Thirty Three Days by Stephen B King

Wild Women Authors is pleased to feature Australian author Stephen B. King, who is celebrating Thirty Three Days, his first release The Wild Rose Press. Stephen has a guest with him: Jenny O’Brien, lead protagonist from the novel. First up is Jenny.

Where are you from? Perth, Western Australia, but a better Question is WHEN am I from, then it’s either 2016, where I spent thirty-three days, or 2049 where I hailed from.

Tell us a bit about Thirty Three Days. The story is about my trip back in time, to try to convince a young micro biologist not to release a genetically modified strain of wheat which housed an unstoppable blight. That blight over ‘the following two hundred years would grow to the point where it would cause extinction of every living thing on our planet. In the future, a drug is discovered which allowed a person’s consciousness to go back thirty three years to their younger body, in my case to when I was thirty five. Once there, I knew when my trip came to an end I’d have no memory of doing it and what I had done, but as a passionate advocate for the environment, I wanted to try. The thing was, when I went back in time, I fell in love with my target’s father. This was a first for me, in my sixty eight years, I was too busy studying, and then teaching for that, so it was a revelation for me.

What did you think the first time you saw Iane Destaine? I was petrified. I had never been particularly brave or very experienced with men in any sort of romantic way, but when I saw him, it dawned on me how momentous my task was to be.

What was your second thought? That he was ruggedly handsome; fit looking, and somewhere inside me, something stirred. I’m not sure I can describe it any better than that. As I lost my memory on my return to the future, I only have my diary to go by. But some memories bleed through the curtains of time, and that feeling of attraction I do remember.

Did you feel it was love at first sight? No, I had no concept of love as I’d never even had a boyfriend to speak of. I’d had two sexual encounters back when I was a student, and they were both dreadful. In part they help determine my lack of interest in men.

What do you like most about him? With Iaine, everything he did, he was passionate about. He coached a soccer club, and he genuinely cared about doing it. His wife had passed away three years prior and he devoted everything to raising his son, Brad which put his life on hold. I studied the family from the future, so in some ways felt like I knew them long before I ever met him.

How would you describe him? Caring, gentle, considerate, and damned good looking in a rugged way.

How would Iane describe you? Haha, I once asked him to use five words to describe me, because whenever he paid me a compliment, I found it very difficult to accept it was the truth. Self esteem had never been my strong suit. He said he could come up with five hundred, then started rattling of a list of the most amazing qualities, none of which I believed of course, but I thought he was amazingly sweet to say them. It took a long time for me to accept that he meant those beautiful words.

What made you choose the lecture circuit for a career? It was a natural progression. I worked hard to gain my triple Master’s degrees, and the university I studied at offered me a position before I finished. Because I care about the planet we are slowly destroying, and the people who are passionate about trying to save it, it was a natural fit for me.

What is your biggest fear? I was given a glimpse into the future, and was lucky enough to be selected to be able to do something about it, and I hope I succeeded. I don’t know what else the future holds but mankind has an awful track record of looking after the only planet we have.

How do you relax? Put my cat, Boof, on my lap and a bottle of wine by my side, and a pile of student assignments to grade and I’m happy.

Who is your favorite fictional character? Oh this is easy. A dear friend I made back in the past recommended to me what she called ‘the best damned trilogy ever written’ and I agree. That was by Stieg Larsen, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Lisbeth Salander is my heroine for what she overcame in her life to be the woman she is. It was a beautiful piece of writing.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received? That the future is not set in concrete, we can adapt, change and make a positive contribution to the world around us – it’s never too late.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to speak with us, Jenny. We'd like to speak with Stephen now.

What movies or books have had an impact on your career as a writer?

Firstly a poem, which was turned into a song called Nevermind, by Leonard Cohen. Next, my famous namesake Stephen King, has a wonderful way of describing characters. The story, The Body, which was turned into the film Stand by Me is remarkable, and finally, like Jenny, I cannot go past Stieg, though Henning Mankell, creator of the Wallander series comes a mighty close second.

What event in your private life were you able to bring to this story and how do you feel it impacted the novel? Jenny is given a chance to learn a valuable life lesson by going back in time, and it’s not to do with saving the environment. It’s that love and family is why we are on this Earth and anything else that comes our way while here is a bonus. My family helped me learn that.

Tell us a bit about your publisher: how did you hear about them and what influenced your decision to submit to them? I had a very bad experience with a UK publisher who signed me, then had the temerity to get bought out by a big conglomerate that shut down the line I was contracted to. So began a nightmare. Thankfully I found TWRP and the relationship has blossomed – which is prophetic bearing in mind it stands for The Wild Rose Press

What book[s] currently rest on your TBR pile? I’m wading through the Wallander series on audio right now. I discovered the Kevin Brannagh TV series and just loved it. I then I found the Scandinavian version which even though it had subtitles was even better so I had to read the books that started it all. It’s fantastic.

Lastly, what's up next and when can we expect to see it on the shelves?

My biggest project to date is the Deadly Glimpses Trilogy. Book 1 is out now, called Glimpse, Memoir of a Serial Killer. . Book 2 is due out within two months: Glimpse, The Beautiful Deaths, and book 3, Glimpse, The Tender Killer has just gone off for submission and editing rounds. The trilogy explores the inappropriate desire between two married investigators who have to work together to hunt down three separate serial killers. The consequences of the desire will not end well, if it crosses the line between desire and actuality

Here's an excerpt from Thirty-Three Days:

Here goes, I’m about to bait the hook. “Well, let’s take Brad for example. He wants to genetically modify food sources to make them grow more efficiently to feed the starving millions; which is a wonderfully noble ideal. But, what if he gets it wrong somehow; instead of feeding the world, he kills it?”

“How could that happen, hypothetically, of course?”

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s a bit like when I talked about cane toads the other night. They introduced them to solve a problem, a serious one from a productivity point of view. But all it did was create a far more, wide-reaching, issue which has now achieved epidemic proportions. Wouldn’t it be great if we could go back in time and stop them doing that somehow? Go back to the guy who had the brilliant idea to import a toad that, because of our ecology, was fundamentally destructive. Millions of native animals have perished because of the cane toad and some are near extinct. So, suppose Brad could change the structure of his grain, but the nature of the change allows some otherwise hitherto unknown disease to grow, and spread only because he modified it from its original structure.”

“But surely there are safeguards in place to stop that very thing happening? If somehow it did occur, they would just change it back, or find a cure.”

“Iain, you can start a bushfire by lighting a match, but blowing it out doesn’t stop the conflagration, does it? In this theoretical discussion, maybe the change would occur so slowly, and in such a diverse way, it takes years for us to track down the source of the disease. And, unfortunately, by the time we do, it’s too late; it would have spread to all sorts of other food sources. You can have all the safeguards in the world, but when industry sees a way to make a lot of money, it’s funny how often those rules and safeguards are ignored. We have seen it happen all too often. Thalidomide, comes to mind. That was a drug developed to help pregnant women with morning sickness, and wow wasn’t there money to be made from a wonder drug like that? Thousands of children were then born with deformities or were stillborn. It was horrific.”

“You keep saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ like you are from the future….” He looked at her, strangely, and Jenny just stared back, her head tilted slightly to one side as she gave a small shrug. She took a sip of her wine, choosing to neither deny nor confirm his suggestion.

To purchase Thirty Three Days, go to:

www.TheWildRosePress.com

Amazon: http://a.co/d/0GTI97C or iTunes

To learn more about Stephen B King and the stories he creates, go to:

www.stephen-b-king.com

twitter: @stephenBKing1

Facebook: @stephenbkingauthor