Thursday, September 4, 2014

Blog Tour (Spotlight): To Live Forever by Andra Watkins





Title: To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis
Author:
Andra Watkins
Publisher: World Hermit Press
Release Date: March 1, 2014

Is remembrance immortality? Nobody wants to be forgotten, least of all the famous.

Meriwether Lewis lived a memorable life. He and William Clark were the first white men to reach the Pacific in their failed attempt to discover a Northwest Passage. Much celebrated upon their return, Lewis was appointed governor of the vast Upper Louisiana Territory and began preparing his eagerly-anticipated journals for publication. But his re-entry into society proved as challenging as his journey. Battling financial and psychological demons and faced with mounting pressure from Washington, Lewis set out on a pivotal trip to the nation’s capital in September 1809. His mission: to publish his journals and salvage his political career. He never made it. He died in a roadside inn on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee from one gunshot to the head and another to the abdomen.

Was it suicide or murder? His mysterious death tainted his legacy and his fame quickly faded. Merry’s own memory of his death is fuzzy at best. All he knows is he’s fallen into Nowhere, where his only shot at redemption lies in the fate of rescuing another. An ill-suited “guardian angel,” Merry comes to in the same New Orleans bar after twelve straight failures. Now, with one drink and a two-dollar bill he is sent on his last assignment, his final shot at escape from the purgatory in which he’s been dwelling for almost 200 years. Merry still believes he can reverse his forgotten fortunes.

Nine-year-old Emmaline Cagney is the daughter of French Quarter madam and a Dixieland bass player. When her mother wins custody in a bitter divorce, Emmaline carves out her childhood among the ladies of Bourbon Street. Bounced between innocence and immorality, she struggles to find her safe haven, even while her mother makes her open her dress and serve tea to grown men.

It isn’t until Emmaline finds the strange cards hidden in her mother’s desk that she realizes why these men are visiting: her mother has offered to sell her to the highest bidder. To escape a life of prostitution, she slips away during a police raid on her mother’s bordello, desperate to find her father in Nashville.

Merry’s fateful two-dollar bill leads him to Emmaline as she is being chased by the winner of her mother’s sick card game: The Judge. A dangerous Nowhere Man convinced that Emmaline is the reincarnation of his long dead wife, Judge Wilkinson is determined to possess her, to tease out his wife’s spirit and marry her when she is ready. That Emmaline is now guarded by Meriwether Lewis, his bitter rival in life, further stokes his obsessive rage.

To elude the Judge, Em and Merry navigate the Mississippi River to Natchez. They set off on an adventure along the storied Natchez Trace, where they meet Cajun bird watchers, Elvis-crooning Siamese twins, War of 1812 re-enactors, Spanish wild boar hunters and ancient mound dwellers. Are these people their allies? Or pawns of the perverted, powerful Judge?

After a bloody confrontation with the Judge at Lewis’s grave, Merry and Em limp into Nashville and discover her father at the Parthenon. Just as Merry wrestles with the specter of success in his mission to deliver Em, The Judge intercedes with renewed determination to win Emmaline, waging a final battle for her soul. Merry vanquishes the Judge and earns his redemption. As his spirit fuses with the body of Em’s living father, Merry discovers that immortality lives within the salvation of another, not the remembrance of the multitude.


Buy Links
Amazon (Kindle) | Amazon (Paperback) | Barnes & Noble



About the Author

Hey. I’m Andra Watkins. I’m a native of Tennessee, but I’m lucky to call Charleston, South Carolina, home for 23 years. I’m the author of To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis, coming March 1, 2014. It’s a mishmash of historical fiction, paranormal fiction and suspense that follows Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis & Clark fame) after his mysterious death on the Natchez Trace in 1809.

I like:

hiking
eating (A lot; Italian food is my favorite.)
traveling (I never met a destination I didn’t like.)
reading (My favorite book is The Count of Monte Cristo.)
coffee (the caffeinated version) and COFFEE (sex)
performing (theater, singing, public speaking, playing piano)
time with my friends
Sirius XM Chill
yoga (No, I can’t stand on my head.)
writing in bed
candlelight

I don’t like:

getting up in the morning
cilantro (It is the devil weed.)
surprises (For me or for anyone else.)
house cleaning
cooking

Links
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Pinterest | Goodreads

Blog Tour Schedule

Monday, July 21
Review at Unshelfish

Wednesday, July 23
Excerpt at Making My Mark

Thursday, July 24
Spotlight at What Is That Book About

Friday, July 25
Review at Mel’s Shelves

Monday, July 28
Review at Ryann Donnelly
Excerpt & Giveaway at Paranormal Book Club

Wednesday, July 30
Review at The Worm Hole
Guest Post at Sallie’s Book Reviews and More

Monday, August 4
Spotlight & Giveaway at Reading Lark

Wednesday, August 6
Spotlight & Giveaway at Mina’s Bookshelf

Thursday, August 7
Review at Mythical Books

Tuesday, August 12
Review at Beth’s Book Reviews

Wednesday, August 13
Review at The Readers Hollow

Monday, August 18
Spotlight & Giveaway at Susan Heim on Writing

Wednesday, August 20
Interview at To Read or Not to Read

Wednesday, August 21
Guest Post at Literary Escapism
Guest Post at Lost in Books
Interview at Tower of Babel

Monday, August 25
Review at A Chick Who Reads

Tuesday, August 26
Review & Giveaway at My Tangled Skeins Book Reviews

Monday, September 1
Excerpt at Book Hostage

Tuesday, September 3
Review at A Bibliotaph’s Reviews

Wednesday, September 4
Review at Brooke Blogs
Spotlight at Bibliophilia, Please


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You are going to put words in my box?! *squeezes you* Now I shall stalk YOUR blog!