A Time Apart by Brittany Batong review interview and giveaway!!

A Time Apart: A Novel

by Brittany Batong

Time-Travel Romance

Publisher: Chances Press, LLC

Release Date: Feb 25, 2013

Heat Level: Sensual

Word Count: 105,000

Buy Links

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/A-Time-Apart-ebook/dp/B009B2GDSQ/

ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-atimeapartanovel-1091317-141.html

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-time-apart-brittany-batong/1112947656

Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/A-Time-Apart/book-7ZNEoE8Gn06QeNkfW7mbGQ/page1.html

Description

A Time Apart explores the bittersweet duality of our existence among the past and the present, through the eyes of Kara, a twenty-something art school graduate who has resigned herself to contentment in the routines of everyday family life as a commuting suburbanite.

An unexpected attraction to Jake, a slacker-colleague in her office, is further complicated when a visit to a lavish old movie palace initiates a journey into the past. Kara and Jake inexplicably find themselves thrown into the turbulence of Los Angeles during the Great Depression, maintaining a feigned marriage as inhabitants of a boarding house in a forgotten community of Los Angeles called Bunker Hill. As partners in a past that is both exciting and adversarial, Jake and Kara begin to develop very real romantic feelings for one another, even as they are bound to identities in a time that does not yet exist.

A Time Apart follows two people as they discover a Los Angeles beyond their separate lives, beyond all comprehensible experience, and beyond that which is real or imagined.

Check out the rest of the tour here: http://www.cblspromotions.com/2013/04/vbt-time-apart-novel-by-brittany-batong.html 

Excerpt

Preface: 2011

Sometimes I walk around downtown, imagining it not as this Los Angeles, but as our Los Angeles. My mind strips away the high-rises and the mirrored glass, isolating what is left of the city that we knew, surrounding it with the familiar places we walked; supplementing the self-absorbed professionals of the Financial District (who seem to me to talk to themselves but really into their hands-free devices) with instead the department stores and proprietors of “Art Lane”, defying the assumptions of the highbrow set, making statements and movements with their thoughts and their art. What would they think of this overly polished place their world has become?

I wander to 6th Street, seeing not the jumbled mix of cheap eateries and plain façades, but the warm bookshops burgeoning with poetry and compatriots; imagining the streets not with orange Metro buses and blue DASH buses, but instead with red and yellow cars that sail past on their cable connections, Delia reaching out to grab them, her laughter ringing in my ears.

And then I think of Jake, my mind carrying me to all the places we walked that first day. Sometimes I retrace our steps from the Theatre District, with its treasure trove of lavish movie palaces, to Pershing Square, where my reverie allows me to push away the gaudy concrete and primary colors of a park redesign gone wrong; and instead see the trees and grass of that other Los Angeles. My eyes continue to the grand old Biltmore Hotel, still as proud and dignified as it was and now somewhat out of place, and I smile as I think of that first night. If only I could dream vividly enough, I could bring to life the steep incline up Olive Street to Bunker Hill and find my way home to our old Victorian, up the concrete steps and through the creaky porch, into the parlor where our friends gather, spinning records on the old Victrola while I trip on the back step as Jake tries to waltz me around the room. My heart begins to throb in my throat and tears sting at my eyes.

But on I walk, as if it is the only way to keep those memories real.

It is when the memories are their most vivid that I chance upon a group of colleagues, who smile at me and say “hello”. I smile back but resent this invasion, this reminder that the place we knew is no longer here. That place, that life that we lived before us, before now, is gone forever. I am completely alone in its dreamlike memory, my profound grief unspoken, my loss without a voice, strangled at the back of my throat, a silent cry: unutterable.

About the Author

Brittany Batong finds that the most fascinating stories lie within the hearts of seemingly ordinary people. She enjoys working and playing in Downtown Los Angeles, uncovering its hidden treasures; and lives in Santa Clarita, California with her husband and two kids.

