This is my post during the blog tour for Helipads in Heaven by Shanti Hershenson.
In Helipaps in Heaven famous author Dillon Hershkop gets enlisted as the test subject for an experimental time travel endeavor. She must confront her past trauma in order to gauge inspiration for a new bestseller.
This blog tour is organized by Lola's Blog Tours and the tour runs from 27 November till 17 December. You can see the tour schedule here.
By Shanti Hershenson
Genre: Time Travel/ Contemporary
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: 15 October, 2023
Blurb:Excerpt:
World-renowned author Dillon Hershkop has everything she wants in life, but getting there hasn’t been easy. Now thirty years old, she has achieved almost everything she dreamed of as a young girl: A dazzling career, a devoted fan base, and a picture-perfect family—but despite all of this, she is also painstakingly bored.
That is why, when Dillon receives the opportunity to become the test subject for a time-traveling experiment hosted by JPL’s brand new Center for Experimental Science, she seizes the opportunity to explore La Cañada—and the places she grew up around—without any immediate reservations. In exchange, she can write a brand new memoir both about time travel and the nearly forgotten experiences that shaped her into the talented woman she is today. That is, if she returns.
Dillon is soon thrown head-first as an adult spectator into the complicated world of her ten-year-old self—fondly nicknamed Goose—from her love of helicopters, writing, and all things Elton John, to her unreceptive fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Vincent, her sourly judgemental classmates, and the missed opportunities of a fourth-grade writer with a smothered voice.
As she observes the childhood she does not entirely remember, she begins to realize that there are reasons for the holes in her memories—things she must not remember, because if she does, it may become impossible to stand back and watch the oil of her bottled-up trauma be poured into a fire from a distance. And if she goes against the direct orders of the laboratory, the effects of tampering with a nearly unknown science may permanently disrupt the fabrics of time, space, and Dillon’s existence.
From the teenage author of You Won’t Know Her Name, Helipads in Heaven is a deep and heartwarming adventure of time travel, childhood ambitions, and at the core, a love letter to unique children and those who dare to dream.
If you knew her, you’d know that
Goose was the most interesting character Valley Park Preparatory School had the
misfortune of meeting. She was the girl who halted during physical education
classes to stare skyward at helicopters, hawks—anything to float her mind away
from the reality she lived in. She was the girl who scribbled routinely in her
notebooks and in the crevices of her math assignments, who wore an eccentric
bomber jacket decorated with patches even when the weather was too warm, but
most of all, whether her teachers considered it to be something so precious or
not, she was the girl who dared to dream.
Goose daydreamed her way through
elementary school, from the moments in which she’d imagine the protagonists of Star Wars whisking her off to a galaxy
far, far away to the ones where she’d imagine a future she barely believed in:
a dazzling career, fans who would support her better than her classmates ever
did, and to one day witness the scribbles she’d escaped with on the shelves of
a bookstore, on billboards and the big screen—everywhere. But these were very grown-up dreams, as her
fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Vincent, would say, and as a handful of her
classmates would tell her, stupid and impossible. Not once did Goose listen, of
course.
She never meant any harm with her
scribbles or her lack of attention—she only did so to get through the day in
its entirety. Besides, there weren’t many things more beautiful than a world at
the hands of her imagination. Goose did all right in school and excelled in the
classes she loved most, even managing acceptable grades in math. But in a
preparatory school at the foot of the Los Angeles hills, the city of angels and
movie stars and a soon-to-be subject of a time-traveling breakthrough twenty
years in the future, these expectations were always unreachable.
One time, Goose had an idea better
than all of the others (which she believed each time she began a new project)
and dedicated much of her time to perfecting the action scenes and the plot
twist endings and magical details that a ten-year-old like herself would focus
on. During a math lesson on a concept she simply could not grasp no matter how
hard she tried, she wrote furiously on a blank sheet of paper, illustrating her
characters and their actions, accompanying them with exciting words and genuine
enthusiasm. Between taking notes on long division and glancing up to make
certain she did not fall too far behind in Ms. Vincent’s monotonous lesson,
Goose wrote about her talking animals with elemental powers and an ordinary
girl who looked a bit too much like herself to be a coincidence. The scene she
was writing would otherwise be known as the most challenging part of the
story—the end—but at last, the scribble was complete. Goose understood the story dwelling within her
mind.
“Gotcha!” she exclaimed, etching in
a final sentence, the best of all: THE
END.
Unfortunately for Goose, the word
had slipped out before she’d gotten the chance to think, and in turn, attracted
the wrong kind of attention.
Ms. Vincent, who had been writing
equations and sample problems on the whiteboard for her students to then copy
into their notebooks and memorize, caught wind of Goose’s doing. The two made
eye contact. The dread crept in at once.
“As we learn the principles of long
division, class, it is important that we pay the highest amount of attention we
possibly can,” Ms. Vincent addressed the whole class, but the gaze she held
rested on Goose and Goose alone. “That means making sure we are not distracted
by…anything else.”
It wasn’t even a few seconds until
the rest of the class was staring, and Goose figured by now that there wasn’t
an escape from what was to come. As much as Ms. Vincent spoke to and scolded
everyone, the fingers would always point at her.
The matter grew worse when Ms.
