GIVEAWAY & INTERVIEW: CHARLINDER'S WALK by

- Book Review: WITH LOVE & LAUGHTER, JOHN RITTER
- Win THE RIFTS OF RIME by Steven Peck (Ends 6/4) 
- Win DEVINE INTERVENTION by Martha Brockenbrough (Ends 6/6) 

- Win $100 Gift Card! (Ends 5/31) 

CHARLINDER'S WALK
Alyson Miers
Create Space
492pp.
Adult

In 2012, the Plague ended the world as we know it. In 2130, Charlinder wants to know why.

The origin of the disease remains a mystery. Their ignorance of its provenance fuels a growing schism that threatens to destroy the peace that the survivors’ descendants have built. Unwilling to wait for matters to get any worse, he decides to travel to where the Plague first appeared and find out the truth—which means walking across three continents before returning home.

Charlinder has never been more than ten miles from home, has never heard anyone speak a foreign language, and he’s going it alone.

He survives thousands of miles of everything from near-starvation to near-madness before he meets Gentiola. By then he’s so exhausted that the story she offers to tell seems like little more than a diversion…until he hears it.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he learns from her, and no one ever told him: be careful what you wish for. The world is a much bigger place than Charlinder knew, and his place in it is a question he never asked before.

I very rarely review self-published books, but I agreed to post about Charlinder's Walk a couple of months ago. The author, Alyson Miers has provided an interview and an excerpt from her book. The blog tour is providing a $50 gift certificate to one winner! Scroll down to find out how to win.

 

1.  Describe Charlinder's Walk in one sentence.

Between him and the truth lie a century and an ocean, but nothing can prepare him for what he'll find.

2.  What inspired you to write this story?

It was an idea that grew over time. Many years ago I got this scenario in my head of some worldwide disaster that left only 20 people alive on Earth, so the question was: if there were only 20 peole left alive, what would they do with themselves? That idea eventually evolved into the post-Plague world, which in turn gave rise to Charlinder's Walk.

3.  What books did you enjoy reading when you were younger?

I remember reading Anne of Green Gables and finding Anne rather annoying but still gobbling up the book at breakneck speed. I read a lot of R.L. Stine, Mary Downing Hahn, a bit of Robert Newton Peck. In my early adulthood I became very interested in the works of Torey Hayden, who wrote memoirs of her experiences in teaching disturbed and severely disabled children. 

4.  What do you enjoy reading now?

I gravitate towards literary fiction, in which I include women's fiction, though I also enjoy some fantasy and sci-fi. Those who read Charlinder's Walk may notice my affection for the paranormal, and at the same time my respect for the natural sciences. 

5.  Tell us a little about your journey to publication.

I wrote my book, revised it a bit, and started querying agents. That went nowhere, so I revised some more, tried querying some more, and meanwhile, self-publishing was growing by leaps and bounds all around me. I figured out pretty soon that I could keep on trying for years to get a book deal with a publishing house, or I could actually put my story out there in readers' hands. The decision to self-publish was a "get busy living" move. I got a professional edit done on my novel and spent months working my butt off to revise until Charlinder was ready to go out into the world.

6.  What can we expect from you in the future?

You can expect more genre-stretching, envelope-pushing, independent-minded fiction from me. In various stages of progress at the moment are a contemporary women's fiction, a dystopian centered on feminist and LGBT issues, and an urban fantasy. I have the idea sketched out for a contemporary YA novel focused on bullying. 

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

Wanna win a $50 gift card or an autographed copy of Charlinder's Walk? Well, there are two ways to enter...

1. Leave a comment on my blog. One random commenter during this tour will win a $50 gift card. For the full list of participating blogs, visit the official Charlinder's Walk tour page.
2. Enter the Rafflecopter contest! I've posted the contest form below, or you can enter on the official Charlinder's Walk tour page--either way works just as well.

About the author: Alyson Miers was born into a family of compulsive readers and thought it would be fun to get on the other side of the words. She attended Salisbury University, where she majored in English Creative Writing for some reason, and minored in Gender Studies. In 2006, she did the only thing a 25-year-old with a B.A. in English can do to pay the rent: joined the Peace Corps. At her assignment of teaching English in Albania, she learned the joys of culture shock, language barriers and being the only foreigner on the street, and got Charlinder off the ground. She brought home a completed first draft in 2008 and, between doing a lot of other stuff such as writing two other books, she managed to ready it for publication in 2011. She regularly shoots her mouth off at her blog, The Monster's Ink, when she isn't writing fiction or holding down her day job. She lives in Maryland with her computer and a lot of yarn. Connect with Alyson on her website, blog, Facebook, Twitter or GoodReads.

