Book Tour: Dr. How and the Illegal Aliens by Mark Speed Interview & Giveaway

 

BLURB:

Doctor How’s famous megalomaniac brother Doctor Who sold his fictional life story to the BBC half a century ago, painting himself as a lone hero. Disillusioned, their four cousins dropped out. For fifty years, Doctor How has held the line against the forces of darkness and stupidity. And he’s not that happy, since you ask.

Illegal aliens try to hack How’s Spectrel (TARDIS is a very rude word where he comes from), just as he suspects his estranged cousin Where has been compromised. When reports come in of mysterious attacks by alien creatures, Doctor How has to rely on his new companion Kevin, a petty criminal from south London, and Trinity, a morphing super-predator, as he counters this threat to humanity’s existence. Bungling agents from MI16, long desperate to capture the Time Keeper’s technology, hamper How’s efforts to combat the alien menace. Can Doctor How keep ahead of MI16, save Where and combat the alien threat?

EXCERPT:

Kevin lowered his window and said, “Come on, Doc. We haven’t got all night.”

Where honked lightly twice, and Kevin laughed.

Doctor How smiled and took a couple of steps towards the cab.

There was a crash from inside the house, and the sound of splintering wood. The Doctor whipped around to see the sofa burst through the front window and tumble into the garden. It came to a stop upside down against the wall. He took a couple of steps back, pulled out his Ultraknife and held it towards the house.

“Get in the bleedin’ cab and let’s go!” yelled Where.

“I want to know what it is. Kill the headlights.”

“Kill the headlights? You’ll kill us all. Get inside!” Nevertheless, Where turned off the headlights.

“Get in, Doctor!” shouted Kevin.

The wall beneath the living room window collapsed outward in a cloud of dust, and the radiator that sat underneath it fell with a resonating clang onto the rubble. Water gushed out of a piece of broken central heating pipe.

A pair of black antennae waved through the dust. They were followed by two interlocking pairs of black mandibles two feet wide that scythed back and forth in the night air.

“Oh, you absolute beauty,” said the Doctor, lowering his Ultraknife a fraction.

“Oi, nutter! Get in the bleedin’ cab, will ya?” Where turned the headlights back on, lighting up the rest of the creature. It was six feet wide and six feet tall, with a rounded shiny black body.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” said Kevin. “Get in, Doc. Let’s go!”

“It’s after you, cousin,” said Doctor How. Or your Spectrel. Or your cab. Or all three.”

“Well, I don’t want to stick around and find out which, do I? Get in, you bleedin’ maniac!”

The Doctor opened the door and got in the front beside his cousin, who jammed the vehicle into reverse just as the creature edged forward a few feet, to where the cab had been two seconds before.

“Wait!” said the Doctor. He slammed the cab into neutral and jerked the handbrake.

INTERVIEW:

1.What do you think you’re really good at?
I’ve always been good at making people laugh, and I do impersonations – not just of celebrities, but the people around me. I think it was a defence-mechanism in childhood. I once heard a guy who’d been held hostage say that once he’d made his captors laugh he knew they wouldn’t kill him. Humour has got me out of some tight scrapes.

2. What do you think you’re really bad at?

Interviews and first dates. Both are similarly awkward and never give a balanced impression.

3.Have you ever had an imaginary friend?
I was a very cerebral kid at a very physical and authoritarian boarding school. They couldn’t stop me escaping with my mind. My characters and their stories were an imaginary friend on an almost industrial scale.

4.  Do you have any phobias?
I used to have mild arachnophobia, but got over that when I trained as an NLP practitioner and happily let a tarantula called Octavia from London Zoo crawl on me. I’d written about a character called Octavia in a novel many years before. Both the tarantula and the character were scary but lovely at the same time. I still hanker after a pet tarantula.

5. Ever broken any bones?
A university friend lost a sock out of her window onto a roof below. Gallantly, I jumped out to retrieve it and broke the second toe on my right foot.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Mark Speed has been writing novels since he was fifteen. His comedy writing has appeared in newspapers as diverse as the London Evening Standard and The Sun, and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra. He performed his solo comedy, The End of the World Show, at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011 and 2012. He is currently working on the five-volume Doctor How series.

Amongst other postgraduate and professional qualifications, he has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from City University, London. In 1995 a chiropractor told him he’d never run again. Sensibly, he gave up chiropractors, runs every day and has completed several marathons and a couple of Olympic-length triathlons.

NLP founder Dr Richard Bandler called him a ‘polarity responder’.

Links:

http://www.doctorhow.tv/

https://www.facebook.com/DoctorHow.tv

https://www.goodreads.com/MarkSpeed

@doctorhow_tv

GIVEAWAY:

Prizes for the tour are as follows:

• One randomly chosen commenter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card.

• Two randomly chosen hosts will each receive a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card.

The more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: 

http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2014/02/virtual-book-tour-dr-how-and-illegal.html

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