The Book Keeper’s Review of Alice

I really enjoyed this magical little book. The characters are strong, quirky, and believable, and the story is engaging and perceptive. I love stories which hide unspoken wisdom, and which continue to unfold in your mind well after the story has finished. A must read for everyone who loves unconventional, offbeat, and unpredictable story telling.

Kerry Hood
The Book Keeper Book Shop (link to site HERE)
Strathalbyn, South Australia

Thanks, Kerry! And come on, peeps. I could use a few sales and reviews this week!

Order HERE on Amazon.

A post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale by two-time Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist, Gary Gautier

#1 Bestseller on Amazon’s Metaphysical Fiction (free) list
#2 Bestseller on Amazon’s Literary Fiction (free) list

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Alice featured on Freebooksy

ALICE is free today and featured on Freebooksy. Download while free. Read later. A download NOW, while the feature is hot, will help with bestseller list rankings, so get on Amazon and get your free instant download HERE! Tell your friends!

A post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale by a two-time Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist.

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Alice Free

FREE download today. A post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale by two-time Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist, Gary Gautier

Get it HERE while it’s free. Read it later.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon’s Metaphysical Fiction (free) list
#3 Bestseller on Amazon’s Literary Fiction (free) list

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Twelve Days Left

Sorry all. The public online book event for Alice (see previous post) was pushed back one week to Thursday, 9 March, 7 pm, Chicago time.

Same announcement link is still good: Here’s the link to the announcement.

For the actual Zoom link (embedded in the announcement), you may have to scroll to the bottom of the announcement (or here), as it may not appear in the announcement  header box.

The good news is you have a few extra days to read the book if you choose to do so, and the e-copy will stay at $2.99 for the longer window.

(If you don’t have a chance to read it, just come to the free event. Last minute is fine, but better if you can check “going” in advance.)

Thanks~
Gary

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Alice: Introducing the White Witch

Here’s a passage from my post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale, Alice, introducing Christopher and the white witch.

xxx

Rat a tap tap. Christopher knocked at the cabin door of Alice and Evelyn. He didn’t really have to knock but it seemed polite, in case they were making love or having an argument. Alice and Evelyn didn’t really have arguments but politeness doesn’t always speak to what is but to what ought to be. And it was written somewhere that lovers ought to make love and ought to have lovers’ quarrels from time to time.

Alice opened the door.

“Christopher,” she smiled. “It’s so nice to see you.”

“Were you making love or having an argument?” asked Christopher.

“No, we were just making sangria for the gathering. Would you like to cut the oranges?”

“Yes,” said Christopher, and in they went.

Christopher was a regular guest, so there was nothing unusual about his visit. He occasionally came and sometimes spent the night. Sometimes he came because he was making a new map and reassessing the territory. Sometimes he came to help Alice and Evelyn in the garden or with the water lines. With his sandy surfer hair and his clear hazel eyes, Christopher had a mild-mannered way that made him well-liked in New Arcadia. But there was a physicality to his presence too, an outdoorsy vitality, slim but solid, that was almost rugged. He had a light beard and mustache, but nothing like John Wilson’s mustache. Nothing. And Christopher was practical, too. It’s always nice to have someone practical around.

“Making maps and helping with the water lines go together,” he said.

“Why?” asked Alice.

“I can’t tell you,” said Christopher.

“Why not?

“Because everyone needs his own mystery.”

“That’s just the way Christopher is,” Evelyn would later tell Alice. As if Alice didn’t know.

Christopher lived across the woods. You have to bypass both the factory and the hamlet to get there. His lover, Freyda, would sometimes tell him, “Christopher, why don’t you go spend the night with Alice and Evelyn?”

When she said this, he knew that she had night work to do. Her night work was maintaining the music of the spheres. The fairies couldn’t do everything. The music of the spheres must always play, but now and then one must tune the imaginary instruments. “Sort of like an organ,” Freyda would say, her red locks cascading down in a flame. “But with many trap doors hiding tiny mechanisms that are constantly changing. Sometimes they change so fast, you open a door and fix something and before you can close the door it changes into something else.”

No one could verify exactly what Freyda meant because, of course, the instrument was imaginary. But one thing everyone could vouch for – keeping it tuned was the task of the white witch. The fairies couldn’t do it. Freyda was the white witch.

xxx

See other Alice excerpts here and here.

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Good day for book gifts

Get’m books for Christmas. Below are choice picks at bargain prices by two-time Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist, Gary Gautier.

All on Amazon worldwide or in bookstores around the US. For e-copies, select “Buy for others” to send as a gift. For signed copies, email drggautier@gmail.com.

Click covers for links.

Alice
Kindle: 99c this week only
Signed copies: $14.50 + shipping

Alice’s little utopia in a dreamlike forest begins to crack when strange things start happening. A small deformed creature with a bowling ball head appears out of nowhere and turns to Alice for support. Her trips to the pond start to bring  transcendental omens and strange visitors. Thus begins a journey in which Alice wanders away from her idyllic home to find another world and to slowly connect the dots of her own world’s missing history. This post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale is comic, poignant, thoughtful, and sparkling, a magical tapestry with many threads.

