Giveaway: Win a copy of Dying to Live by Michael Stanley & Reconciliation for the Dead by Paul E. Hardisty

Today I have been following some of the book fun from the Theakstons Crime festival in Harrogate online to make up for the fact that I had to cancel going this year... one day I will actually make it there! If you're on Facebook check out the hilarious Book Blast Author Challenges that Angela Clarke has been doing live today and will be back tomorrow with more fab authors, or keep an eye out on Twitter as plenty of mentions of what's going on and even a few live videos to watch.

To make up for not going I've decided to run daily Crime/Thriller giveaways over the next couple of days.  So this evening's giveaway is for a couple of books I've received from the lovely Karen at Orenda Books as I also have eBooks of them.

Dying to Live by Michael Stanley (which I'll be reviewing soon as part of the blog tour)

When the body of a Bushman is discovered near the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the death is written off as an accident. But all is not as it seems. An autopsy reveals that, although he's clearly very old, his internal organs are puzzlingly young. What's more, an old bullet is lodged in one of his muscles... but where is the entry wound? 

Debut Spotlight: Paul E. Hardisty

Today it's my absolute pleasure to do a spotlight feature for Paul E. Hardisty and his book The Abrupt Physics of Dying which is the debut novel for new publisher Orenda Books founded by Karen Sullivan.

Canadian by birth, Paul Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a, and was one of the last Westerners out of Yemen before the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. 

Paul is a university professor and Director of Australia’s national land, water, ecosystems and climate adaptation research programmes. He is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia with his family.

Claymore Straker is trying to forget a violent past. Working as an oil company engineer in the wilds of Yemen, he is hijacked at gunpoint by Islamic terrorists. Clay has a choice: help uncover the cause of a mysterious sickness afflicting the village of Al Urush, close to the company’s oil-processing facility, or watch Abdulkader, his driver and close friend, die.

As the country descends into civil war and village children start dying, Clay finds himself caught up in a ruthless struggle between opposing armies, controllers of the country’s oil wealth, Yemen’s shadowy secret service, and rival terrorist factions. 

As Clay scrambles to keep his friend alive, he meets Rania, a troubled journalist. Together, they try to uncover the truth about Al Urush. But nothing in this ancient, unforgiving place is what it seems. Accused of a murder he did not commit, put on the CIA’s most-wanted list, Clay must come to terms with his past and confront the powerful forces that want him dead. 

Gritty, gripping and shocking, The Abrupt Physics of Dying will not only open your eyes. but keep them glued to the page until the final, stunning denouement is reached.

How close was your own experience to that of Claymore Straker?
Clay is someone I could have become if life had gone a different direction (except that he is taller, braver, tougher and better looking than me). I was very close to going to SA in the early eighties to join up to fight in Angola. In the end, thankfully, it didn't happen. Eighteen is simply not a rational place. The core events described in the book are based on experiences I had in Yemen in the 90's doing the same work Clay does, fictionalised of course. 

Your descriptions of Yemen are beautiful, vivid and affectionate, yet you call it one of the most 'tortured places on earth'. Can you explain why?
Yemen is such a beautiful place. Stark, rugged, strung with gems. But, yes, tortured. Bound hand and foot to the past, to ancient traditions, being brutally forced into the present. When I was there in the early nineties working for the UN, I modelled water use in Sana'a, the capital, and found that the whole basin would start running out of water between 2010 and 2020, without major reforms. Of course, nothing has been done, and wells are starting to run dry. Millions of people in one of the driest places on Earth. Oil was discovered in the 90s too, and rapidly exploited by foreign companies. The oil, too, is now starting to run out. The development stats are shocking, especially for women. Ninety percent are illiterate, each will have on average 9 live births in her lifetime. Half the population is under 13, and every male over 9 is armed. The government has no control outside of the two main cities. And with all that, it is a place that everyone should see before they die.