About Downtime
Written by James Allen
332 pages / 145000 words
ISBN: 1-934166-69-3, 978-1-934166-70-3
Available file types - html,
lit, pdf, prc
FBI agent Morgan Nash has a hard time believing that a magic spell has swept him into the past, especially considering that in his own time he was facing down a bullet. Now he's facing down a bunch of nineteenth century dabblers, whose ancient spellbook goes missing before they can send Morgan back where he belongs.
Chief among Morgan's new friends, Ezra Glacenbie is more than a little intrigued with his visitor from the future. The attraction between them is undeniable, but their growing relationship has more than a few roadblocks, including Ezra's disownment, the investigation of a serial killer, and a little family blackmail.
Finally, Morgan just decides it would be best to go back home, back to his own life and time, finding it too hard to believe in a love that came out of such extraordinary circumstances. When he gets home and looks into the past, though, he finds that he's left Ezra just when the man needs him most. Can he get back to the past in time to save Ezra's life?
Review
James Buchanan, author of My Brother Coyote, writes,: Victoriana and modern FBI agents aren’t normally a match. But when Morgan Nash, the jaded 21st Century G-Man accidentally gets dragged back to the era of Prince Edward and gas lamps it is an entertaining one. Add that one of the ersatz magicians, Ezra, might actually be what the recently dumped Morgan isn’t looking for, but needs, and you get a sweet romance to boot.
There are dangers when you write about historical London… getting your characters involved in a plot with well known personalities carries some real pitfalls. James Allen manages to not overtax the willing suspension of disbelief with those interactions and actually adds an interesting, and believable, twist to a legend. The blending of the paranormal and the grounded cultural detail added richness and depth to the story. Reading Morgan the brash American stumbling around not just England, but Queen Victoria’s England gave me several smiles.
It was a pleasant read that I enjoyed. Morgan grew on me, much the way he did on Ezra, and the rest of the boarding house. At the end I found myself wondering what the next caper would be.
Sample
After hours on the floor with nausea roiling in my gut and something that felt a lot colder than blood running too fast through my veins, I dragged open my bleary eyes to look at the cell phone's backlit display. Okay, it hadn't been hours; more like five minutes, but that was plenty of time to bleed to death. I jabbed the number for Leonard's cell and got an eardrum-shattering whine of serious static for my effort. Goddamn it. Looking for service. Fucking fantastic. If you wanted to get anything done, you had to do it yourself.
I fumbled a hand over my stomach, grimly determined to stop the bleeding however I had to -- and found none. I checked again, teeth clenched against very real nausea, but there was nothing to feel except smooth if clammy skin.
What the hell? I could have sworn Nosik had blasted a hole through me...
But apparently he had missed from just ten feet away. Maybe he needed glasses. Well, I wasn't getting any answers lying around on the floor all day. As I pushed myself onto hands and knees, I felt a distinct difference in the room, one I couldn't put a finger on. I hadn't passed out. I was fairly sure I hadn't. But tilting my head to peer to one side only confirmed my gut feeling. The light was different. Not brighter but -- warmer, like candlelight. Things were moved. Rearranged. And Nosik was nowhere in sight.
An uneasy feeling prickled the length of my spine as my focus sharpened. Maybe I was too sick to stand up but I wasn't too sick to blow a few holes through Nosik's little helpers, if they were the ones waiting around to bag me. I gritted my teeth and forced myself back on my haunches -- and there they were, three of them. My uneasiness expanded to new dimensions at the sight of them. If these were Nosik's buddies, they'd fallen into an even deeper time warp than Nosik with his plaid trousers. They stood gathered in a tight group, looking less like foreign agents than museum employees of the type who were stuck in storage rooms to catalogue junk as dusty as they were.
Then I realized none of them had tried for my gun, which lay on the floor just within reach. I grabbed it and lurched to my feet, telling myself on the way up that it wouldn't look professional to vomit in front of the enemy. As I hefted the Glock in a firmer grip, two of the three men fell back a step. The third, a leather-bound book open in his hands, stared at me with wide blue eyes and instinct told me he was the leader of this little gang of -- art thieves? Art theft was more popular than ever. Even drug cartels and arms dealers were getting into the act. But these guys didn't look like arms dealers any more than they looked like agents. They didn't even appear to be armed. Maybe they were just museum employees; but something out of the ordinary was going on. I took a shot at prompting a confession.