iAi cover reveal: The Dark by David C. Cassidy

The multi-talented author David C. Cassidy has completed his third book. He's releasing The Dark, a very creepy, scary and riveting tale on December 15. It's available for pre-order on Amazon right now. 

What's it about?

It knows what you want. It knows what you need.

In denial over his father’s death in a horrific accident, Kelan Lisk has grown fearful and withdrawn. For this meek and bullied child, a burning desire to tame a deadly sledding hill consumes him, drawing him inside a wondrous place where anything is possible … including his father. But as this strange new realm spills into this one, twisting an innocent boy into an agent of evil, the world is forever changed, devoured by an even greater evil—the Dark.

Reviews on Amazon:

“Dean Koontz would be proud of this writer.”“Exceptional writing on a par with Stephen King.”“Readers are at the mercy of a masterful storyteller.”“Eloquent and eerie … this is how a story should be written.”

I'm thrilled about this book and doubly proud of it, because I've been a fan of David Cassidy (the author, photographer and designer, not the teen idol) since I discovered his first book, Velvet Rain, and saw several of his gorgeous cover designs. In fact, I asked David to design the covers of both One Shade of Red and Army of Work Soles.

The other reason I am so proud of The Dark is that I edited the manuscript. I'm very happy with the way that worked out.

So check it out. And if you want a scary, creepy and excellent book to read over the holidays, or if you want to give one as a present, then this is what you're looking for.

 

Where do you stand when the boundaries blur?

The boundaries between the different types of publishing just keep getting more blurred and more porous.

Amazon and Hachette’s dispute has reached a new plateau, with the respective CEOs writing mass emails to explain their respective positions over book discounting. Amazon is also in a dispute with Time Warner, and has blocked pre-orders of some Disney movies.

About three weeks ago, Amazon spurred news attention yet again with rumours that it’s in negotiations with another Big Five publisher, Simon + Schuster. Some speculated that it may lead to Amazon purchasing this publisher from its current corporate parent, CBS.

In addition to the publishing operations that Amazon already has, this would make Amazon one of the biggest publishers as well as the biggest book retailer.

Is this really new, though? Remember the Doubleday Bookstores, which were the most prestigious in the US until they were bought by Barnes & Noble in 1990.

Major corporations straddle boundaries

One of the raisons d’être for the commercial publisher is to provide those essential selection, editorial, design and manufacturing services that ensure audiences get quality books. Self-publishing, according to this argument, just cannot measure up to the professional standard of major publishers. I’ve ripped this argument apart a number of times already, so suffice to say now that it’s not backed up empirically.

But several major publishers have invested millions and more in self-publishing platforms. Penguin launched Book Country in 2011 and then bought Author Solutions a year later. Simon & Schuster has Archway Publishing, a vanity publisher. And they’re not the only ones.

So, now we have vanity publishers owned by major commercial publishers, in an embarrassing and disingenuous pissing match with the biggest retailer, which also owns the most successful self-publishing platform.

Neither side in this argument is being open

It’s kind of hard to understand just why Amazon is going to such lengths in this dispute. After all, they make a lot of money reselling publishers’ products. Why should they care what price the publisher sets? But remember that Amazon also sells a particular brand of e-book reader. Lower prices for e-book versions of the world’s favourite, bestselling titles will encourage Kindle sales.

The dispute between Amazon and Hachette or Time-Warner is over how much of the money readers pay they get to keep. The author isn’t part of the dispute, even though both sides like to repeat how important the author is to them.

“Brick and mortar” bookstores are another trope in the sympathy pleas of both sides. “Amazon is putting brick-and-mortar, physical bookstores out of business.” It’s hard to argue against that, particularly following the loss of Borders and uncounted independent booksellers.

As for the independent booksellers, though, they’re getting squeezed not only by the Internet, but also by the growth of big-box corporate bookstore chains. And if it weren’t Amazon, it would be some other company that uses the efficiency of the Internet to grab market share.

Amazon, for its part, does what it says it will do, and efficiently. Whenever I have ordered anything from Amazon, it’s arrived in a breathtakingly short time.

