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We will share some excerpts from Travels in Elysium – and we would like to find some bloggers who are willing to share an excerpt on their blog. Below, you will find a short introduction for each excerpt. In exchange for sharing the excerpt – we will promote your site as part of the tour.

To participate, contact nikki @ nikkileigh.com and for full tour details, visit https://bookpromotionservices.com/2013/06/20/travels-in-elysium-tour/

Excerpt 1 – 763 words

When young Nicholas Pedrosa lands the job of a lifetime as an archaeologist’s apprentice on a Greek Aegean island, the horizon is blue, his dreams limitless; he’s escaped a life of slow death in the grey English provinces. Yet landing on the scarred volcanic island of Santorini, his expectations are abruptly dashed as he blunders into a funeral procession. The dead young man staring back at him from the open casket plunges him into an ancient mystery that will demand every last ounce of his mental and physical strength to solve — and survive.

Excerpt 2 – 725 words

No sooner has he started work on the dig than Nicholas finds himself at the brunt of Huxley’s increasingly sinister behaviour, the archaeologist seemingly possessing an hypnotic power to manipulate minds, and sometimes, even reality itself. These apparent hallucinations are at times terrifying, at times rapturous — but is Huxley to blame, or some force beyond that no one has yet grasped or understood? As Pedrosa falls under Huxley’s hypnotic spell, the ancient island appears to come to life.

Excerpt 3 – 779 words

As archaeologist Marcus Huxley pursues his forensic investigation over the peninsula, reconstructing events in the hours and days before the ancient island met its doom in a volcanic holocaust that shook the ancient world, the psychological pressure he exerts upon his young apprentice, Nicholas Pedrosa, tightens relentlessly, notch by notch — pressures his dead predecessor knew only too well. What does Huxley want from his new apprentice and why? As they climb the broken mountain looming over the dig, the realisation dawns on Nicholas that the archaeologist’s excavations are as much about mind and spirit as they are about rock and ash.

Excerpt 4 – 524 words

In the dead of night, Nicholas climbs Temple Hill into the ancient city, drawn by another mystifying appearance of a white light. Could it be smugglers? Huxley himself, perhaps, in some occult worship of the night? Or Benjamin Randal, his own deceased predecessor, who according to the superstitious labourers on the dig, stubbornly refuses to stay dead and buried, haunting the ruins along with their ancient ghosts.

Excerpt 5 – 878 words

Weeks into his new job as apprentice to archaeologist Marcus James Huxley, Nicholas remains as uncertain as ever about the true object of their search. Is it to find the missing inhabitants of the ancient city, as his boss claims, a burial ground or skeletal remains that would prove that this once idyllic city was once more than a deserted ghost town as it seems today… or is Huxley pursuing a more tantalising discovery as rumours suggest — the grave of Plato’s legendary lost Atlantis?

Excerpt 6 – 663 words

While the archaeologists continue to probe the mystery of the ancient city’s final days, Nicholas pursues his own investigation into a parallel mystery — his predecessor’s (Benjamin Randal’s) sudden death, variously attributed to a tragic accident, manslaughter, suicide, illness, even murder. On one early morning, Nicholas finds himself under the shadow of the ancient excavated house designated ‘16’, from whose scaffolding Benja took his fatal fall.

Excerpt 7 – 604 words

Huxley’s arch nemesis, Prof. Claude Guirand, has been trying to wrest control of the excavations — and the ancient secret they still hold — ever since picks and shovels first bit into the volcanic ash. Now having reached a tenuous truce before the country’s brutal police state can close down the excavations for good, the two erstwhile enemies, and Huxley’s own inner team, set out to investigate the mysterious white light that intermittently appears around the dig at night.

Excerpt 8 – 699 words

Finally the archaeologists, along with Huxley’s former bitter enemy, local Orthodox priest Father Constantine Nannos, enter the ancient house on the hill, the reputed ‘Oracle of the Dead’. What will they find? Heaven, hell, the promised isle of the blest, Elysium?

Excerpt 9 – 922 words

Still lost to the Oracle of the Dead in the ancient house on the hill, Nicholas Pedrosa finds himself about to cross the River Styx into the ancient lands beyond.

Excerpt 10 – 829 words

Returning from their first ‘travels’ through the Oracle of the Dead, Huxley is incensed that his chosen guinea pigs have failed to reveal his long-cherished ultimate truth about life and death, and the possible existence of an afterlife, but seemingly meaningless variations of their own lives, experiences, fears and desires.

To participate, contact nikki @ nikkileigh.com and for full tour details, visit https://bookpromotionservices.com/2013/06/20/travels-in-elysium-tour/

Filed under: book excerpt, historic fiction, murder mystery, novels, psychology, research for a novel, spirituality, virtual blog tour, virtual book tour | Tagged: Atlantis in fiction, book excerpts, metaphysical novel, novel at archaeological dig, novel set in Greece, santorini greece | 1 Comment »