Par Lance

Please take a look on Amazon (for Kindle) and Lulu (for paperback) at my debut novel, Eleven Miles. 

 

If you like what you see, buy it, read it, review it, and recommend it to as many friends and family as you can reach. Create an avalanche for me!

 

Description

 

How far would you have walked to gain your high school education?

From an early age, the greatest passion in Boitumelo Tumelo's life is learning. Boi, as she is known to her friends and family, just loves going to school. Her primary school is in the local village, but when she graduates to secondary school, two obstacles stand in the path to her further education. Firstly, there are fees to be paid. Secondly, it is eleven miles to the nearest secondary school. She would have to get up very early, and walk that long distance to school every day, and walk home after school. There are many potential dangers along the remote African track between her village and her school.

This is the inspiring story of how Boi overcomes the obstacles and dangers to gain the education that she so desires. Not only does she achieve her ambitions, but she manages to make life better for the children of her village who wish to follow in her footsteps.

Eleven Miles is a fictional story based upon a true life situation in Botswana. Until the target of Princess Boikanyo's School Bus Project is achieved, 50% of all profits from the sales of this book will go into the project funds. In the meantime, please feel free to make additional contributions to this worthy cause by clicking on the project link.

For the May Bank Holiday weekend only, When Pleasure Blooms will be available as a free download from Amazon.

I don't know how Howard Loring thinks of all the creative twists of these time travel novels. He has some imagination, which I admire greatly. I aspire to being this good a writer.

I actually believe that he cheats. He really is a time traveller, and therefore has a great, and unfair, advantage over the rest of us poor mortals.

As with his first novel, Piercing the Elastic Limit, it takes some time before the unravelled ends of the rope start coming togehter to form a rope. In the analogy that he actually uses in this book, it is more like the tributaries of a great river, of time, coming together to form the powerful body of water meandering its way through the jungle towards the might ocean.

Having read numerous time travel books, from Robert Heinlein and HG Wells onwards, I have always thought of "The Arrow of Time" being straight, true and swift. Loring puts me in mind of the spaghetti of time: locate the end of a strand, and guess which other end it is connected to.

In this story, there are a team of leaders who are seeking out the "heretic" who is jeopardising the future, or should that be the past?, of the whole universe.

Who is who? In what time frame? And where? And when?

It is fun to puzzle out the answers to all of these questions as you read through. Go for it! I recommend this book to all time travel fans.

One quote from this book, which I particularly like, has to be mentioned in this review.

"What rubbish anyway, he thought with scorn, an all-powerful god that was everywhere at once yet nowhere to be seen. These grunts believe anything, he thought with distaste."

By the way, I thought of two of the characters as a likely, abandoned and alone on the planet, Adam and Eve, long before the author revealed them as such at the end of the book. That was a bit of a 2001: A Space Odyssey moment.

I really did love this book, although I think that the reading experience may have been better in papaerback rather than Kindle. There are a lot of graphics, and I had to keep expanding them to allow me to view them with ease.

The story itself is great. A lot of imagination has gone into the writing. It is told from the point of view of Oliver Tibbs, aka Oliver Tibbs.

The poor boy is surrounded by BRILLIANT people. His whole family is BRILLIANT. His Mum is a brain surgeon. His Dad is an architect. His little brother is a chess champion. His twin sisters are BRILLIANT at ballet dancing. Almost all of his classmates at school are BRILLIANT at something or other. Oliver is judged by his peers to be DAB: Dull And Boring.

You'll understand why I put the word BRILLIANT in CAPS and BOLD when you read the book.

The only person who is anything like Oliver is his best friend, Peaches Mazimba.

Oliver is BRILLIANT at fibbing and he has a BRILLIANT imagination.

I have read books along the same lines as this, but nothing exactly like this.

You can read it in one sitting, and I guarantee that it will make you laugh and will not challenge too many of those neurons inside your head. Read it and have fun!

This is a very short story. Well, to say it's a story is an exaggeration actually. It is just a series of sex scenes stemming out of the book description. I am being fairly generous with two stars, but I think that it just about gets there.

