Welcome to the Staragazer book tour! There are prizes to be won and a cool book to read. What can you win? David Scott will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Want more chances to win? Then follow the tour. You can do that here: https://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2021/09/excerpt-tour-stargazer-by-david-scott.html
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Stargazer
For thousands of years, stars have held our attention and imagination. They influence our life—we wish upon them, sing songs about them, navigate by them, write about them, follow them, and even give their name to the actors we love. My memories have revealed a lifetime of navigating by the stars, and moving beyond the fear and anxiety that self-doubt so insidiously cloaks us in. Yes, as Jiminy Cricket sang for us in Walt Disney's Pinocchio, "when you wish upon a star . . . fate steps in and sees you through."
Memories and influences have a profound effect on our lives. I look back on my childhood years—the 1940s to mid-'50s—and I can recall the people who were inspirational to me. Mostly it was my family, but there was also Jiminy Cricket. You no doubt recollect the song "When You Wish Upon a Star," with its lyrics that lift the spirit and let you believe anything is possible. I didn't doubt Jiminy for a minute.
The early years of my life were a time of innocence, security, adventure, and family love. How quickly my situation changed—one decision by my parents, made with my best interests foremost in their thoughts, shattered the world I had known. Through the fear, torment, isolation, and loss of my own identity, my memories and influences would come to have an overwhelming power on the choices I was to make.
My transition from teenager to adult seemed to happen overnight, but my unflappable outward appearance belied the struggles of a boy coming to terms with his guilt, and an irresistible need for his parents to be proud of him. My future was being shaped from the past, but it took me a long time to realise it. I chose the road less travelled, steeped in the wonder of the cinema and accompanied by my beloved animal companions, and it has been intriguing, daunting, rewarding, and, at times, solitary, but I always felt it was the path I was meant to take.
Like so many people, I let the emotions attached to memories hold me captive, and I missed opportunities to choose with more clarity. A near-death experience helped me to live a simpler life. Participating in a creative writing course inspired me to engage in script writing, stage work, and novel writing. This is my third book, an autobiography that has revealed more of me than I ever intended to share, and fate has led you to it.
Now for an excerpt!!
Turning points in my life that readjusted my nature: the first was my boarding school experience, the next was the death of my father, another was my first love, and then there was a helping hand by a television celebrity when my spirits were at their lowest. And the last, so far, was a near-death experience. Of course, there were many other dips and rises in my existence but none as significant as those five. I would be jumping the gun if I went into them now, as you need to know how my life was at the time to fully understand how profoundly the events affected me.
My genes possess a trait some may say is bullheadedness, but I prefer to call it motivation. Well, it must be to have beaten millions of spermatozoa in the breaststroke race to the womb! Mind you, the same characteristic has steered me down more wrong paths than I will ever own up to.
It was probably the errant ferret rather than planning that brought me to centre stage in 1943, seven years behind my brother and eight years after my sister. My parents must have been flat-out running movie theatres, building houses, rearing children and dealing with the usual chores and dramas of young couples, so a baby at that time must have come as a shock—not that it was ever complained about.
We shifted from Wodonga before I turned four, so my recollections of living there are liable to be like out-of-sequence movie scenes. But be warned: after that they are comparable to Cecil B. DeMille epics.
Some may challenge this memory, but I believe I learnt about frustration in the cradle, when my ungainly arms and hands couldn’t pick up an object beside me. But I am a prolific dreamer so maybe it’s what I imagined.
Rufus, the family dog, waddled through the end of his life as I crawled and then skipped into mine. He was deaf and almost blind, yet he faithfully plodded behind me and my siblings as we ran errands around town. He was predominantly Labrador with a few other breeds thrown in to give him a shaggy coat. He may not have been as big as I remember, but as I was small, Rufus seemed humongous.
While my siblings were at school, Rufus and I discovered the secrets of our front and backyard, and on Sundays, when Dad drove us into the country for picnics, Rufus squeezed onto the car’s back seat between my brother, Max, and me. Pat, my sister, also sat in the rear, but because Rufus would let off cracker farts, she was always by the farthest window from him. Whenever he let one off, Pat whinged and poked her head out the window while Mum lectured Dad about “his” dog. Max and I smelt it as a joke and patted Rufus, who lapped up the attention.
David Scott is a playwright, director and novelist – among other things. His career included forty years as a film exhibitor; establishing a horse stud; managing a motel; working in the hospitality industry, and a few other experiences along the way. David’s latest book, Stargazer, is an autobiography highlighting the value of family, ingenuity, bravado, old-fashioned common sense, colourful characters and unfailing good humour. From rural towns in Victoria and New South Wales, to the mountain life in Queensland, the constant has been faithful canine companions, perseverance and a joy for living.
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