Fast Facts:
Author: Catharine Bramkamp, Popular author/award winning poet/ podcaster/ champion of Newbie Writers everywhere.
Genre: YA/Time Travel/Sci Fi
Book Title(s): Future Girls from the Future Girls Series
BIO
- Catharine Bramkamp, author.
Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice
Catharine Bramkamp is the co-producer of Newbie Writers Podcast that focuses on newer writers and their concerns. She is a successful writing coach and author of a dozen books including the Real Estate pa Mysteries series, The Future Girls series (Eternal Press) and editor of the Redwood poetry collection, And the Beats Go On. She holds two degrees in English, and is an adjunct university professor.
A California native, she pides her time between the Wine Country and the Gold Country.
She and her husband have parented two boys past the age of self-destruction and into the age of annoying two word text missives.
Accomplishments:
Writing Coach, Podcaster for the Newbie Writers Podcast, University Professor – critical writing. Board member for WNBA-SF, member of Redwood Writers.
Future Girls Blurb:
October 10, 2145: eighteen-year-old Charity Northquest’s whole future is ahead of her–and the future sucks.
October 11, 2145: she unexpectedly has a chance to fix it.
When her best friend is reported killed, but then re-appears the next day as an old woman, everything Charity has been taught is called into question. Even if she does not believe in time travel, she has little choice. So the ill-prepared Charity travels back to the mysterious and captivating 21st century where her single purpose of changing the future fades with the increasingly more urgent question of whether she can survive the past.
Book review:
By Betsy Fasbinder on February 15, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition
This book gets 5 stars from me because it’s everything it intends to be. It’s an interesting twist on the time-travel motif. The story lauds the influence and power of women and girls, but is also a cautionary tale against passivity and blind obedience to authority and the potentially dire effects of getting complacent and accepting what governments and the media say without question. This is a suspenseful story with a main character we can root for and villains that take a variety of forms. Lots of fun social and political themes (global environment, feminine power, corruption, sexualization of women, religion, media manipulation, , e.g.) addressed in creative ways without being overly dogmatic or preachy.
My very favorite thing about this book was that it didn’t disintegrate into a corny romance where they guy fixes everything for the helpless girl and she has to give up everything important for romance. The heroine is necessarily naive because of the sheltered experience of her life in the future, but she’s not a fool…and she learns and grows along the way. Guys are there as allies, partners, helpers, and sometimes villains, but they don’t upstage the heroine’s role.
The book is a stand-alone, but I can see the seeds for the series and will surely read those when they arrive on the scene. If Hollywood is looking for movie material, here it is. Katniss Everdeen, step aside. There’s a warrior of a different sort on the scene and she gets to use her smarts and her heart as her best weapons.
Connect with Catharine
- Catharine’s Website
- Catharine’s Blog
- Follow Catharine on Twitter
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- Follow Catharine on Pinterest
- Catharine’s YouTube Channel
- Email Catharine
- The Newbie Writers Podcast – iTunes