Blog Tour: Day Of Vengeance - Guest Post + GIVEAWAY!

I am hosting the first spot on the blog tour of the spellbinding book, Day Of Vengeance. I am excited because this is the first blog tour I am taking part in! Yay!
This the is the third one in the Jack Christie series, a thrilling trilogy about a school boy going back in time and changing history. My review should be up soon!

On this day of the the blog tour, Johnny will be doing a guest post where he talks about his brilliant characters and how he invented them. He will also be telling us how he interpreted the historical figures in his own fictional novel. The author is a very interesting person and I hope you like the guest post:

 

 

Jack’s character was formed in a rather bizarre way. When I wrote Day of the Assassins there is a piece where Jack is escaping from baddies on HMS Dreadnought and he has the bright idea of hiding in the barrel of one of the famous battleship’s main guns. In order to fit him into the aperture of the gun, I had to make him quite small. To balance his limited physical stature (although he gets bigger in the later books!) I had to give him other strengths – like his memory and intelligence. Angus is then his alter-ego really – he is good at sports, brawnier and a physical match for anyone – but lacks Jack’s brains and judgement. He also had to be bigger because of all the physical equipment they come across – cable cars, army jeeps and weaponry! As  a team they have most of the skills they need! So that really is how I came up with Jack and Angus...

 

What is good fun about writing the Jack Christie books is the interweaving of fantasy and fact – this applies to events as well as people. Jack and Angus meet lots of extraordinary characters on their travels, thing is, some of the most extraordinary are not the ones that I’ve made up! I had quite a lot of fun with Christopher Marlowe in Day of Deliverance. He was an extraordinary person – a famous playwright and possibly a double-agent. He came to a sticky end when still in his twenties. There is a portrait in Corpus Christi College (supposedly him) with the words ‘what feeds me destroys me’ – that probably says it all!

It is pretty difficult to really know what a historical character was really like; so it’s fun to add your own interpretation. In the main part the real historical characters are mostly kept in the background – but there are some important interactions and you have to just have a go at what you think they would have been like based on what you have read and learned.

I think Adolf Hitler, in Day of Vengeance was perhaps the most challenging historical figure to recreate. Jack and Angus don’t actually meet him, but they do see him on his tour of Paris and there are some thoughts that go through Jack’s head about that. They also encounter some other fictional characters representing some of the abhorrent and criminal elements of the SS and the Nazi movement. I found it hard to write what is essentially a made up story whilst representing some of these elements of the period in a way which was not clichéd. I am not sure I succeeded and I also worry about writing about a period which although ‘historical’ is obviously still relatively near and so controversial and deeply sensitive to so many people.

--GIVEAWAY--

Like what you hear? I thought you might. The wonderful publisher,Templar, are giving away a copy of the book and you could have the chance of winning! If you want to know more about the book itself, read the blurb below.

Schoolboy time-traveller Jack Christie is thrown back to 1940s France with the Second World War at a crucial point. The Battle of Britain and the German Vengeance programme are underway, as Jack and his best friend Angus take a more senior role in VIGIL's bid to prevent an intervention in history that could go nuclear. With Spitfire dogfights, jeep races and thrilling chases, the boys have met their most hair-raising adventure yet, including involvement in an assassintation attempt on Hitler.

I love the books, and I think all ages will find them exciting and well-written. So, go on - enter! You know you want to....

Read the T&C's before entering:

• You don't have to be a follower to enter, though it would be nice. ;-)
• UK residents only.
• The deadline is 8pm on Friday 23rd September 2011, and the winner will be announced the day after and e-mailed.
• The winner will be picked at random so there is a fair chance for everyone.

To enter, just fill in a form HERE.


Good luck, everyone!


Don't forget to check out tomorrow's stop at Empire Of Books where Johnny will be talking about where his inspiration for the time travel series came from.


For anymore information on the book tour, click here, for the Templar blog.

I hope you enjoyed my spot for the blog tour, and if you haven't read this book yet, make sure to enter my giveaway or buy the book instead of missing out on all the action....

Zoe x