The Social Porcupine

Welcome, Jack, to Keturah's Korner! Please introduce yourself to us!     Thank you so much for having me! Well, as you can tell, my name is Jack, at least as far as my pen name goes. Jack Lewis Baillot. My real name is a mystery because I'm that sort of person. I'm an Author and do everything that title entails — like writing books, sometimes editing them, and reading every chance I get. And once in a great while marketing. How many books have you written and how many of them are published? I have written at least seventy to eighty books in my lifetime. Some will never see the light of day, most are being rewritten now that I have some idea of what I'm doing, HA!, and will hopefully be published at a sometime later date. I have published two so far, both historical fiction set in WWII but completely different from each other. Brothers-in-Arms is a 400 page length novel set in Hitler's Germany and Finding the Magic is a small novella set during the London B...

Finding the Magic is an adorable retelling of Beauty and the Beast  set during one of my favorite time periods, WWII. I wrote a review on  Goodreads.  But basically—the book was beyond warm and tender and captivating and I'm thrilled I had the honor to beta read it. And it was such a lovely short read, too. Anyways, this story is being published, and that means there is going to be a gorgeous cover . . . But first, what is it about? Fifteen-year-old Belle is sent to the countryside to escape the London bombings of WWII. She knows she will miss her mother and worry about her father, who is away fighting in the war, but has no idea what awaits her in the manor in which she is to live. She finds friends in the staff but the mysterious and elusive master of the house frightens her. Can she teach him to find the magic in a world where magic seems to be long gone? And who wrote it? Jack is an author, which is why she spends much of her time writing and little o...

I recently had the honor to review read a copy of Jack's book Brothers-in-Arms. Amazon Goodreads My review on Goodreads Back Cover: Franz Kappel and Japhet Buchanan never expected their friendship to be tested by the Third Reich.  Friends from early childhood, the boys form an inseparable, brotherly bond. Growing up in a little German village, they escape most of the struggles of war until the day Japhet is banished from school for being a Jew, and later has a rib broken when other village boys beat him up. Franz learns he is putting himself in danger for spending so much time with Japhet but continues to stand up for his Jewish friend even at the risk to himself. Then one day their lives are shattered when they see first-hand that the price of being a Jew is dangerously high.  With the war now on their doorsteps, Franz and Japhet come up with a desperate plan to save their families and get them out of Germany alive. Leaving behind the lives they've alwa...