The First Review of Silent Lips – 5 stars!

Amazing how nice the feeling is when you read your first Amazon review of  your book!

I've just checked the review. Silent Lips, my thriller about a genetically modified virus that spreads in New York, leading to a frantic search for a cure, was awarded 5 stars.

Here's the review:

Reading Silent Lips by Glenn Ashton is like getting on a train heading up a long mountain. The suspense builds and builds until you reach the top and then swoops down into a very surprising ending. The level of detail involved in describing the battle against a plague-like virus attacking New York City is amazing and it feels like you are there in the laboratories and treatment rooms as well as in the highest offices in the land.

Beware that this book can keep you up well past your bedtime. The complexity almost demands a consistent dedication to finishing the book. Then you want to start over to make sure you understand the underlying science, but it's not really a necessity that you do, as it is just a very fine read.

It is definitely an amazing first book and I look forward to other books by this author.

I hope the reviewer buys Obelisk Seven, and Littletown Combo One!

Going on vacation to Europe? How to add zest with an obelisk hunt

Ever since we wrote Obelisk Seven, we have been surprised by the number of people who have raved about their first encounters with an obelisk while holidaying in Europe.

We tell them of our first encounters with these ancient pillars of red granite, and they tell us of the ones they've seen, and the ones they've missed.

Our website and blogs just for you!

When we finished our thriller, and started our quest for a publisher (check our Obelisk Seven website for more details), we also started a blog to use some of the material we had but which did not fit into the 84,000 novel.

Our novel started with an interesting tour guide from Trafalgar Tours. He was a Dutchman who left the pursuit of law to become a tour guide of major European cities. He and his wife enjoyed travelling, and he was an artist as well: whenever he had some time off from guiding tourists through London or Paris or Rome or Venice or other cities, he would sneak off and sketch street scenes and buildings.

Nefertiti - Take her a rose in Berlin

And did he know a lot about the history of these old cities, and the buildings and statues in them! He was fascinated by the past, both the politics and the people, and able to convey to us interesting snippets which made our visits to the tour sites so much more intriguing.

Tracking down Nefertiti in Berlin

Nein! Nein! Nein! Three times we were told during our visit to Berlin in 2009 that we could not see the famous bust of Nefertiti.

Alone - Nefertiti in the Old Museum, Berlin

She was not open to the public, said our tour guide.

She was being prepared for a move to the New Museum, said the concierge of our hotel.

She could not be seen  by tourists right now, said the museum official our hotel concierge phoned, at our insistence.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, we thought, so we made our way to the Museum Island to see if we were definitely banned from seeing the famous Queen.

Museum Island is the northern half of an island in the Spree River in central Berlin.

It houses five museums, the Old Museum or Altes Museum built in 1830, and the New Museum or Neues Museum built in 1859.

The New Museum was bombed by Allied forces during the Second World War, and was rebuilt and re-opened in 2009, after our visit there.

We wandered into the Old Museum and voila! 

There she was.

Museum Island, Berlin - aerial view

There was a display of busts of Cleopatra and Nefertiti, and THE bust was there.

As were dozens of people, thronging around this remarkable sculpture, which shortly thereafter was moved to the "palace" prepared for her in the New Museum.

Caesar bust in the Old Museum, Berlin

A little further down the hall we came across a bust of a brooding Caesar, with startling white eyes, seemingly pondering the fate of his empire and the queen of the pharaohs, Cleopatra, who had caused such disruption in it.

The Altes (Old) Museum, Berlin - Nefertiti's prison in 2009

We could not believe our luck, and snapped away, from all angles. 

To actually see the bust of this queen, who played a minor role in our novel, Obelisk Seven, was truly a gift from the gods – from the Egyptian gods, of course!

They did not answer Nein! to our question: Can we see the queen.