I thought I’d share with you some of the reviews of Captured By Fire. They were all published a while ago but I have not got around posting them until now.
BC Bookworld. Click on the title words to get the full magazine. Once it’s opened, you have to scroll by clicking the arrow on the right. We made the front page, but the full article is inside.
Vancouver Sun.
The Province. Mostly a rehash of the Sun article.
BC Bestsellers List as of Dec 28 2019. Still low, but we’re still there.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our publishers for producing this book. We worked with a number of editors, which is always an interesting learning experience. It was gratifying that pretty much all we wrote was accepted. It was the grammar, spelling, and proper nomenclature of the various official bodies that needed tweaking. And every time Fred and I read it through, we always felt we had to add just this extra little story… Naturally, during our book tour, we received so many stories we could have written another book about them.
It seems as though we cannot escape fire. I am currently reading Pepy’s Diaries. It’s an old volume my mother had. Samual Pepys (pronounced Peeps) worked as a victualer for the Royal Navy in the 1660s. He had to somehow juggle supplies and money in a corrupt world. His stories of the intrigues of parliament and the sea battles between Britain and Holland and France are one thing. But The Diaries are also a very personal journal. He wrote in a code that was not broken until 100 years after his death. Now we find that he was 27 and very hard up in 1660 but actually quite wealthy a few years later. He loved to sing and dance, and had a constant eye for a pretty lady – much to the anger of his wife. He was annoyed when his wife bought jewelry for herself without his permission – it was of no great cost but he could not let her go on that way as who knows to what it would lead! He had no children, but often talks of his family – a cook, a maid, his wife’s woman companion, his own “boy”, his brother and wife, and how he attempted to be generous to them and protect them during some very bad times in London, notably the plague in 1665 and the Great Fire in 1666. The fire was eventually stopped by blowing up houses to make a fire break – when the king could be persuaded to spend money on such action. Pepys quotes figures after the fire that show how much loss in rents was incurred – he doesn’t talk much about the losses of the poor people. Different times.
And now there is Australia. Jade, my new neighbour, and her young children are visiting family south of Sidney and I have been watching the news avidly. (Husband Ryan is home, driving a sand truck.) But from what Jade has told us, they are so far OK; their main difficulty is with the 40C+ temperatures. She has many relatives in the area and some have lost buildings. Australian fires have many differences compared with ours. The vegetation burns differently – many species of eucalyptus are extremely flammable, and grass fires travel faster than forest fires. But the main problem is lack of water. Many supplies have run dry. Then all people can do is stand by and watch things burn.