Schematics and Assemblies of the Cosmic Heart
Kindle: $3.91
Signed copies: $9 + shipping

A poetic landscape with the impact of human passion and imagination. The poems are both personal and archetypal, rich in intimate joy and sadness, but also connecting to something abstract and eternal. The focus may settle on a brittle image, domestic or mythical, or on a brief feeling that opens a transcendental vista and then, perhaps, closes again. Each poem is tightly sculpted and easily read, but in a way that keeps readers reaching into the heart of their own cosmic lives.

Love’s Ragged Claws
Kindle: $3.93
Signed copies: $7.85 + shipping

Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist. In this short novella, Gabriel enters confession for the first time in 50 years and tells the priest he has only three sins, all sins of the flesh, and the confession opens up the byways of human identity and human relationships as it weaves the tale of three sins. The account moves back and forth across decades, pulling out the little epiphanies that would be reference points of meaning for the rest of Gabriel’s life. 

 

Goodbye, Maggie
Kindle: $3.88
Signed copies: $11 + shipping

Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist. In a culture of health food stores, gurus, quacks and seekers, Phil’s stagnant life is rattled when his charismatic brother shows up with the news that he has murdered someone and asks for sanctuary. Thus begins a dramatic comedy of misdirection, as our heroes find racism, madness, and unlikely friendships as they roll through the Louisiana bayous into New Orleans.

Hippies  
Kindle: $3.94
Signed copies: $14 + shipping

The Vietnam war resistance, psychedelic drugs, sexual openness, the freedom of the commune – it seemed that everything about the 1960s could be incredibly liberating or wildly destructive. Filled with the sights, sounds and ideals of the Age of Aquarius, this hippie epic follows Jazmine, Ziggy, Ragman, and a coterie of hippies as they discover an LSD-spinoff that triggers past life regressions and sweeps them toward a dramatic climax.

 

Spaghetti and Peas
Kindle: $5.99
Signed copies: $14 + shipping

What would you do if you saw a snake in the lettuce? Rachael had to figure that out fast. And she found a magical adventure in her own back yard, within smelling distance of the spaghetti sauce her dad was cooking on the stove. Enjoy this zany, richly illustrated, hardbound picture book as a read-aloud or early reader.

Mr. Robert’s Bones
Kindle: $3.94
Signed copies: $11 + shipping

In a neighborhood full of quirky characters, three kids’ search for hidden silver in an abandoned house pits them against forgotten ghosts and the house’s dark memories of racism and betrayal. The quest for the silver is especially nerve-racking for Annie, the kid who actually sees the ghosts. Her friends want to believe her but can’t, and she herself is torn between running away from it all and following the ghosts into the house’s dark history.

 

Phineas Frecklehopper
Signed copies: $5 + shipping

Phineas Frecklehopper was not always picked first at sports. He couldn’t always remember to take a bath or brush his teeth or do his homework in every single subject. Still, he considered himself a normal boy in most respects. But he did have one peculiar hobby, or at least others thought it peculiar. He loved to cook. But could rendering a recipe really make a hero? Absolutely! Read to see how. Then cook Phineas’s sample recipes! Ages 8-12.

Shipping (USA):
First book                                            $3.50
Second book in same shipment          $2.00
Additional books in same shipment    $1.00

drggautier@gmail.com

Ragged Claws Review

Lee Hall gives a new review of Faulkner-Wisdom Prize finalist novella, Love’s Ragged Claws.

“For a short read, Gary Gautier packs in so much …  I’m definitely urged to go back a few times and read it just to capture everything.”

See the full review at Lee Hall’s Book Reviews.

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Gary’s Shelf in NYC

Finally got my own shelf at Quimby’s Brooklyn, NYC!

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Alice opening

Here’s the opening page of Alice, the recently released post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale.

ALICE

Alice sat by the pond cupping her hand in the water, as if searching for an undersea plant or animal. The sun was going down. She stripped off her gown and dove in to do something but she could not remember what. When she came up, something was in her hand and the stars were above. They were the same stars as ever, but the constellations were different. Virgo and Scorpio and all the others were gone, and some new arrangement had begun. Something moved in the woods beside the pond. Not really in the woods. In a juniper bush. It was too big to be a fairy. Alice did not know what it was that moved in the juniper bush.

As Alice approached the shack, she could hear in the dark the whispering of the forest. She saw the lovely silhouette of Evelyn through the window, sleeping in bed. She entered, and Evelyn opened her eyes.

“I was at the pond,” Alice said.

“Was the rain king there?” asked Evelyn.

“No. Not today. But something happened. I dove in and the whole cosmos changed. The stars are still there but all the old constellations are gone. Virgo and Scorpio are gone now.”

Evelyn sat up. She was taller than average, with a nobility of stature that contrasted with the petite Alice.

“So then it’s a new age,” said Evelyn.

“Yes.”

Alice sat on the bed. Evelyn leaned toward her, pushed a brown curl from the brown eye of Alice, and kissed her twice. Once on her favorite birthmark in the whole world, the pink crescent moon on Alice’s neck just above the collarbone. And once on the mouth.

“We can hope,” she whispered.

“Yes,” said Alice. “And when we can’t hope, we can love.”

And they lay down together in the wood frame bed in the wood frame house in the woods.

The next day, John Wilson came over to the shack. No one ever called him “John.” They always said, “John Wilson.”

“Something happened with the fairies last night,” said John Wilson.

“I knew it,” said Alice.

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In all the best cities

Now in all the best cities: New Orleans, New York, Chicago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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