Virtual Book Tour & Giveaway for Forward to Camelot by Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn

Join authors Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn on their Virtual Book Tour for Forward to Camelot, presented by Goddess Fish Promotions, from November 4 – November 29, 2013.  Susan and Kevin will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during this tour and their Super Book Blast Tour.   Please be sure to leave your email address with your comment, in case you are the winner.  You can follow the rest of their tour here, the more stops you visit, the better your odds of winning.

What Does The JFK Legacy Mean to Me?

I suppose I could take the easy way and tell you JFK’s legacy stands for hope, as it does for many people.  The promise of youth and what might have been...there’s always a strong lure for the road not taken.  

       What I keep from the JFK years is a trail of character.  That may seem odd, given the many indiscretions and controversies surrounding his presidency, but the one thing that always stood out about JFK was character.  From the first time I read John F. Kennedy & PT 109 when I was nine years old, I knew a man who had the courage to lead, through thick and thin, to the detriment of his own well being. Without knowing his life of privilege, I knew I wanted to be like him.

       John F. Kennedy was a leader, a man who stood up for what he believed in and made others stand up for it, too.  He certainly had his flaws as both a person and a leader, but his character always managed to shine through in the most difficult of situations.  A plethora of ailments including Addison’s disease threatened to kill or cripple him several times throughout his life,  forcing him to self-administer daily, painful injections to control his Addison’s. Physically unfit by any medical standard, Kennedy lied his way into the Navy and then combat duty (with his father, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, exerting his influence where necessary), but that’s where privilege ended.  Kennedy engaged in front-line combat missions and fire fights with the enemy that were very real, very dangerous, and often required a reckless disregard for one’s own life to save others.  Few men exemplify courage and leadership the way Kennedy did after his patrol boat was rammed and sunk in the middle of the vast Pacific one dark August night during World War II.  Nearly disabled himself with a bad back re-injured in the crash, Kennedy swam miles to an island towing a more seriously injured crewman with the straps of a lifejacket between his teeth. 

       Devoid of food and fresh water, in the midst of enemy territory, a battered Kennedy swam out into shark-infested waters each night trying to flag down any passing American ships, to no avail.  Yet he never gave up hope and never let his men give up, either, rescued six harrowing days after being shipwrecked, more important than a medal, JFK earned the eternal respect of his men and the rest of the Navy.

       The valuable lesson President Kennedy learned from his blunder with the Bay of Pigs fiasco perhaps saved the world a year later. No leader has ever dealt with the imminent prospect of an active nuclear war as he did, and his resolve to peaceful convictions beat back the overzealous call to military action that would’ve led to global obliteration.  It took Jack Kennedy more courage and character to not push the button than it did to push it at the behest of all his best ‘advisors’.  Kennedy had the foresight to pass the torch of his beliefs to the youth of the times, establishing the Peace Corps as global ambassadors of good will.  Steadfast in his support of the Civil Rights movement, standing up to defiant governors who would deny students the basic right to education, JFK proved that doing the right thing isn’t always the popular thing.

       Jack Kennedy learned to be his own man, rising beyond the notorious shadow of his father’s backhanded, reprehensible ways. He wasn’t a saint, but he had a regard for people, for their rights and beliefs. Imagine how differently the Sixties take shape with JFK standing beside Martin Luther King at the forefront of the Civil Rights movements. Could the Women’s Rights Movement and eventually the breakup of the Soviet Communist Bloc have found smoother, quicker paths through Kennedy leadership? I wonder how JFK would’ve addressed the societal hot-topics of today, affordable health care and equal rights & marriage for gay and lesbian citizens?

       

John F. Kennedy challenged us as a leader and a man, asked us to redefine ourselves and what we had to offer the world.  More importantly, he showed us how to do it.  It’s what great leaders do.  It’s what character is built on.  

Forward to Camelot: 50^th Anniversary Edition

By Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn

Publisher: Drake Valley Press

Release Date: August 29, 2013

Genre: Time Travel/Political Thriller

Length: 436 Pages

ISBN: 978-1935970149

ASIN: B00EVWYDG0

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About the book: 

WHERE WERE YOU THE DAY KENNEDY WAS SAVED?

On the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination comes a new edition of the extraordinary time-travel thriller first published in 2003 with a new Afterword from the authors.

