Join me in welcoming Jackie Keswick to my blog with her newest novella, The Power of Zero, a Prequel to the Power of Zero Series! Check out this awesome interview of Rio!
Available at Amazon!
Like Gettin' to Know a Feral Cat
Hi, I'm Rio. I don' do interviews. People like me don', y'know?
Bu' jus' to be neighbourly an' all, I'll talk to you about Jack. 'Cos he's somethin' else.
Bu' tha' first question on your list right here? Why did you offer a kid squatting in your basement a home? Tha's the kind of question tha' tells you who your friends are. Nobody who knows me - an' is in their right mind - would even think of askin' me tha'. They all know how I'm built.
And Jack wasn' jus' any kid.
Breakin' into my house took serious guts. An' he didn' break in to steal stuff, either. He needed a safe place an' who am I to deny him tha', eh? Everyone needs a safe place, however fortunate we are. Don' you like to hide in bed sometime, whether it's with heartache, a cold, or a favourite book? Imagine you didn' have tha'. Wha' would you do?
Tha's another thing about Jack tha' chokes me up. He chose life on the street over life with the pimp his mother sold him to. No' many people have tha' kind of courage. An' he still had enough heart left to try an' help others.
No' tha' I knew tha' at the beginnin'. Gettin' to know Jack was like gettin' to know a feral cat. You have to do tha' slowly an' carefully or you'll get scratched an' bitten. I did. Figuratively speakin', of course. I got too close too quickly one day, only
tryin' to help, mind. Bu' it scared Jack an' he ran. Worst few weeks of my life. I knew he was out there, all alone an' hurtin', an' I busted a gut to find him again. An' yeah, I was almost too late an' tha' scared the socks off me, I can tell you.
Bu' we got over it. An' Jack... well, he never bothered with school. Never trusted anyone enough for tha'. Bu' he's smart. He studied at home, an' then he started to help me. Gettin' him involved with my kinda crap wasn' perhaps wha' anyone else woulda thought good for him. Bu' I knew. Jack was good at sneakin' around, an' he wanted to help, so I let him.
An' look where he's now. He an' tha' chap he's with, Gareth, they rescued two kids a few months back. So the boy who started out with a mother who didn' deserve tha' name an' nobody to look out for him, now has a family an' two kids of his own. All because he had the courage to accept a bit of help.
Right. Wha' else did you wan' to know?
Jack's favourite colour?
Green, I think. The greener the better. Actually, scratch tha'. He does like really dark greens, bu' I think he has a thing for tha' silver green leather Hotshot makes shoes and jackets from. I'd swear I've seen him in one just the other day. It's the same colour as his eyes, and it looks badass.
Next. Jack's favourite food?
Once upon a time, tha' would have been green apples and pizza and hot chocolate. No' all at the same time, of course. Then he discovered coffee - round abou' the time all the coffee shops started up - an' tha' was tha'.
An' you know wha'? I'm no' gonna get into a music discussion with you all. I'm no' tha' patient. Wha' I will say is tha' when I met Jack he'd been told over an' over tha' he was nothin'. Nobody of consequence. A zero. An' when I told him tha' it's good to be a zero, he looked at me as if I was mad. I meant wha' I told him, though. Zeroes have power. They can change things. An' now tha' Jack's learned tha'... well, you don' wanna mess with him or anyone he cares abou'. Just sayin'. ;-)
ABOUT THE POWER OF ZERO
When a homeless boy meets an ace hacker…
Twelve-year-old Jack Horwood has run from the pimp his mother sold him to, preferring to take his chances on the streets. A house with a cheerful red door – and a classic convertible out front – prompts him into a spot of breaking and entering, and soon he has a warm, dry basement to squat in.
Until the owner of the house, Jamaican hacker Rio Palmer, discovers his hideout. Rio offers him a safe place to stay, but Jack doesn’t believe a word the man says and runs.
Rio can’t forget the youngster who is scared and vulnerable, and stronger than many men Rio has met. Finding Jack is a tiny challenge. Teaching him to trust is like climbing a mountain. But when faced with a true zero and its power, Rio can do nothing else.
Jackie Keswick was born behind the Iron Curtain with itchy feet, a bent for rocks and a recurring dream of stepping off a bus in the middle of nowhere to go home. She's worked in a hospital and as the only girl with 52 men on an oil rig, spent a winter in Moscow and a summer in Iceland and finally settled in the country of her dreams with her dream team: a husband, a cat, a tandem, a hammer and a laptop.
Jackie writes thrillers, suspense, sci-fi and fantasy - often with love stories built in. She loves unexpected reunions and second chances, and characters who don't follow the rules when those rules are stupid. She blogs about English history and food, has a thing for green eyes, and is a great believer in making up soundtracks for everything, including her characters and the cat.
And she still hasn't found the place where the bus stops.
For questions and comments, not restricted to green eyes, bus stops or recipes for traditional English food, you can find Jackie Keswick in all the usual places:
This looks like a good read!
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