GUEST POST
Firstly, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share my passion with you all. I very much appreciate it and I hope that this will help to get my stories enjoyed by readers everywhere.
I am Diane Sager, although I also use the nom de plume of D.S. Sager when I write under my horror/zombie/vampire genre. For all but my toddler years, I have lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area. I reside with Russ my English husband, three dogs, two cats and a parrot – not necessarily in that order!
Up until about five years ago, I was a high school teacher of emotionally disturbed and high risk youth. I loved my job and some of my students are still in touch to this day, many years after they graduated. I think I helped to shape their lives and I know they helped to shape mine.
Now this is kinda weird……….I have worn a POW bracelet since the beginning of the Iraq war and I vowed to keep it on until all our troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan. It bears the name William H Searfus who was tragically killed in Vietnam in 1967 and on MY birth date, November 25th.
All my published books have a character in them named Searfus as a tribute to this man and all the other brave souls who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom. This gentleman has son living in Southern California named Stanley Searfus.
I hope to make contact with him some day and pay my respects…… I have tried.
It’s a supernatural time-travel book of sorts which involves a 66 year old KATHERINE RHODES getting into a tragic accident that hurls her back in time to 1967. She wakes up back in her 20 year old hippie body in the Haight/Ashbury district of San Francisco. As many of you know, 1967 in the Haight/Ashbury became known around the world as “The Summer of Love” She gets to re-live this era of hippies, free love, drugs, music, politics and protests, with a wealth of knowledge and the opportunity to right some wrongs.
It’s all fiction but I wanted the setting to be 100% authentic. I immersed myself in the 60’s hippie culture and spent hours and hours on research. The book is factually correct. I listened to music from the late 60’s constantly, particularly the psychedelic era. I even bought a record player (remember those?) I got my old LP’s out and bought even more from eBay…….. Grateful Dead, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jimi Hendrix, The Charlatans, Country Joe and the Fish, to name but a few. There are Hells Angels, Black Panthers, political unrest and a horrific war in Vietnam. I wrote and researched constantly during the 15 months it took me to complete it. I wore hippie clothes and I even found myself saying 60’s words. I stopped at the drug scene though. It’s just not my bag!
Janis Joplin is in my book a lot and I watched as much video footage of her and her band as I could find. There is some awesome footage on YouTube of her singing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. My husband and I even visited the fairgrounds in Monterey to get the feel of the place. I read every book I could find on Janis and even Peter Coyote’s “Sleeping where I fall” based on the same period in time. Peter helped found “The Diggers” who fed the homeless hordes of hippie drop-outs in San Francisco in 1967.
I’m also lucky enough to still live less than an hour away from San Francisco, so my husband and I would go there and see where Janis Joplin or Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead lived. We drank in the Dogpatch saloon near the Hells Angels HQ. On another occasion my daughter and I rode the bus from the top of Haight Street to the Hells Angels house, all in the cause of authenticity. KATIE and her friends FROG and MOONBEAM travel this route in my book to attend a Hells Angels party.
I wanted to take my readers back nearly 50 years and be sure it was authentic, especially those that are too young to have been there. Even the weather is accurate in the book – I checked.
There’s a saying, “if you can remember the 60’s you weren’t really there” I think it was quoted by Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. I take my readers back to the real deal so they WILL remember it.
Soooooooooo, it was fun to research, fun to write and so far it’s fun seeing people enjoy it and tell me about it.
BLURB
KATHERINE RHODES has a tragic accident which sends her back in time. She wakes up as the 20 year old hippie she was back in 1967 in the Haight/Ashbury district of San Francisco. This was the period known globally as the “Summer of Love”. It’s all here, Hippies, Hells Angels, Black Panthers and the abhorrent war in Vietnam. “KATIE gets the chance to re-live this era with her friends FROG and MOONBEAM. This time she knows what to expect and tries to change things……….. Can she ?
EXCERPT
Feeling dizzy, she shut her eyes and rubbed her temples for several minutes, running through the accident in her mind. She remembered going down the embankment and hitting the tree. She knew she had been in an ambulance and she remembered a slew of doctors surrounding her. Yet here she was sitting on a couch…somewhere familiar, a place she knew but couldn’t recall.
A brown chenille bedspread covered the couch. There was a basic wooden coffee table, several antique lamps, one in the corner and another on an old table by a beveled window. The hardwood floor of the room was covered by an imitation Persian carpet.
The walls and even the ceilings were filled with posters; old bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Yardbirds, and even the Monkees. Some were drug related, promoting marijuana, mushrooms and LSD. Others were political, protesting the Vietnam War, even including a caricature of Lyndon B. Johnson dressed as John Wayne.
On the ceiling directly above her was a poster of Clint Eastwood draped in a poncho, cigar resting on his lip. A pose from For a Few Dollars More. She knew the film well. Beside it were several blacklight posters, psychedelic peace symbols, a hookah smoking caterpillar, and an assortment of twirling colorful designs.
The television, an old tube model from yesteryear, was in a wooden cabinet covered by stickers: STP; two local radio stations, KLIV and KFRC; Champion spark plugs; bare feet and peace symbols of various colors. Beside that was a flower painted guitar case that leaned against the wall. Everything in the room was familiar. She knew this house. She had been here many, many times, so why couldn’t she remember whose house she was in?
AUTHOR Bio and Links
However, her latest indie release, SUMMER OF HAIGHT ‘67 is none of the above albeit a little supernatural……..This story is nestled between her zombie series “EVIL VEIN” published by Permuted Press and penned under her “apocalyptic” name of D.S.Sager
A former high school teacher of emotionally disturbed and high-risk youth, Diane is now dedicated to full time writing.
Contact her at celticdi@gmail.com, @celticdi on Twitter, www.evilvein.com, Author – Diane Sager on Facebook.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Haight-67-Diane-Sager/dp/0692298215
GIVEAWAY
Diane will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteEven thought I am of the correct age to be a hippie, I was a bit too buttoned up to actually go the CA and try my hand at really being one. That and the fact I really didn't like the music of that age. When the rock & roll music I grew up with in the 50's and early 60's died out (with the Beatles arriving in America), I really quit listening to R&R and moved on to Country Music, of which I am still a big fan.
ReplyDeleteTodays posting made me remember growing up in the late 60's and my friends who went to VietNam and flower children and the Hari Kristnas who roamed around the airports changing, and I remember growing up and flowered pants and headbands and experimenting with life. thank you sounds like a fun and interesting book to read
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