After the leviathan of a book that was ‘999’, I stuck to shorter volumes in September. The first was ‘Underground’ by Al Ramsay. Al is a local author and we’ve known each other for a while. ‘Underground’ came out around the same time as my own book, “Hearts’ Home”, so we met up for a book swap, a coffee and a natter in The Artisan Deli, a rather nice cafe in Penwortham. This is a very civilised way of acquiring reading material, but I would stress that you should have other reasons for writing and publishing a book. If the tax man is reading this, don’t worry, my publishing balance sheet is still so far into the red we’re talking infra. Having read and enjoyed the previous books in the series I’ve been looking forward to this book for a while. If you’re looking for a quick, fun read with lots of laughs, this is for you. Felix is a teenager living with his parents and his kid sister. He’s at an awkward age, and probably always will be. His ambition is to be a successful journalist, and to this end he has set up an online news outlet, focusing on local news. Suspecting that a local landmark has been sold for scrap, he makes a late night visit to a local scrapyard to gather evidence … at which point his life comes tumbling down. With a mix of global geopolitics, eco-activist cells, a terrifyingly jolly funeral director and Felix’s auntie’s late old flame all mixed into the plot, this story has a cliff hanger at the end of every chapter. Lots of fun, I hope there’ll be another Felix story.
From Al to David… my next read was ‘Incorcisms’ by the always delightful David Hartley. Many years ago, when the world was young and David Hartley was even younger, we went to some of the same open mike reading events and I was struck by his imagination and skill with the written word. Since then, he’s gone and gotten himself a PhD and has published several collections of short and flash fiction. Treat yourself, read ’em all, they’re brilliant. A lot of them are very dark, most of them are very funny if you like it dark. I followed up ‘Incorcisms’ with two more of his short story collections, ‘Fauna’ and ‘Spiderseed’. I recommend them with absolutely no hesitation at all.
By now, it was clear that September was going to be a month for reading books by people from the North West who I’ve met a time or two. Caroline Blake and I first crossed paths at the excellent ‘Telling Tales’ book event at Chorley Theatre. She came to the first event, where I was reading, and I went to the second event, where she was reading. I bought ‘Just Breathe’ after hearing her read from it. It’s a well structured story with several interesting characters and a great premise. If you enjoy intelligently written contemporary romance, this may be the book for you.
My next read was by David Hartley’s dad, Pete Hartley. David kindly added ‘Ice and Lemon’ as a freebie when I bought a book bundle from him. I was wondering if I’d perhaps ruined my perfect September score of only reading books by people I’ve met, then I read Pete’s blog and realised that we attended at least one of the same writing events in Chorley many years ago. He got an entire book from it, I got a rather strained flash fiction. But we must have met, it was a small event and I’m fairly sure I spoke to everyone there.
Do not judge this book by its cover. It looks vaguely chick lit, vaguely rom com. It looks like a holiday read, something to take to the beach and read without thinking. It isn’t. The premise of the book is that everything dies, instantly. Bacteria, viruses, cows, cats, worms, centipedes. Everything on Earth just stops living. Except … Except for a few scattered humans who were high in the air at the time, travelling by plane to or from somewhere. A surprising number of these people manage to land safely, and thus follows a fairly standard, if somewhat bleaker than most, post apocalypse story. The fun part for me is that the story is set where I live. I know the hotel where the survivors hole up, the football stadium where our protagonist searches for his dead family, I shop at the supermarket which becomes the larder for our first group of survivors. I will never see my local B&Q in the same light again. And so, on with the story. It’s a decently plotted sf story with a nice idea behind it. It gets a bit meta and mystical towards the end, but not too much so. I enjoyed it, and have passed it on to a friend. Last thoughts – is the ‘Citric Chronicles Book 1’ a reflection of some future plan for a sequel, or a cute reference to the unwritten sequel which is one of the books McGuffins?
And then, right at the end of the month, I blew it. I didn’t have to, there are a couple of unread, indie books on my tbr pile written by authors that I’ve met at least once and who live in North West England, but I failed. I went to a fair to sell my own books and completely forgot to take something to read. I’d forgotten to bring my ‘currently reading’ so did something I never do … I bought a cheap paperback from a nearby supermarket. It was that or a magazine, and ‘The Gathering’ by C J Tudor was probably roughly the same price. I don’t usually do thrillers or murdery things, but this book promised vampires, and I was tempted. I read it in the space of seven hours of sitting behind my stall, whilst, of course, trying to engage with potential customers. Another stallholder saw me reading it, and came over to rave about C J Tudor and ask me if I’d read any of her other books. I had to confess that this writer was completely new to me. My new friend hadn’t yet read this book, so I happily passed it to her when I finished it. So, it was a gripping, easy read with a decent plot, interesting characters and some nice worldbuilding. If you like police murder mystery thriller things with vampires, you’ll love this.