Hello, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the blog tour for Peter in Flight by Paul Michael Peters. There's also a review and giveaway below. To participate in the giveaway, please use the Rafflecopter at the end of the post!
Synopsis:
Peter can tell you how to run a great marketing campaign. He
can tell you everything there is to know about successful trade show programs.
He can tell you stories about the thousands of people he has met, miles he has
flown, hotel rooms he has stayed in, and ways to work the system to your
advantage. Still, he can’t tell the woman he loves how he feels.
Peter in Flight is a novella by Paul Michael Peters designed
to be the perfect read for a cross-country flight or extended layover. Life
moves fast in this quick read about a “trade show guy” and a love he thinks he
can never have.
Goodreads Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17884455-peter-in-flight?ac=1
Buy Links –
Amazon.com Kindle
ASIN:
B00CNGK59A
ISBN:
978-0-9891785-0-1
Barnes
& Noble Nook
B&N
Identifier: 2940148654469
ISBN:
978-0-9891785-2-5
iBOOK
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/peter-in-flight/id683452758?mt=11
9780989178532
iBook# 10000483934
KOBO
ISBN: 978-0-9891785-4-9
Excerpt –
I’m in Vegas
staying at the Hilton next to the convention center. There’s a place in the
hotel called Star Trek: The Experience,
based on the television series and movies. There are games and a Star
Trek-themed bar along with artifacts from the show and a “virtual experience.”
Two years ago
during COMDEX, the largest conference I attend, I made friends with a bartender
at the Star Trek Experience. Dressed
as an alien character called a Ferengi, with a large prosthetic forehead and
enormous ears, he stands behind the bar on a riser. Once he is off the riser to
grab a drink or walk the floor you realize he is five feet tall at best. I only
know him as Phil the Ferengi, but he may be the best bartender I have ever
met. He also owns a string of car
washes.
“Hu-mon,” he
greets me in character, “what can I get you? Drink? Holodeck? Games?”
“Hello Phil, good
to see you again.”
“Ah, yes hu-mon, I
thought I recognized you. What are you drinking tonight?”
“I’ll have a gin
and tonic please.”
He steps up on his
platform with the drink when he returns. I know I can talk to him because it’s
a slow night and I know his name.
“How are your
travels, hu-mon?”
“They’re good,
thank you. How is your car wash?”
“They are very
profitable. All of this desert dust can eat away at a car’s finish. But there’s
also a new city ordinance; I have to “go green.”
“What will that
mean for you?”
“I have to add
these tanks that collect used water, then filter it, and use it again. They
call it gray water.”
“I can imagine
why.”
“Are you sad,
hu-mon? Or tired? You don’t look well.”
“I’m losing sleep.
I’ve never had this problem before. I can usually sleep anywhere, but in the
last week I can’t get a full night.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s that obvious?”
“It’s that obvious?”
“It is usually
women or money. What’s her name?”
“Tatiana. She is
both unavailable and my obsession.”
Phil grabs the
bottle of gin and puts in on the bar in front of me. “Do you know Plato?”
“The philosopher?
A little.”
“Through
Aristophanes, who was a peer of Plato’s, we know this one interesting story
about early hu-mons. Hu-mons were not separate from one another, but were made
in pairs. They had two heads, four arms, and four legs. And they wouldn’t walk
around so much as they would roll around tucked up in a ball.”
“This is not Star
Trek?”
“No, ancient Greek
philosophers describing the earliest version of humankind.”
“Go on.”
“So here they were—women
and women, men and men, men and women—all sorts of these paired creatures
rolling at great speed across the countryside of ancient Greece. The speed at
which they move, the power they have, starts building confidence in humanity.
The confidence turns to pride. And it’s with this pride, what the Greeks call hubris, that they decide they are better
than the gods and try to overthrow them.”
A couple comes to
the bar interrupting Phil and he takes their order. Once they are settled, he
returns.