Vincent furrowed her brow and mumbled, “Dillon…” That was Goose’s real name,
Dillon, and while she didn’t hate it, she found comfort in the name Goose. It
was formerly her nickname as a toddler and young child, one that her parents
fondly used. A friend of hers overheard it once and decided to use it. Despite
the fact that she was growing out of it, the name stuck like glue. Not to
mention, she really did love birds.
There were birds in the story she
had previously finished, too—hawks and falcons, which were her favorites, and
even a few geese to add to the equation. Fearing that the pages were about to
be confiscated, that the teasing from her classmates would get worse, and that
Ms. Vincent would shout at her again, Goose brushed her arm over the table and
swept the pieces of bound paper off of her desk. They landed in a heap in her
backpack, the sound having the opposite effect as it only drew more attention
in her direction.
“Yes, Ms. Vincent?” she replied
after a tense moment of silence.
Stalking from the whiteboard to the
location on the left side of the classroom in which Goose’s desk was, she
crouched down as if to be at eye-level with her. “I’ve been a teacher for a
long time and, well,” she reminded her, “I know just about every trick in the
book.”
“Yeah?”
A smile tugged at Ms. Vincent’s
lips. “If it’s so important, show me your little creation.”
“My what?” Goose furrowed her brow,
though she of course knew exactly what her teacher was referring to—the work to
which she’d caught on—and there was no hiding anymore.
Ms. Vincent pointed in the direction
of Goose’s backpack, where several papers spilled from its opened mouth. “You
know.”
Slowly and without much of a choice,
Goose retrieved each and every paper she’d been scribbling on from her
backpack, placing them side by side with her notes detailing long division.
“You want me to share them?” she asked, perhaps too eagerly. There was still a
spark of hope inside her, like somehow, this interaction would go differently
than the others did—that for once, despite the actuality that Ms. Vincent never
picked her to share her writing-related work or otherwise, this was a
redeemable chance.
This assumption was furthered when
Goose received a nod in response.
“It’s a book I’ve been working on,
about my cat, Strider, with—”
“Now, Dillon, in the future, let’s
remember to save your daydreams for outside
of school,” Ms. Vincent stopped her from continuing, raising faint laughter
from the rest of the class. “I’m impressed that you aspire to try and write a
novel one day, but for now, let’s remain in the real world, okay?”
“The real world?” Goose scrunched up
her nose at the comment. “I’m not playing make-believe, Miss. I’m serious.”
“You’re creative, sure, but also
disrupting my lesson.” Ms. Vincent did not need to follow up with that
particular sentence, for just the phrase alone was enough to glaze tears over
the edges of Goose’s eyes. “Please see me after class.”
She could feel the glares of her
classmates. They flared up her cheeks and caused each and every hair on the
base of her neck to prickle and stand. This was humiliating—beyond humiliating.
Goose felt almost on display for everyone to see and point at, the class
laughingstock. She was trapped in a glass cage like a creature to be gawked at,
and right then, wanted no more than to faint and be sent home. Goose always
wanted to pass out in scenarios as embarrassing as these—just like the time
when she had dropped her computer in front of the class and had broken it, or
just like the time her physical education teacher yelled at her for tracking
mud into the classroom.
Alas, Goose could not pass out.
Ms. Vincent stalked back to her
position at the front of the classroom. Even in the absence of her attention
toward Goose, this was not the end of the punishment.
“Gonna cry, Dillon?” a boy named
Davis Cartman teased.
Davis and Goose had begun as friends
in the third grade—Goose’s first year at Valley Park Preparatory School—but as
the year went by and fourth grade commenced, he turned sour. This was the same
with Ashton and Katie and many other classmates Goose once found herself
friends with.
Filling her lungs with a trembling
breath, Goose answered, “I’m not.”
Davis ignored the remark, eyes
wandering around his audience of staring, laughing peers. “I think Dillon’s
about to cry, guys! Can you believe it? What a crybaby!”
“Crybaby!” someone else shouted,
presumably Ashton.
Goose bit her lip as if it would do
anything to prevent the embarrassment from surfacing in the form of a sob.
“It’s Goose—”
“I’m sorry, Goose.” Davis sneered. “I hate to break your bubble, but Ms.
Vincent is right: You’re too dull-headed. I think it’s time to retire your
dreams and pay attention like the rest of us.”
Goose’s head jerked in the direction
of Ms. Vincent, and she called her name in hopes that she would hear what Davis
was saying and correct him. She wanted Ms. Vincent to insist that she was not
telling Goose to give up her dreams or that she was at all stupid. She did not.
Instead, Ms. Vincent shot only a
single glance over and plainly shook her head. The laughing, the teasing, and
everything else, persisted.
Goose leaned back into her chair and
defeatedly wiped away her tears.
This was it—she was sure of it. She
would never write again.
If that was the case, of course,
Valley Park Preparatory School would’ve never been misfortuned to meet her. As
unforgettable as she was, her memory would’ve been left in the dust if it was
not for one simple fact.
Sooner than she would have imagined,
Goose would prove each and every fool who’d dared to doubt her wrong, because
each and every dream she used as a beacon of hope to wade through her days,
little by little, came true.
Links:
- Goodreads
- Bookbub
- Amazon
Shanti Hershenson's first two novellas were published when she was in the sixth grade, although her writing journey started long before then. Ever since she could hold a pencil, marker, or crayon, she was creating stories. They started from pictures, mere scribbles, and eventually, turned into captivating tales.
Author links:
- Website
- Tiktok
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