Bonfire Night

A bonfire blazes in Outback Australia. Two men sit all night in its glow, commemorating their dead friend. He blew his head off with a shotgun. Bonfires burn across Lewes, England, commemorating Guy Fawkes Night. As crowds of revellers lurch through the streets, a boy stands teetering on the ledge of a bridge, waiting for the train to pass below. Two different lives, two different places, one story to tell.

Beyond the Division

Pilsung and Soon are star-crossed lovers. He is from South Korea, and she is from the North. Their love is so forbidden that when Pilsung tells his boss, she is immediately worried about the police finding out.

Soon escapes from North Korea after the shutdown of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and plans to fake her own death with the help of a police officer in South Korea. Pilsung is out of the loop and spends most of the story looking for his love, not realizing she is supposed to be dead.

Soon has been watching Pilsung’s every move, waiting for the right time to reveal herself, only to be heartbroken when she misunderstands a close bond between friends. She decides to leave him, but Pilsung flies to Yanbian to look for her and attempts to smuggle himself into North Korea.

Before The Pearly Gates

Miles Appleby is a complicated and tormented soul. A successful oral surgeon at an exclusive practice in Chicago, he has always been driven by the high expectations of his father. Increasingly, he feels isolated and slowly comes to the realization that he leads an empty life. Miles, however, carries a secret that involved a woman who Bill, his close friend, had been seeing shortly before he suddenly left his homeland for another life in London.

Ever plagued by relationships that fail, Miles meets an engaging woman, Juanita, who finally ignites something in his life giving him warmth and meaning. In a strange turn of events while attending Bill’s untimely funeral near London, he gains a different perspective as to why certain events unfolded, and the secret that Miles had been so careful to protect is slowly revealed by a person called Laura. As the story reaches its zenith, the stories of these four characters finally become pieced together.

Beaten at Birth

Precious, the oldest of ten suffered all of her life. Her biggest fear of landing in a care home had now become true. All of her belongings were thrown in the rubbish, along with all of her memories. A stroke that was not treated, due to misconduct, had left her with slight dementia. The system was prepared to pay £900 a week for a care home she didn’t want to be in. She would have been better off in prison, at least you get parole in prison. The care home had thrown away the key. Her siblings and son had tried in vain to get her out, but her oldest daughter and granddaughters were insistent that she stay there, so they could get on with their dubious business.

Baz, Ant and the Boys

The summer started with ‘Brown Sugar’ and it ended with The Who at The Oval cricket ground, where they turned live rock music into a mesmerizing, pulsating miracle. And bound up in this heady atmosphere of 1971 was the pure, unadulterated love of football and all its absurdities, where sex, snakebite and the slide tackle scythed their way through everything.

Shortfall College, a gaunt and brooding building, reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution cut a dark slice of shadow across the South London sky. It was here that an oddball, dotty selection of students set out in search of the Holy Grail – the South London Intercollegiate Cup – aided by spurious tactics and hindered by countless distractions.

From Marlene, the landlord’s wife, a goddess and vixen with a predilection for ice who couldn’t keep her hands off Baz, to Norman, a ringer, with a rather unhealthy lopsided grin who completely snapped when trying to remove an opponent’s ear with his teeth.

Driven ever onwards by The Bear, their captain and inspiration, and Baz, his defensive henchman, they try to rein in the Ant, who possesses the aerodynamics of a spear and a footballing philosophy whereby the ball isn’t absolutely necessary.

Alba Regained

Frustrated equally by misrule at Westminster and the Scottish government’s failure to progress the independence agenda, a reinvigorated Scottish National Liberation Army seizes power from Scotland’s ruling party, the SNP, after a campaign of attrition during the 2020s. This tale follows the adventures of two young revolutionaries as they pursue their patriotic goal whilst struggling to understand their own personal and philosophical commitment to the cause.

With the effects of climate change now moving into a series of extreme weather events, normal life is so disrupted that unnatural (some would say magical) events appear almost as everyday occurrences, until eventually the human turmoil and the weather disruption come together in a dramatic conclusion that puts into question the singularity of the human experience.

A Dalliance with Destiny

Spanning a century, and set in South Africa and India, the novel captures the odyssey of a seemingly brash man in his thirties, who fights to remain lucid in what appears to be an irrational world. Whilst everyone around him is still celebrating the euphoric entry of his country into the rest of the democratic world, he is at odds with it. After a series of distressing experiences, he attempts to extinguish the raison d’etre of his angst by embarking on an increasingly mystical journey to India with an unconventional best friend.

“A literary masterpiece, transcending the local and the global, with extraordinary attention to detail. A protagonist who scales the boundaries of sanity and material depravity in his higher spiritual quest.”

“The human condition is dissected in all its complexities with a sharp scalpel, where we sometimes feel a sense of discomfort because nothing is quite safe. And, then, just as rapidly, it suddenly points us towards our own soulful compasses. The intertwinement of humour and pathos cuts close to the bone, but leaves us with a blush in its wake.”

“The narrative reminds one of Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ – the bawdy unravelling of the archetype’s sex life juxtaposed against his quest for spiritual enlightenment as a pilgrim.”

“A commentary on the life of a young man in search of his epic life story, one roots for the main character, yet hates him in equal parts. This intrepid piece of writing brings to the surface a litany of oscillating emotions, for there is nothing ordinary about the lead character’s journey. There is no moment of blandness here.”

A Bridge in Time

Maddie Coles, disillusioned, 40-something housewife, wakes immobile and in darkness, unaware of the catastrophic illness she has suffered.

During this static time, Maddie recreates subconsciously her life from the very first day of birth in 1965. A life created from real memories and forgotten youthful hopes and dreams, which lead her to question and re-examine every aspect of her life so far.

When medical science reawakens her 25 years later in 2037, the world as she knew it is unrecognisable and alien to her. She must come to terms with the devastating losses and extraordinary surprises, and reacquaint with family and friends of an almost forgotten past. She must also learn to live in the real world again. As Maddie travels this deeply personal, sometimes funny, heartwarming and often painful journey she finds inner wisdom which gives her strength to overcome the difficulties of her new life and determination to value everything she has regained by returning to it.

2034

A futuristic, dystopian novel that charts the absolute division of modern society, as the majority of the population dutifully and readily accept the new medical-digital dictatorship in exchange for peace-of-mind and alleged safety. A hardcore, significant minority refuse to bow the knee to chemical tyranny and totalitarianism. As a result, the majority are medically protected from the untreated vulnerable minority by a geographical division of society, policed not by concrete walls and barbed wire, but by lethal drones. The majority are controlled and protected in their ultra-safe, utilitarian, futuristic, world, complete with artificial food, driverless electric taxis, permanent social distancing, and little need to work. The renegades in the excluded world are left to fend for themselves, to build new communities in the abandoned wild lands, living hand-to-mouth, without electricity or any mod-cons, but they are free.

The consequences for the two communities unfold through the story, piece by piece, are not what you would expect!