I got the impression that the author hammered out eight pages on her keyboard and didn't bother to re-read her work before hitting "Publish Now."

She didn't even notice that Keith untied Lacey, then, on the very next page, Lacey was still tied up and Heahter unties her. Continuity error!

I wouldn't recommend it unless you're looking for some intensely hot, sexy action with no background.

Connie Willis is a very imaginative writer. I love the time travel genre, and this story is one of the better ones that I have read. However, at almost 600 pages, this book is way too long. The pace is so slow and repetitive that I believe that the first 400 pages could have been condensed into about a quarter of that length.

All the way through, Finch, who is the secretary of one of the main characters, Dunworthy, complains about the lack of "lavatory paper." All he needed to do was by a few copies of [b:Doomsday Book|24983|Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)|Connie Willis|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1332036910s/24983.jpg|2439628], ripped out the first two-thirds, and he would've had a surplus!

I hold the editor responsible for my tedium, as the author presented that editor with a great story and received no good guidance in return. The proof reader is also culpable of serious crime: there are numerous typos and incorrect vocabulary usage. Worse than that, there are so many punctuation errors that, if [a:Lynne Truss|5571|Lynne Truss|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1215628380p2/5571.jpg] were to read this story, she would be pulling her hair out by the time she were half way through.

Once the pace picked up, just past page 400, I was captivated and read through to the end quite quickly.

What puzzled me immensely, and many other readers too, is that although Kivrin, the historian who travelled back in time to the Middle Ages, had brilliant technology in the form of implants which automatically translated her speech into Old English and allowed her to record her journal by speaking into her hands as if praying, she was not equipped with the most essential, available piece of technology. When two of the modern day characters travel back to rescue Kivrin, 35 pages from the end, they have a "locator" which will guide them back to the "drop", or the time portal, through which they transported. Since most of Kivrin's quest, back in the 14th century, concerned seeking the location of the drop, why oh why did she not take one of these locators with her in the first place?. I suppose that it would have taken away half of the story, had she been so equipped.

All in all, this is a really good time travel story, but the book could have been less than 300 pages long, have been better edited, and should certainly have been scrutinized by a proficient proof-reader.

I would only recommend it to friends who love a good time travel book and have the stamina to keep reading to the end of a marathon.

I really enjoyed this short, very erotic story.

The story is well summarised in the book description, and to take it further would be to give away the whole plot.

Suufice to say that it moves along at a brisk pace and that the action is very sexy indeed. The points of view, and the feelings and emotions of both of the main characters are represented in great, horny detail.

Near the beginning of the book, I thought that there might be a littering of inaccuracies which could irritate me. Half of my heritage is of the Highlands, so a simple slip such as saying that Ben Nevis is "one of" the highest summits, when it is actually THE tallest mountain in the British Isles, made me think Oh no! But I was wrong. The geography and clan history was fairly accurate, and not irritating or distracting at all.

With all of the sexy action, and the interactions between the characters, going on, there was no time to dwell on the background!

This is a great little piece of erotica, and I shall certainly look out for Eliza Knight in the future.

Highly recommended.

This story is short but full of laughs. It is hilarious!

The main character has a friend, Laura, who is very New Age and likes to send presents which are exactly what the recipient needs.

The latest present has very strange effects on our heroine, her three dogs and her husband. The results are very, very naughty, extremely funny and really need a few minutes of your time to find out for yourself what they are.

I promise you that you won't regret sparing the time.

Have fun!

Goode stuff!

This is only a short story from erotica doyenne, Chloë Thurlow, but it is as arousing and amusing as any of her other works. In fact, condensing one of her stories into less than fifty pages seemed to intensify the satisfying effects of her writing for this particular reader.

Grace Goode is filling in the gap between leaving school and heading for university with a few weeks of work at the local estate agents. All of her colleagues happen to be busy when Charlie Wright appears on the scene and requests a viewing. Grace has no option but to drive the customer out to the property to show him around.