Get Charlinder's Walk on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

CHARLINDER'S WALK: AN EXCERPT

The rest of the afternoon passed so enjoyably that Charlinder soon asked himself if he had overreacted. He forgot the tension of the school day. He liked his life just where it was, and he preferred not to think about how it would be several years down the road, when all his friends would be mothers of children in his class. Stuart, for example, was a very sweet child but there was no telling how he would be as a pupil. The idea that within the next couple of years the rest of his friends would also have babies was a change he preferred not to imagine. The idea of “babies” was one thing, but he preferred to come up to Spinners’ Square and join the women as “my friend Char,” and without the additional layer of “my kid’s teacher.” He liked what they had just then. It didn’t need to change.

Even when Ruth arrived late in the day with a knitting project of what appeared to be a small sock, Charlinder assumed she didn't intend to do anything except enjoy some conversation while doing her textile work.

                "Hello, Ruthie," said Miriam, in the tone she used to tell people they were expected to declare their intentions right away.

"Hi, everyone,” Ruth responded as she sat down in the grass. "Hi, Stuey!" she cooed at Stuart, who held up the ball of yarn he was using as a toy.

                That was enough for the time being. Ruth went on knitting, the rest of them continued with their tasks, and no one said very much, but it wasn't a tense quiet. It was the kind of quiet that happens when no one needs to say anything, and they were comfortable that way, until the sun started glowing orange and sinking towards the horizon.

                "Char, who was the other little boy fighting in school today?" asked Ruth suddenly.

                "What do you mean by 'the other little boy'?" He suspected she already knew of Taylor's nephew, but wanted her to spell it out.

                "I heard from Taylor that his nephew, Michael, was in a fight with another little boy at school today. Who was the other boy?"

                "That was Khalil," said Miriam. “I’m tight with his grandmother.”

                "What were they fighting about?" asked Ruth.

                "Taylor didn't tell you?"

                "No, he just said Khalil said something that made Michael really mad, and they ended up fighting."

                Charlinder did not like where this was headed. "Khalil said Michael and Taylor were both squirrel-brains," he said, dodging the issue and making Phoebe and Yolande giggle.

                "But what would make him say that?" Ruth pressed on.

                "I don't know," he fudged. "Kids that age do a lot of things for no apparent reason. The little buggers just don't think."

                "But this is the first fight you've seen in two years of teaching school," said Ruth. "Surely it didn't just happen for no reason."

                Miriam let out an exasperated growl. "Char, you might want to leave now," she said through gritted teeth, then turned to Ruth. "Taylor probably already told you this, but just to get it back in the open so you know we're all informed, little Michael decided to share Uncle Taylor's preaching about how God punished people for behaving badly by giving them the Plague. Khalil didn't agree with him."

                "So, how did you handle that?" Ruth asked Charlinder.

                "How he handles the kids in the schoolroom is none of your business," said Miriam.

                "No, really, it's okay," Charlinder cut in. "The class got a little off the subject after a history lesson, and I just wanted to move on so we could have math time. The kids didn't drop the subject when I asked, and they ended up fighting, so I broke them up and made everyone sit down in their math groups. And then it was over."

                "Why couldn't you just let them discuss what they wanted?" asked Ruth.

"Because if I let a few six-year-olds decide the topic of discussion every time one of them had a whim, we'd never get anything accomplished,” he answered.

"So, you don't want them discussing the Plague?"

"The Plague is a history lesson for another time, which I do teach, just not today."

"So, what, you don't want them discussing the disease that set the human race back by thousands of years, except on your terms?"

"I'd have no right to call myself a teacher if I let the kids use school time to have any conversation at any time they wished," he pointed out. "Then I'd just be a babysitter, and while many parents figure it’s the same thing, I'm still interested in educating. And if you ever try teaching kids that young, you'll see you can't just let them run the place. So, yes, I do want them discussing the Plague on my terms only, or they can take it outside of school."

"Which I see your friend Taylor has already done, in any case," said Miriam.

"And does that bother you?" asked Ruth.