“So the hu-mons
think they can conquer the gods. But when the hu-mons attack the gods, Zeus
strikes them with such great power that he splits them all in two. Now the
hu-mons are sad, desperate, and alone, and they start to kill themselves
because they’re having a hard time without the warmth and comfort of one
another. Some remove themselves from the community. Others get lost in the
wilderness and are never seen again.”
“So what happens?”
“Zeus is wise. He
and the other gods need the hu-mons to worship them. While they are asleep, he
changes their bodies to what we know today, so that we walk upright and find it
easy to reproduce.”
“Interesting.”
“Well, here’s the
part that applies to you, sleepy hu-mon. After all of those changes, the gods
left a memory, a longing inside each of them for their other half. That craving
for the other half is instilled so deep inside, that we end up traveling the
world searching to fill that absence. And when we are fortunate enough to find
that other half, we know instantly—getting lost in the entwinement of
friendship and love and intimacy—that we have finally found home. People like
this will spend their whole lives together. If you ask them what they find
attractive or appealing about one another, they can’t explain it—they just know
it’s right.”
“It’s a beautiful
idea, that something is missing from each of us, and we have to trust others to
fill that. I guess the heart wants what the heart wants; there’s no getting
around it.”
“Easier to say,
but I like my story better.”
“Thanks for your
time and the drinks,” I say, getting up.
“Any time,
hu-mon. We’re always open.”
***Nona’s review of
Peter in Flight:***
Peter is a frequent flyer who works trade shows for
Comp-U-Soft. He’s been all over the country and has shaken the hands of more
than a million people. He’s great at the meet and greet, but has few close
relationships. He’s closest is to his boss, Tatiana, for whom he carries a
torch. It’s not just the constraints of
his job that keep him from making his move—Tatiana is a married woman with
children.
This story reminded me a lot of the movie “Up in the
Air” with George Clooney. Peter is a lot more likable than the Clooney
character, though. For one thing, he doesn’t go around firing people. But they
both have the problem of maintaining relationships because their jobs always
keep them on the go
I liked Peter. He was good at his job, and he was good
at reading people. Of course that was probably a talent honed in his
profession. He knows his stuff, is a good listener and rarely gets ruffled.
Even when confronted by an obnoxious competitor, he keeps his cool, prevents a
scene and gets the guy hustled out by security.
But he’s a good, caring person, too. Especially when it
comes to Tatiana. Her marriage is not a particularly happy one, but she has no
desire to break up her home. Peter respects that. Though their relationship
remains platonic, and Peter is a free agent, he remains surprisingly faithful
to her. He’s not a guy who has “a girl in every (air)port.”
Several events happen to shake up not just Peter’s
relationship with Tatiana, but the place where he feels the safest—his job.
There are a lot of upheavals in the later part of the story. The final event, which eliminates all obstacles in their way, felt rather
over the top. But it allowed Peter to prove how much he loves and Tatiana and how
much she can depend on him.
I enjoyed Peter
in Flight, but if people read it expecting a conventional romance, they may
be disappointed. A lot of time is spent with him discussing his job and the
people he meets on his travels. But I liked spending time with in the story. And
I bet if I met him in an airport in real life, I’d have a good time hanging out
with him.
Author Info –
Paul Michael Peters is an American fiction writer based out
of Ann Arbor Michigan. After studying at the Second City in Chicago he spent
extended periods of time living in Philadelphia and Toronto before returning
home to his beloved big mitten shaped state. "Peter in Flight" is his
debut work.
Author Quote
"I wrote this story while I traveled extensively for work between 1998 and 2008 taking notes on the things that happened on each trip. I could not include all the good stories. Looking back on my time on the road, I always liked to think of myself as George Clooney from Up in the Air, but in reality, I was John Candy from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."
"I wrote this story while I traveled extensively for work between 1998 and 2008 taking notes on the things that happened on each trip. I could not include all the good stories. Looking back on my time on the road, I always liked to think of myself as George Clooney from Up in the Air, but in reality, I was John Candy from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."
Author
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