She is, to say the least, a flirt. Some might judge her to be a slut, or even a prick-teaser. On the way to the property, it becomes apparent that Charlie is a bit of a lecher as well as being a keen photographer.

As they walk around the property, Charlie clicks away with his camera and somehow seduces Grace into his shots. Before long, her clothes are on the floor and her bottom, as per the author's familiar signature, is being spanked, pleasurably, red-raw.

I won't tell you any more. You'll just have to read it for yourself.

My initial reaction was ........

PHEW!!!

But you deserve more of a review than that, don't you?

This story is short, and rough, and hard, and HUGE, and different. You need to read it. This is monster-fucking at it's best.

And it has a very happy ending.

You ladies will be wishing you were there in place of the heroine!
If you have read it, tell me if I am wrong. Tell me that I am right!

I was almost wishing I could be a girl, but only if I could be THAT girl!

Better still, I wish I could be THAT lucky gargoyle!!!!

At only 30 pages, it is a very short story, and the book description tells you all that you need to know. Whether you have tried this genre before or not. the time has come. Download it now, read it, and comment back to me on this review.

Finally, I guarantee that your feelings will be mixed, but VERY enjoyable!

This has to be the most hilarious fairy tale that I have ever read! Not only is it very, very funny, but it is also very very naughty too.

The pure and virginal Princess Amalia is plagued by the presence of a penis growing in her bed. She tells her parents about it, and the King does everything in his power to get rid of the rogue penis. The mattress is destroyed. The bed frame is destroyed. The Princess's bed is moved to teh almost inaccessible tower.

In the meantime, a marriage of convenience is arranged with the Prince from a neighboring, rich kingdom.

The Princess's aunts investigate and try to help.

Chaos ensues.

More hilarity ensues.

And there is an unexpected ending. Well, not if you are an aficionado of fairy stories, maybe.

This is a quick read, and I am sure that you will all love it.

Hugely recommended!

I read the majority of this book on flights back and forth across the Atlantic, and it proved to be perfect entertainment. I tried to watch the in-flight movies, but this Dear Lupin was much more satisfactory as a source of enjoyable amusement. I was still able to listen to the jazz channel in the background.

As the description says, this is a book of letters from a father to his son. The father despairs for the destiny, or lack of it, of his wayward son. It is unlikely that any of his advice will ever sink in. Nevertheless, he perseveres, and gives it anyway. The interspersion of comments from the recipient make it even clearer that the paternal advice will never have a positive effect.

Lupin believes that his family are middle class, but they are definitely towards the upper end of middle class, straying into upper class. The circles in which they mix are certainly in the upper echelons of English society.

What made this book even more interesting for me was that I have lived, on and off, in the area of most of the events for the past 35 years, so I know all of the places very well.

Without spoiling the read for you, I conclude this review with some amusing tidbits that I highlighted on my way through. I hope that they tempt you into reading the whole book.

(A comment from the son which is tacked to a letter that he received when he was in hospital)
- My mother (sometimes known as the Bureau of Misinformation) is desperately worried and following my liver biopsy calls a distant cousin who is a doctor for advice: ‘I’m most frightfully worried about my son Charles, they’ve just done an autopsy on him.'

- For some reason or other I got on the wrong train at Waterloo but luckily I quite like Bournemouth.

- ‘How eager for fame a man must be To write up his name in a W.C.’

- Mrs Cameron stayed on Thursday night: she and your mother talked incessantly; neither listened to a word the other said which was sensible as neither was saying anything really worth listening to.

- Yesterday I met an old buffer in Newbury who had been at the Gaselee’s party. He tried out a new hearing aid there, switched it on to a maximum volume and has been stone deaf ever since.

- My father’s account of the middle-class existence of a long-suffering, elderly gentleman in Berkshire, together with his self-deprecating humour, continues to prove to be a big hit in Africa.

