‘Through His Eyes’ by Emma Dibdin
The Blog Tour

My thanks to the lovely people at ‘Head Of Zeus‘ publishing and NetGalley respectively, for organising my spot on this extensive Blog Tour and making the download so hassle free.

As the tour draws to a close, there are sure to have been plenty of features, Guest Posts and author interviews, hosted by previous Blog Tour participants, so why not check out a few!

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‘THROUGH HIS EYES‘

The Premise

Jessica Harris has just received a career-making assignment.

She’s going to interview Clark Conrad – A-list Hollywood heart-throb and Jessica’s secret teenage crush.

Clark’s going through a messy divorce, and wants to rebrand himself in the public eye.

But halfway through her interview, Clark’s teenage daughter is found floating facedown in his infinity pool.

And then his young girlfriend accuses him of abuse. 

As Clark’s world darkens, Jessica is drawn to help him.

This is the man she’s always dreamed of being close to.

And now he needs her.

He can’t be the monster they say he is… can he?

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EMMA DIBDIN

About the author

Emma is a lifelong writer and pop culture nerd, and admits to feeling endlessly grateful for having a job as a journalist which combines both, with her work having appeared in Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Total Film, and Indiewire.

Since moving to New York from London two years ago, she has spent a lot of time brewing coffee, writing fiction, and covering the ever-broadening selection of Peak TV – all while fighting a one-woman war against the culinary tyranny of cilantro. Coriander is my nemesis. It is the devil’s herb, and the slow, sinister proliferation of it in British sandwich shops is deeply upsetting to me.

Follow Emma on Twitter

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As my contribution to this extensive Blog Tour, ‘Head Of Zeus’ and Emma Dibdin, have requested that I share this extract from ‘Through His Eyes’ …

Loner centred on a seemingly amoral, ambitious lawyer who moonlighted as a do-gooder vigilante. It was essentially a superhero show before they were in vogue, though the network would never dream of selling it as that. Loner was ‘a lawyer with a dark secret’, defending scumbag suits by day and saving lives by night, aided by his otherworldly ability to sense death around him. He could sense if someone was about to be hit by a car, or killed by a mugger, or burned alive in a fire, and wherever possible he would intervene, save them, always in disguise to avoid any link between his two lives.

Of course, there was a tragic backstory driving him to do all this saving, a horrifying childhood trauma that left him an orphan, and my favourite episodes were always those that delved most deeply into the angst of his past. There’s something comforting about a hero who has endured unthinkable pain and survived in spite of it.

Loner is probably no longer the role that most people know Clark Conrad for; he’s been a bona fide movie star for more than a decade, one of the few actors whose name alone can still get a film financed. But to me this will always be who he is. Loner by name, loner by nature, and yes, of course this tagline is absurd, almost as absurd as the fact that the character’s literal name was Richard Loner. The kind of thing TV could just barely get away with in the nineties. People talk about this show now with affectionate scorn, as a corny oddity, but there’s a reason its fans have stayed so engaged and are still clamouring for a reboot. The thing is there’s nothing insincere about Loner, and after a few moments of watching Clark’s performance you forget the silliness of  its concept.

Netflix reminds me that I’m midway through an episode – season three, episode twenty, the episode I’ve re-watched enough times that I can probably recite it – but I opt to begin the entire show again from the beginning. I watch his face, the face that has been an endless comfort to me through so much, listen to the voice that has been a mainstay when everything else in my life is collapsing, and think about what’s to come. What I’m going to ask this man. How I can possibly communicate, in the space of twenty minutes, what he has meant to me, how he came to represent for me the idea of what a good man looked like. Most people get over their teenage crushes, but he is my exception.

Not that I’m there to communicate any of this to him. I’m there to ask him the kinds of questions that will prompt newsworthy answers, because I am not a fan, or rather I am no longer just a fan. I’m a reporter.

I know I should be taking notes because there are ideas coming to me, questions, angles, but I’m too tired to hold my head up. I’m out cold before the sun has even gone down, the words of the show circling my mind as I’m drifting off, Loner’s dry one-liners following me into my dreams. This is not the first time he has lulled me to sleep.

‘Angela! Angela! Turn this way!’

‘Towards me, Angela!’

‘Angela, what happened with Jason? Are you guys getting back together?’

‘Angela! To the left! Angela!’

‘WE LOVE YOU, ANGELA!’

‘Hey, Angela, five minutes for Us Weekly? Angela!’

‘Angela, what’s your perfect breakfast?’

‘ANGELA! ANGELA! ANGELA!’

‘Angela, right over here! Over your shoulder!’

There are few things more soul-destroying to me than a red carpet. Angela Jackson, a twenty-something TV actress currently in the tabloids for breaking up with her co-star, is posing for pictures as photographers, reporters and fans vie for her attention, their demands overlapping each other until it’s all a meaningless din. But she’s a pro, she keeps smiling and posing and turning even as the photographers shout conflicting instructions at her, begging her to grace their lens with one perfectly sellable  angle.

My editor specifically wants me to get a quote from Angela but I have too much dignity, or fear, to scream at the top of my lungs to try to attract her attention, and in any case it’s pointless. I suspect the reporters who do this are just trying to feel less useless, because if the star’s publicist doesn’t want them to speak to you, they will not speak to you. I flag down the only publicist I know here as she barrels by, a phone in either hand and a clipboard under her arm, and thankfully her face lights up in recognition.

‘Jessica, hey, do you want to speak to Logan?’

And within a few minutes he is there in front of me, the baby-faced supporting actor with a rabid teenage fanbase, and I’m trying desperately to get him to say anything interesting about this film we both know is bad. I ask him softball questions, the fundamentals in any PR training exercise (what drew you to the role? Who’s your biggest career inspiration?) and watch him with a sinking heart.

‘Yeah, you know, it’s just a really exciting project to be a part of, and obviously Bryan is such a legendary director, it was a no-brainer for me.’

‘What was the most challenging aspect of the role for you?’

He furrows his brow, evidently not having prepared an answer even for this.

‘You know, I guess it was all challenging, in terms of the work, but I had such a great team around me that it was just a real honour to be there every day.’

I’m going to get nothing from this guy.

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