A modern-day Scrooge for all year round! #timetraveler #lovetoread #fantasy #timetravel #novels

When fictional characters move from books to the REAL WORLD.
…from the mind of a fictional character
by

Julie Compton
(a character from Louise Wise's Wide Awake Asleep)

"Julie Compton is already 'current'. She's a highbrow, business woman in joint ownership with an equally highbrow business woman. She's there, dammit. She's made it, despite her disastrous upbringing."

I sit back and admire my narrative that I've said about myself. Well, it's true I did have a disastrous childhood, and I dismiss all this nature V nurture rubbish giving lazy people excuses to sit on their arse and claim benefits from the taxes of hard working people like me.

My dad left when I was about four. It's hard to remember because he kept coming back to secretly visit me--he couldn't give me up, you see, it was only Mum he wanted to divorce. Except I was a constant pawn in her games.

She handed me to social services, and I ended up in care for two years. Those were the worse days of my life. When I came out, I was forced to go back to my mum despite my dad pushing for custody of me.

But look, that's all in the past. I've moved on, and now I have my own back because I've put her in a home now!

I sound smug, and I want to feel smug... except... I'm not. I'm sad that we don't have that mother and daughter bond. It's all too late now, of course. What's happened has happened. No going back, is there?

So, no, I'm not one of those sad individuals on shows like Benefit Street or Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away who constantly bang on about their 'poor me' situations? I've picked myself up, dusted myself down and bloody got on with it!

I started with nothing, and made something of myself... so why do I feel like a part of me is missing? I'm 49 years old, for Christ's sake! I should be settled. But I'm not. Something is missing from my life and I can't think what.

Julie Compton       

(Julie Compton writing before the accident and before 'shimmer man' sent her back in time to change her future.)

Introducing...

WIDE AWAKE ASLEEP

Julie Compton’s life should have come to an end in the car crash but instead she woke, unharmed, back in 1972 and primed to relive her life all over again.

One problem. She’s in the body of a stranger. 

AMAZON.COM | AMAZON.UK

Journey back to the 70s and 80s England where Julie’s forced to jump through the eras, occupying and controlling the bodies of people she knew as a child. She must work out which destiny path was the wrong one, wondering all the while if her body, back in 2016, was dying in her car.

With each momentous change, her memories transform and she realises she’s not only changing her future but the futures of those around her.

A paranormal, time-slip adventure set in the real town of Northampton in England.

Excerpt taken from chapter five

Wide Awake Asleep

My head was buzzing; thoughts that weren’t mine invaded my mind. I looked over at the mirror on the dresser, then back at the contents of the bag on the bed. I looked at my hands. I’d noticed they looked different before, but I’d ignored their appearance—had to ignore it, to preserve my sanity.

A stranger’s thoughts persisted in my head. Mundane things of another life that I didn’t belong to.

I looked at the mirror again, then rose and forced my legs to move forwards. I knew I’d look different, but the jolt of shock hit me anyway. Instead of seeing my own face, I saw a young woman with a thin, pockmarked face and awful buck teeth. Instead of my blonde no-nonsense bob, my hair was long and brown. A wave of nausea turned my stomach as I stared at my reflection. I should be seeing a forty-nine-year-old woman in her prime, not a twenty-something scraggy-haired woman. I should be immaculately made up with perfect teeth and skin, not… not this.

An unexpected thought popped into my head. Will I look more professional if I put my hair up or should I leave it down? It wasn’t my thought. It belonged to whoever’s body I was occupying.

One thought was spinning around in my mind—and it was mine: I had died in the crash, and this was some sort of afterlife.

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Nurture or nature? Does anyone have any answers? #paradox #paranormal #timeslipnovels #timetravel

by

Louise Wise

I tend to write about lonely, could-have-psychological-problems characters who mingle with the 'normal' so my books have a dark edge, and my latest book is no different, but it has got me thinking about the human psyche and our chosen path in life.

My character starts out as a hard-nosed career woman in her late forties. She has no family other than an elderly mother. Her words 'I have no time for relationships' is true as she rushes from one business deal to the next.

Now, although this is a book plug, it has also made me think about the nurture/nature thing as my character (Julie Compton from WIDE AWAKE ASLEEP) is able to change her past by taking a different road in life, and I wonder how nurture, as opposed to nature, shapes all of us.

The protagonist from Wide Awake Asleep was shaped by her past, but as she is spirted back to her childhood she makes different choices and changes the very psyche of her being. Is that nature or nurture?

As I understand it:

Nurture = how we're brought up/outside the family influences/schools/friends/how family deal with tragedy/extreme happiness and excitement.

Nature = genes pure and simple.

If one of your parents has an illness you're more likely to get it, but if the illness is avoidable (through diet/awareness) it can be halted (type 2 diabetes for example) but if you 'catch' an avoidable illness it's back to nurture (learned habits).

I thought it was cut and dried, too. But another thing puzzles me... the little 'ticks' people have ie fiddling with your hair, that particular way you have/do things that is copied from your parents. That should be nurture/learned behaviour, surely?

OK, here's the story that got me thinking, I was visited the other day by a young relative who was brought up by her mum and never saw her dad (he died) but her mannerisms were EXACTLY the same as his. It was so startling it was uncanny.

This wasn't nurture/learned behaviour. It was passed down through genes.

How fascinating that simple gestures are passed from one generation to the next!

WIDE AWAKE ASLEEP

Find out what happens when an extraordinary event takes Julie Compton on a paranormal adventure through her past to correct a time paradox.

Amazon.UK | Amazon.com

‘Past events can be changed but one must be careful of how one does it because it’ll impact on the rest of one’s life.’—Dáire Quin, Modify your Destiny if you Must, 2003

No one saw Julie’s car leave the road, no one saw her crash into the watery ditch, no one saw the gnarled tree branch pierce through the window screen and impale her in her seat.
No one heard her screams.
Yet, this was the beginning of Julie’s life.

Julie Compton, is a forty-something woman, striving for success in a male dominated business world. She thinks she’s made it. She thinks she has it all.

Trouble is, her destiny has been travelling in the wrong direction and Julie is now forced to relive her life by occupying people’s bodies from her past in a time-travel, paranormal adventure.

For readers who enjoyed books like 'The Time Traveler's Wife' and 'The Lovely Bones'.

~

Excerpt from WIDE AWAKE ASLEEP – a paranormal, time travel romance.

Disorientated, I looked around at my surroundings. I had the strange feeling that I wasn’t here at all. I thought I heard a voice, and I cocked my head, but it was carried away on a gust of wind. The feeling of hands touching my body subsided and I was left in this paradox universe where I was me inside someone else’s body.

I looked down at myself and the first thing I saw was a plaid skirt, and thick tights, which sagged at the knees and ankles.

My heart began to beat in horror. No, no. Please, God, no.

My hands touched the stained cardigan over my large droopy breasts. Up further to my face…

My hands recoiled.

I felt a moustache!

I gasped in horror. I was ‘Auntie’ Iris Grimshaw!

It was bad enough being goofy Sarah Marshall, but now I had a moustache! And a bloody monobrow!

Iris began to walk, and I felt a sharp pain in my hip. I slowed, but the pain persisted. It shot down my left leg every time my foot touched the ground. No wonder the old sod was grouchy.