"If Taylor wants to give his big sister and brother a break from dealing with a six-year-old boy for just long enough to tell him that God loved His creations so much He tried to kill them all," Miriam explained, "then I'm frankly disturbed, but then I can't be everyone's mother when their mothers are alive. What bothers me is when people want to use the Plague as an excuse to pick fights with people who aren't interested," she continued. "Like you're doing now, for example."

"Picking a fight?" Ruth said disbelievingly. "Is that what I'm doing?"

"Well, you are the one who brought it up," said Phoebe.

Yolande tucked the wool cards under one arm and took Stuart in the other. "Come on, Stu-baby, time to go home," she said while making haste from the Square.

"What you call 'picking a fight' is the least that I and anyone else who cares around here has to do to get anyone to talk," said Ruth. "What are you all afraid of, anyway?"

"We're not 'afraid of' anything except giving you lot the idea that there is anything to talk about involving your God. Just who are you to decide what anyone should be talking about around here, anyway?" demanded Miriam.

"Maybe we do it out of concern for your souls," Ruth offered, still just as composed as ever above her array of slender knitting needles and two-ply yarn. "Maybe we want you to start talking about what led to the Plague because we don't want you to suffer eternal damnation in Hell for your actions."

Charlinder wanted to run home and bury himself under a pile of Eileen Woodlawn's writings, but one look at Phoebe's face showed him what he felt: they just couldn't look away.

Miriam began laughing again. "And who's going to tell us what kind of behavior is going to send us to Hell? You?" she scoffed. "That is, assuming your promises of Heaven and Hell are places that really exist, which I'm far from convinced they are, but you know how I really feel about what caused the Plague, and what your God may have had to do with it?"

"No, Miriam, tell me how you really feel," Ruth said flatly.

"I just don't care one way or the other. I don't see why anyone gives a lamb's tail about what caused a disease that snuffed itself out almost a hundred-twenty years ago, when we have much more important things to do than argue over what might have happened. The Plague is in the past; it is history. We need to take care of the present, and if you have enough time on your hands to be quibbling about something that far in the past, then you're not doing enough to get this farm moving into the future."

Phoebe looked extremely impressed with Miriam's rant, but Ruth was unfazed.

"But what kind of future will we have if we just make the same mistakes that brought God's anger on our ancestors? How many of us will survive another Plague?"

"And again I ask," Miriam continued, "Who are you to know what any supposed God wants us to do, any more than the rest of us? And have you ever found it a little strange how your whole argument for why we should love God, and worship Him, and build our lives around bending to His will and honoring His divine plan, is that He supposedly brought about a disease that killed over six and a half billion people in less than two years? Have you ever considered how that looks to those of us who aren't impressed with your reasoning for why God even exists in the first place? Any God who would do that to His creations for disobeying a moral code that He never even bothered to communicate to them is, as far as I care, not a God who deserves even our respect, much less our worship."

This time, even Ruth was shocked. She finally blinked and recovered her voice enough to say, "There doesn't have to be any mystery in what God expects from us. It's a pity that none of our original survivors left a Bible in good enough condition to last this long, but all you have to do is pray, and listen to what He says."

"Except I don't think you, or any of the other Faithful, want us to pray," Miriam told her. "You don't want us to listen to voices only we can hear, and you don't want us to discuss what we think may have happened over a hundred years ago. You want us to listen to you. And that's why the rest of us don't want to have this conversation. It doesn't matter why our ancestors saw all their family and friends die of the Plague, because at this point, there's nothing we can do to change the fact that it happened. Arguing about what they did to bring that disease on themselves isn't going to make our children's lives any easier or better. The only people who have any reason to care about why the Plague happened are long since dead."

"I see I'm wasting my breath on you," said Ruth, with a slight expression of awe.

"You've been wasting your breath on everyone who's been sitting here, honey," Miriam confirmed.

Ruth speared her ball of yarn on the ends of her needles and stood up. Before she walked away, however, she looked at Charlinder. "She never could explain how she knew it was safe to go outside, could she?"

"I don't think she was ever really concerned about that," Charlinder answered.

"No, she may not have been concerned. But she still never managed to explain it, even after she described it in her diary," Ruth reminded him, and finally walked away.

"What was that about? Who is 'she'?" asked Phoebe.

There was no way it could be anyone else. "Eileen Woodlawn."

a Rafflecopter giveaway