping up with a spotlight on a new title via Rachel's Random Resources. The tour features several excerpts of a title from Laura Briggs that you'll definitely want to follow along with the really wet your reading whistle! Ready, set, let's read all about today's title in the spotlight...
A Train from Penzance to Paris
by
Laura Briggs
About the book...
When Maisie accepts a celebrated author’s invitation to mentor her, she finds herself leaving Cornwall behind on train tracks bound for the glitter city of Paris. Instead of making beds and serving coffee at the Penmarrow hotel in Cornwall, she’s making notes on her manuscript while sitting in a French cafe, meeting famous writers at private dinner parties, and trying to ferret the secrets behind the author’s unfinished future novel.
It’s glamorous, it’s breathtaking … but it’s also an ocean channel away from the place that she loves, and, more importantly, the person to whom she just recently confessed her deepest feelings. Separated from Sidney by distance and circumstances, Maisie fears that their connection will be lost despite her words to him – and maybe because of those words, and the ones she didn’t allow him to say in return.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of things in her new life trying to distract her – the professional editor hired to critique her novel, the eager young literary agent who sees pie-in-the-sky potential for Maisie’s talent, but Maisie finds solace in the eclectic group of amateur writers into whose midst she finds herself by accident. Their critique and advice is fast becoming as important as the editors – maybe even more important than the published author Maisie believed held the keys to refining her skill.
But it’s missing Sidney that fills Maisie’s thoughts the most, along with her life back in Port Hewer, and she can’t stop wondering whether his feelings are the same as her own. His unspoken answer has become one of the most important pieces of her life, even as she struggles to match the pace of her new life and keep her dreams in sight. And when she unwittingly becomes privy to a seeming literary conspiracy, she must decide what to do in light of its truth – and decide what’s most important in her quest to become a professional writer.
Join Maisie in a whirlwind tour across two of the world’s greatest cities, filled with questions, dreams, and a chance for fame that she believed far beyond her grasp, as she discovers herself as a writer, and how to embrace an unexpected future on her own terms.
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~~~ EXCERPT ~~~
...from A Train from Penzance to Paris
Thank you so much to Gina for letting me share an extract from my latest book! It is the 5th installment in my Cornish romance series about aspiring author Maisie. The scene below finds Maisie enroute to Paris with her favorite author, who is also her writing mentor. But as the letter she’s composing reveals, Maisie’s thoughts are still back in Cornwall, with the charming local groundskeeper, Sidney Daniels.
I paused, tapping my pencil as I gazed at a distant cathedral, the points of its grand towers rising above the village like a crown. Across from me, Alli paged through her little Chinese silk notebook, jotting down something that I could only hope belonged to her long-overdue fourth novel. The one devoted fans like me had been dying to read and had been denied for the past six years.
The villages we pass seem to beg me to visit them, wander down little lanes and look for cottages draped in red ivy, sprawling oaks let to live in cobblestone main squares. I have a thing for villages now, thanks to Port Hewer. I'll never pass one without wondering what kind of life happens there, and knowing it's never as small as I used to imagine, with everyone a quaint clone from an episode of 'Cranford.'
I'll feel a little homesick if I visit one, even though the place I'll be missing isn't technically my home. Just the sight of somebody riding a sky-blue bicycle might leave me with the need to curl up with comforting chocolates and a cup of tea, incapable of writing a single word of my manuscript's revisions for the rest of the day.
The train announcement for the Paris arrival time caught my ear, snatches of dual-language nouns. That was good, because I almost closed my eyes and pictured myself cycling down the hill with Sidney, me waving at those scornfully-staring neighbors who knew all the rumors about his dubious past long before I did. Because of that picture, I felt my heart squeezed tighter in the grip of that longing.
I could write something else here. Am I crazy? Crazy to get on a train to Paris with a stranger, who promises that I'll brush shoulders with movers and shakers any novelist would be dying to meet? Or would I have been crazier to stay behind and clean rugs and clear tables as a hotel maid, my fingers crossed while my manuscript lay in some publisher's 'to review' heap?
I think everything I've done may have been certifiable, since the day Wallace Scott told me I'd been turned down for the mentorship program. And I mean that down to the moment I said the words 'I love you' and then boarded this train twenty-four hours later, like I was running away from the one person who had kept me and my dream from growing stale and dusty, and getting hopelessly lost in that world.
My pen didn't write those words down in reality, but these were the questions my mind had turned over multiple times since leaving. Never in a million years would Sidney have let me make another choice, we both knew. But I watched it cut him deeply, knowing there was nothing we could do. It had always been coming, I tried to tell myself. One of us was always going to leave, as we both knew. But it didn't help one bit.
"We're coming into the station shortly," Alli said, shoving her little notebook into her leather satchel. "Don't forget to collect all your suitcases from the upper compartment. Silly me, I once fell asleep on the line from Reading to Bristol after an all-night sing and carouse in a pub near the old playhouse — I bolted off the train just before the doors closed, only to remember I'd left my handbag underneath me on the seat. Twenty perfectly good quid lost, which was all my worldly possession at the time."
In keeping with most of the stories she'd told me, it rambled on its own path and left gaping holes. I was curious to know just when and where any of this fit in the unusual past of the celebrated writer.
"Fortunately, I travel light," I answered, since all my worldly goods were tucked in the suitcase above, including my stuffed carnival prize giraffe Mr. Bubbles and my scant souvenirs from life in Port Hewer. Everything except my red cloche hat, which lay on my lap beneath my open journal.
My pen returned to the page. The clouds traveling past on the horizon couldn't move more quickly than my thoughts, and even the scenery is slow compared to my revolving question. I ask myself every hour if I'm truly ready for this, for what it means to take this leap as a writer.
A wise friend once told me I could never know the answer without trying — that no one but me will ever know if I'm ready; or, for that matter, what I should do when the time comes. So I won't trust Alistair's word, or anybody else's, more than I trust my own judgment in this process. That's a promise.
Write me a letter soon and tell me how you are. Tell me how things are in the village, and what Mrs. Graves and the vicar are doing, and of Dean battling his nurses. If you see anybody from the hotel, Molly or Brigette or Riley, or even Norm in his grumpiest mood, then tell them hello from me.
I miss you, Sidney.
Love, Maisie
The train's speed becomes a mechanical crawl as it eases into the Gare du Nord station, and I feel as if a breath of steam is about to be released by the train, a mist that will part in dramatic revelation. Of what, I ask myself? A postcard city? The stage for my dream's first act? Or maybe an experience I truly can't face as a twentysomething year-old former waitress, whom only a year ago was wearing a sequined Mexican hostess dress while taking taco orders. Here I am now, in the company of one of the world's most critically-acclaimed writers, about to take the streets of Paris — and my first manuscript's revision stage — by storm.
I am excited, terrified, and exhilarated. I have no clue if this is how destiny feels.
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About the author...
Laura Briggs is the author of several feel-good romance reads, including the Top 100 Amazon UK seller 'A Wedding in Cornwall'. She has a fondness for vintage style dresses (especially ones with polka dots), and reads everything from Jane Austen to modern day mysteries. When she's not writing, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, caring for her pets, gardening, and seeing the occasional movie or play.
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Special thanks to Rachel at Rachel's Random Resources for the chance to bring this tour to you. (THANKS!) For more information on this title, the author, this promotion, or those on the horizon, feel free to click through the links provided above. Be sure to check out the rest of tour for more bookish fun!
Until next time, remember...if it looks good, READ IT!
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