On November 22, 1963, just hours after President Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One using JFK’s own Bible. Immediately afterward, the Bible disappeared. It has never been recovered. Today, its value would be beyond price.

In the year 2000, actress Cady Cuyler is recruited to return to 1963 for this Bible—while also discovering why her father disappeared in the same city, on the same tragic day. Finding frightening links between them will lead Cady to a far more perilous mission: to somehow prevent the President’s murder, with one unlikely ally: an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition brings together an unlikely trio: a gallant president, the young patriot who risks his own life to save him, and the woman who knows their future, who is desperate to save them both.

History CAN be altered …

Buy Links: Amazon │ Barnes & Noble 

Excerpt:

… Outdoor sounds.

Cars driving past. Car horns blaring. A cool breeze on my face, and something hard underneath me.

Slowly, I opened my eyes.

I was alone, lying outside on a patch of soft grass, and it was growing dark.

My head felt like it was about to split right open.

My eyes were sore.

My body felt bruised and banged up, as though I’d fallen down a flight of stairs and hit a number of hard objects along the way.

Altogether, I had had better days.

For a moment, I couldn’t think what I was doing here… wherever here was.

It came to me slowly, as I lay there, that I had stepped through John’s DNA detector, that I’d sensed a flash of light behind me and heard the tapping of keys on his keyboard. And now… I was alone and outdoors. I could feel a fresh evening breeze on my face and hear the rustle of trees above me.

Where was I? And more important, when was I?

I took a deep breath, braced my hands against the grass, and pushed myself into a sitting position. My head hurt worse when I forced myself to open my eyes.

I sat on a slope of lawn facing a curved street leading down under a railroad overpass. To my left I saw a blaze of light and a cluster of taller buildings. In the distance to the right, I could see dingy, weary-looking freight cars sitting still on a railroad track. Directly behind me, in the darkening sky, I saw the outline of a classic-looking curved pergola. Behind that, on the corner, was an old-looking faded brick building. Wherever I was, it was a city.

I sat still for a moment, gathering my strength and assessing my condition. I did feel pretty beat up, as John had theorized I would. But it wasn’t really debilitating; I suspected I’d feel a lot better as soon as I had a good meal and a decent night’s sleep.

I lifted my eyes, painfully. The light hurt.

My legs, when I tested them, were sore but would hold me, so after a moment I got to my feet. I walked cautiously down the slope of lawn toward the street. I stopped on the sidewalk; cars continued to flow past.

Big cars. Unusually big cars. Some with… I peered at them… tailfins?

I turned to look behind me at the lawn I’d lain on.

… And knew, suddenly, where I was.

I was in Dallas. There could be no doubt about it… because the sloping lawn I’d been lying on was known in my world as the Grassy Knoll, and the entire pretty little park was better known as Dealey Plaza.

The place where Kennedy had been shot.

… Which meant that the seven-story, faded-brick building on the right could only be the Texas School Book Depository, the clock on the Hertz Rent-A-Car sign on the roof telling me it was 6:40 p.m. The curved street in front of me was Elm Street.

John’s program had transported me to precisely where he said it would. The question was… had he also transported me to another time? To the right time?

AUTHOR Bios and Links:

SUSAN SLOATE is the author of 20 previous books, including the recent bestseller Stealing Fire and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new genre: the self-help novel. The original 2003 edition of Forward to Camelot became a #6 Amazon bestseller, took honors in three literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production.

Susan has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way!, which won the silver medal in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest on The History Channel. Amelia Earhart: Challenging the Skies is a perennial young-adult Amazon bestseller. She has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, managed two recent political campaigns and founded an author’s festival in her hometown outside Charleston, SC.

After beginning his career as a television news and sports writer-producer, KEVIN FINN moved on to screenwriting and has authored more than a dozen screenplays. He is a freelance script analyst and has worked for the prestigious American Film Institute Writer’s Workshop Program. He now produces promotional trailers, independent film projects including the 2012 documentary SETTING THE STAGE: BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, and local content for Princeton Community Television.

His next novel, Banners Over Brooklyn, will be released in 2014.

For updates and more information about Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition, please visit http://susansloate.com/CAMELOT.html.

Don't forget to leave a comment for Susan or Kevin as they will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during this tour and their Super Book Blast Tour.   Please be sure to leave your email address with your comment, in case you are the winner.  You can follow the rest of their tour here, the more stops you visit, the better your odds of winning.