- Your mother was hoping to have her first day’s cubbing last Friday but it was cancelled as the head groom at the Old Berks stables had peppered a female employee with a humane killer and then blown his own head off. He had worked there for twenty-five years and the girl, whom Nidnod knew well, is thirty years younger than he was! It’s odd the way demon sex keeps on obtruding into fox-hunting!
(Nidnod is the family nickname for Lupin's mother)

- John’s successor at Ascot is Piers Bengough, a tough but agreeable South African Jew whose sister Mrs Quarry lived near the Thistlethwaytes at Eversley. I hope he will follow the example of Bernard Norfolk and John A. by letting us use the Ascot Authority stand through out the year.
(My (reviewer's) mother-in-law was housekeeper to the Bengough family)

- 1st lady: My dog did very well. He got a first, a second and was Highly Commended.
2nd lady: Mine did all right too. He had a fight, a fuck and was highly delighted.

- Also dead was my former commanding officer General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones, whom we called Winchester-Smith.
(You have to understand English geography to get this one!)

- Once a judge observed to him, ‘Mr Smith, you are being extremely offensive,’ to which Smith saucily replied: ‘As a matter of fact we both are. The difference is that I’m trying to be and you can’t help it.’

- Two definitions of a Gentleman:
1. He has all the qualities of a saint bar saintliness (Hugh Kingsmill).
2. He always gets out of the bath to do a pee (Anon).

Are you tempted?

I did enjoy this story, the way that it was told, and the way that all of the threads were brought together in an horrific climax.

The style of writing reminded me of that of [a:Arthur Conan Doyle|2448|Arthur Conan Doyle|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1289836561p2/2448.jpg], which should not surprise me, as he and Arthur Machen were contemporaries. The language is very descriptive and somewhat flowery. Occasionally, that gets a bit boring, but mostly it is, for me, beautiful prose.

There appear to be three main characters, but they converge on a fourth. There is much mystery and supernatural overtone.

Machen's anti-materialism shines through his characterizations. This provokes deep thought in the reader. At least, it did with me.

There are some quite scary parts to this book. A good producer could make a very good film of it. Perhaps they already have. I haven't looked into it.

All in all, I enjoyed the book, and swayed between three and four stars for it, but eventually settled on three because I found part of it to be a bit of a trudge through treacle. Sorry Arthur!

There are over four thousand reviews of this book on Goodreads, so it is unlikely that I can say anything fresh about the content and style of this superb book, so I am not about to try. I'll just tell you a little story of how it helped me at a most opportune time.

I have been presenting and instructing for well over three decades, and I am still learning something new every day. We should all be open to that and never believe that we hae actually arrived at the perfect state. Strive for perfection.

I got a lot out of this book. I read it on a plane from England to my company HQ in Florida. I was due to co-deliver a two-week induction class for new joiner technical staff from all over the world. As you can imagine, we had put a lot of effort into the planning and preparation for the ten days of intense instruction.

Despite the experience of the new people, I have always felt that everyone could do with a few tips and hints on good communication, public speaking and, in particular, delivering powerful presentations and demonstrations to our customers. So I had two hours dedicated to these topics.

I mostly knew what I was going to do with the two hours, but reading

[b:Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery|1908456|Presentation Zen Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery|Garr Reynolds|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348381669s/1908456.jpg|1910340] inspired me to change my content and delivery.

I was able to use the three main guiding principles of the book: restraint, simplicity and naturalness, to construct a session to illustrate the power of those three guiding principles to the participants on my course.

I went analogue! I minimalised! I told my story!

This book really helped me to do that.

Was I rewarded?

Yes, I was.

At the end of the course, all of the participants were assessed on a presentation and demo which they had to prepare during the two weeks. My presentation on good communication came on day one, shortly followed by the assigning of course assignments.

All of my students used the guiding principles of [b:Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery|1908456|Presentation Zen Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery|Garr Reynolds|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348381669s/1908456.jpg|1910340] to great effect. It was a joy to watch!

Thank you very much [a:Garr Reynolds|868792|Garr Reynolds|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1323368619p2/868792.jpg].