Blog Tour - Game Show - 14/4/18

Blog Spotlight

Game Show 

by Allie Cresswell

Today on my Blog I have the pleasure of Sharing with you.....

Game Show!

I would like to thank Rachel Random Resources and Allie Cresswell for inviting me on the Blog Tour.

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Book Information 

It is 1992, and in a Bosnian town a small family cowers in their basement. The Serbian militia is coming - an assorted rabble of malcontents given authority by a uniform and inflamed by the idea that they’re owed something, big-time, and the Bosnians are going to pay. When they get to the town they will ransack the houses, round up the men and rape the women. Who’s to stop them? Who’s to accuse them? Who will be left, to tell the tale?

Meanwhile, in a nondescript northern UK town a group of contestants make their way to the TV studios to take part in a radical new Game Show. There’s money to be won, and fun to be had. They’ll be able to throw off their inhibitions and do what they want because they’ll all be in disguise and no-one will ever know.

In a disturbing denouement, war and game meld into each other as action and consequence are divided, the words ‘blame’ and ‘fault’ have no meaning and impunity reigns .

Game Show asks whether the situation which fostered the Bosnian war, the genocide in Rwanda, the rise of so-called Islamic State in Syria and the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar could ever happen in the West. The answer will shock you.

Purchase from Amazon UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Show-easy-people-things-ebook/dp/B00D8LS3O8/

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Extract

The story of Game Show is divided between a besieged Bosnian city during the 1992 Bosnian/Serbian War, and nondescript British town.

Gaining sights into conditions for the besieged Bosnians was very difficult. I only had the news reports and newspaper articles to go on - and these were few and far between. Bosnians could not get out of their cities, and journalists could not get in.

I used what I could glean from the small amount of information I could get at the time, and later accounts, to put together my portrayal of life for Bosnians, and filtered it all through the mind of a ten year old boy

Here, we see through Gustav’s eyes their pitifully reduced living accommodation.

Gustav’s grandmother slept in the corner under a heap of blankets.  Her mattress, dragged down from one of the upstairs rooms, was the one they shared, taking turns. Despite his mother’s best efforts it looked grey and dingy - only fit for the tip. His older sister sat, like him, in total stillness, propped against the cold, bare wall. The basement - a damp and gloomy space where once they had stored garden furniture in winter, and bottles of wine, and broken toys waiting to be mended - was now their living and sleeping room. They crouched there in fear, beneath what had been the familiar, safe living room of their home on the outskirts of the town.  But now it was a broken shell. The windows had been blown in and the place where the door had been was a void opening out onto the street. Above the door, on the lintel ‘Turk’ had been scrawled in red paint, like a swearword. For days, the electricity supply had been unreliable, controlled now by the Serb authorities, and the furniture remaining to them after the series of sly lootings (perpetrated while they were out trying, bizarrely, amid this chaos, to persevere with normality) had diminished to feed the old, long-redundant solid-fuel furnace they had brought back into service for the nights when they could bear the cold no longer.

The grown-ups had earnestly discussed the options in hushed and frantic voices (Gustav was supposed to be asleep but he heard it all; the women’s voices in muted minor keys, the old men in anxious falsetto.) Should they, like so many of their friends and neighbours, load up a handcart and leave with what few possessions they could carry? (A handcart? Gustav opened his eyes wide with incredulity, recalling his history project on ‘Medieval Times’. The very idea was ridiculous! Where would you even get one?  But then again, their family car had been ‘appropriated’ – whatever that meant – and he knew it was impossible to get petrol...)  This might be better, some considered, than waiting for the trucks to come to one of the investigation centres. But either option would mean they had to give up all their valuables, sign away their houses and relinquish their bank accounts. You had to go to the ‘Bureau for the Removal of Populations and Exchange of Material Goods’ and sign a form. The person behind you in the queue would witness your signature. You needed a certificate to say you had no library books outstanding. You had to say you were leaving of your own free will. You had to lie: this Gustav’s mother absolutely refused to do. She said Baka was too old for the journey, anyway, and how could they leave without Papa? They must wait for him to come home.

Nobody knew much about the investigation centres - camps, they called them - but rumours infested the town like rats. They’d heard on a journey lasting many days you were not allowed to use a toilet and people were given no food or water and old people and babies often died.

They said, at the camps, Muslims like them were subjected to unspeakable treatment. What did that mean, Gustav wondered. That you weren’t allowed to talk?

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Author Bio

I have been writing stories since I could hold a pencil and by the time I was in Junior School I was writing copiously and sometimes almost legibly.

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I did, however, manage a BA in English and Drama from Birmingham University and an MA in English from Queen Mary College, London. Marriage and motherhood put my writing career on hold for some years until 1992 when I began work on Game Show.

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In the meantime I worked as a production manager for an educational publishing company, an educational resources copywriter, a bookkeeper for a small printing firm, and was the landlady of a country pub in Yorkshire, a small guest house in Cheshire and the proprietor of a group of boutique holiday cottages in Cumbria. Most recently I taught English Literature to Lifelong learners.

Nowadays I write as full time as three grandchildren, a husband, two Cockapoos and a large garden will permit.

Facebook -  https://www.facebook.com/alliescribbler/

Website  - www.allie-cresswell.com

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and Talking about.......

Game Show!

You can also follow along with the Blog Tour by checking out the Poster Below ⬇

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