Other Novels:
The Wife of God
| This is the novel I'm currently working on for my Ph.D. It's based on the life of D.P. Schreber, the famous schizophrenic. |
The Delivery
 | The second novel, my first foray into a long form first person narrative, is both an obituary and a story of renewal. Leonard Kopek, the narrator is convinced he is dying and he looks back over his life, neurotically writing in the belief that as long as his pen travels across the paper, he will not die. We learn about his past, his loves and failures and, often despite his intentions, about the events that transpire outside his window. As the book progresses, the present takes over from the past and his ruminations take second place to events in which he cannot help but be involved. The novel was initially inspired by the death of my father, but quickly went off in unexpected directions, as I tend to find is often the case. |
Jackie Price
 | Written from the perspective of an eleven year old girl who has been put in a care home, this is one of my favourite novels. It gave me the opportunity to restage some of my own childhood in the Midlands of the seventies and also let me write in a more raw and immediate style. |
A Long Walk up to the Beacon
 | My fourth novel and as yet a chapter or two from completion (there’s a bit of a gap in the last third of the story which I need to fill in.) Tom Adams is a “ghost” – the name given to a very few prisoners in WW2 POW camps who were supposed by their guards to have escaped, but were actually hidden around the camp, filling in at roll calls for prisoners too busy with escape attempts to make it themselves. While his companions dig a tunnel, he is nailed beneath the boards of one of the huts for the most part of every day and while he is there he drifts along the hills of his childhood home and walks the walks he used to take before he signed up, gradually becoming reluctant to come out in the evening for a hurried meal. Towards the end of the war, when the Russian advance seems inevitable, the food dries up and the tension in the camp becomes unbearable. The day of the escape nears and there are doubts raised over whether Adams’ will be fit for it. |
Short Stories:
The Man who Drank Bleach
 | My first published work and the first thing I wrote after starting the creative writing MA at Goldsmiths. It was based on an incident that happened outside Manchester City Infirmary that I witnessed in the nineties. I came across an old man lying in the road, he was clearly homeless and in trouble and when I went in to get him some help, no one took any notice. He died (so I later read in the local paper.) The story went into an anthology, “Manchester Stories 7” published by Comma Press, accompanied by a nice pencil drawing. Click here for the uncensored PDF of the original story. |
Charlie
 | My second published work, a submission chosen for the anthology “Goldfish” a collection of the best fiction and life writing from the first five years of Goldsmith’s MA program. Deals with similar themes to The Man who Drank Bleach but in a first person perspective. It was this story that first bought me to the attention of my agent David Smith. Click here for a PDF of the story. |