Connect with Brittany Batong

Chances Press- info@chancespress.com

Author- brittany@chancespress.com

Giveaway Info:
Prize is 10 eBook copies of “A Time Apart: A Novel" (1 each to 10 winners). Contest is tour-wide and ends May 10. Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Review:
I am a fan of time travel romances, but this book was different then most I read. I really found it sad that Kara was hurled into the past without her child. Her and her boss were sent back to the great depression during an earthquake. Jake also has a family that is left behind. I enjoyed reading about how hard it was to find work during the great depression. It is part of history that was well written. To be thrown into that time without today's conveniences must have been very difficult. Kara and Jake fall in love and have a baby in the past. Kara does art to make it by, and she becomes the bread winner. This was a very touching story about surviving the best way you can, and falling in love in the meantime.
I did not like the ending at all and it actually made me mad. I would have rather stopped reading a few chapters earlier. Don't get me wrong, It was a good ending for some people I guess, but not for me. I hated that the babies were lost in time, and I hated the fact that there were three marriages that were affected. Either way people were going to get hurt. However the ending did involve characters in love.
I am giving this book a 3/5. I was given a copy to review, however all opinions are my own!

Author Interview:

1. Were they from L.A in their time

When we meet the two main characters of A Time Apart, Kara and Jake, they are both your average office workers in Downtown Los Angeles, both fairly successful if not completely fulfilled with their work.  I wanted to make sure that the setting to which they traveled in the past was something with which they could be somewhat familiar.  Most people who work in Downtown LA live elsewhere, so there is also that element of the past becoming an extension of their professional identities, and the implications that has on both of them.  The Los Angeles of the past becomes a place with more opportunities for Kara, and less for Jake.  That serves an interesting dynamic as the two grow closer romantically.

2. Why the great depression, they were such hard times. Does the lack of money play a role on their characters?

I actually started by researching significant earthquakes in Southern California in the past, and the 1930s quickly became my only viable option given some of the perimeters I had set out for myself as far as seismic magnitude.  Once I had the time pinned down, I did a great deal of research to see what was happening in Los Angeles at that time, beyond the Great Depression.  I really needed to know what sort of support system Kara and Jake would be able to identify, given the financial challenges of the time period.  Bunker Hill and the incredible community that was cultivated there, even given the adverse conditions, became a great place for them to discover where they belonged in the past, in the form of the old Victorian boarding house.  The marginalized immigrant population also became a natural support system, as many people lived extremely transient lifestyles in search of better opportunities, so Kara and Jake would likely not seemed as odd as you would think, with somewhat anachronistic clothing and minimal belongings.  Then there were the bohemian arts movements happening in Los Angeles, which made it an exciting place to be a progressive, creative individual.  As adverse a time as it seems, it really is a time into which they could blend.

3. why did you decide to have two people time travel?

I had a situation similar to one in A Time Apart,  where an attraction I felt from a seemingly insignificant moment with an acquaintance got me to wondering about how people wrestle with these ideas of emotional faithfulness.  As a married woman, I wondered what I would do if I was thrown into a situation that made exploring those feelings a possibility: would I be able to remain true to who I am and to my husband?  Then the idea of time travel came to mind, and the rest sort of just flowed from there.  I love time travel stories, but often you have a situation where one person travels to the past and meets someone that belongs there.  The effect is that they don't really have any connection to that love interest once they find themselves back in their own time.  I really thought it would be interesting for two people to share this experience, especially given the fact that neither one in their own time is "free".  

4. what would you like my readers to know?

I'm in love with local history, and since I work in Downtown Los Angeles I think it's fun to uncover its sometimes less-than-evident treasures.  I think most stories about Los Angeles in our popular culture tend to focus on Hollywood, and even though that's an interesting part of our local culture, it isn't all of it.  There is so much more to Los Angeles than a lot of people realize: it's a melting pot of cultures, ideas, and creative energy.  It really is another character in A Time Apart.  I think it is inevitable that the place we live becomes either a friend or foe in our life experience.  Los Angeles is definitely an intimate friend, and I'm happy to share it with my readers