Revolution Reborn

I am delighted to announce that my second novel, Revolution Day, hitherto published only as an e-book, is now available to buy in paperback!  It’s priced at £6.99 in the UK, $9.99 in the US and €9.46 in the Eurozone.  Here’s an all-purpose Amazon link http://authl.it/4yo

I’ll be looking to arrange a launch event for the paperback edition some time soon, so watch this space for further news!

In the meantime, I guess a short excerpt is in order.  President Carlos Almanzor has ruled his country for 37 years after seizing power in a revolution. His estranged wife Juanita is writing a memoir in which she charts his regime’s descent from idealism into autocracy and repression. Here, she looks out of the house where she has been a prisoner for sixteen years…

 

It is just a line on the ground, a slight change in colour between the asphalt on one side and the gravel on the other, a few metres away from the door of my house. The same weeds grow on both sides of the line. After rain, part of it is concealed by a puddle. When I was free, I crossed this line hundreds of times without noticing it, except when the wrought iron gate lay closed above it. But even the gate had little significance. It was never locked in those days; its opening and closing were the task of a couple of seconds. Walking over the line made no impact upon my consciousness other than a rather pleasant, fleeting sense of entering a place of peace, of refuge from the demands of public life. Or – when I was going the other way – an odd mix of apprehension and excitement as I prepared to get back to work.

The line has not changed in any way since then. It, and the gate itself – still the same gate, after all these years – continue to be ignored by all other forms of life but me. The birds fly over it. Snails and lizards move unhindered beneath it. My cat – how I envy her this – passes between the bars as if they were not there when she begins and ends her nightly prowlings. The gate is locked now, of course, but for the various men and occasional woman who come here for one purpose or another, that fact is of no consequence. They all have keys, and the act of unlocking it hardly delays their progress at all.

But for me, the line, and the gate above it, are now an impermeable barrier. I have crossed it no more than four times in sixteen years, under armed guard. The trees on the other side of the road beyond the gate do not look any different from the ones I remember, the ones I could have walked among and touched if I had wanted to. They are no further away, in space. But I no longer see them as real trees. To me, they are like a picture of trees or, when the wind blows, a movie of trees swaying to and fro. They are beyond the line, and all that is outside it has for years been slowly fading out of reality.

 

Juanita is not the only one disillusioned with Carlos’ Presidency.  As vice-president Manuel uses intrigue, manipulation and blackmail to make his own bid for power, Juanita will find herself an unwilling participant in his plans.

You can find out more about Revolution Day here:  http://www.tetaylor.co.uk/revday