In this light, I have a hard time finding sympathy for big publishers, multinational corporations that are self-appointed gatekeepers of the written word.

What if we change the question

What if we shift our focus from the publisher and bookseller to the author? What if the authors, the people who put most of the work into producing a book, got the greatest part of the proceeds? What if publishers and printers and retailers were only incidental to the value chain?

It would be an ideal world. But I’m not hopeful it will arrive.

Do we need a new category?

Photo by jsorbieus via Flickr Creative Commons.

Last month, I wrote in this blog that I did not consider my books to be self-published because I did not do the work myself. In fact, a number of talented, creative and generous people made critical contributions to the development of all my books, as

•           pre-publication readers (“beta readers”)
•           editors
•           proofreaders
•           a cover designer
•           marketing consultants.

I have said before, in this blog and elsewhere, that commercial publishers, big or small, hold no monopoly on quality books, electronic or print. Authors have more than one skill, and by collaborating, they can help each other publish books that meet or exceed the standards of Little, Brown, MacMillan or Knopf.

Exceeding their marketing and distribution might is another story, of course.

To me, a better term than “self-published author” is “independent author,” because I am independent of the control of any publishing company. No one tells me what to write, what to include, or what kind of cover to have.

But as readers of this blog will know, blogger, author and teacher Joshua Isard wrote that the term “independent publisher” is already taken. (I won’t quibble that I didn’t call myself an independent publisher, but rather an independent author. Oops, I guess I just did.)

The publishing landscape is changing fast.

Author and blogger Anne R. Allen wrote in her blog about the blurring lines between traditional, commercial and self-publishing. Not only is Amazon becoming a publisher, but the Big 5 have been adding self-publishing services as well as buying vanity presses—companies that charge authors (often thousands of dollars) to help them format, print and produce e-books.

(I will give you some free advice if you want some, or you can read this blog regularly).

As Anne concludes, the lines have always been blurry and they’re not getting any clearer.

But maybe “independent publisher” is the wrong term, simply because it doesn’t describe an idea clearly. Maybe we do need another term.

How about “collaborative publishing,” or “cooperative publishing”? Do either of those work better?

What do you think?

Box 'o' books launch: The HOT BOX launch tour

Sizzling Thriller Hot Box Release:

8 SIZZLING THRILLERS FROM 8 BEST-SELLING AUTHORS

Get yours today

• Amazon
• Smashwords (99c)
• Goodreads

What's in the Hot Box:

Steven Bannister – Fade to Black

John Paul Davis – The Cortes Enigma 

C R Hiatt – Sanctioned Kill 

David Leadbeater – The Razor’s Edge 

Andy Lucas – Race Amazon 

Karen Perkins – Dead Reckoning 

C K Raggio – Heron Park 

Mike Wells – Wild Child

Steven Bannister—Fade to Black—Allie St Clair is young and brilliant and today she’s been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard. But the time for celebration is short. Something is wrong in rain-swept London. Very wrong.

#NewRelease

John Paul Davis—The Cortes Enigma—1581: It appeared in the west as the sun was setting, a distant silhouette like a fire on the water. Twelve hours later it appeared again, this time much closer to the mainland . . . Who was on board or where they came from remained a mystery . . . No trace of the vessel was ever found . . .

#NewRelease

C R Hiatt – Sanctioned Kill - Destined for Danger. Sanctioned to Kill.  Hot on the trail of an international weapons ring, covert agent Kyra Ray finds herself caught in the cross-hairs of a ruthless arms dealer in the perilous mountains of war-torn Afghanistan. Closing in, the mission takes an unexpected and near-deadly turn in the high-stakes drama of New York City, where Kyra is mysteriously spared by an assassin sent to kill her. Retrained as an assassin and given strict orders to take him down, Kyra becomes trapped in a game of cat-and-mouse that will put her life on the line and her directive to the test—her sanction to kill.

David Leadbeater—The Razor’s Edge—Trent, Silk and Radford are the Razor’s Edge and the best spy team in the business – until the government they toiled, served and bled for, disavowed them.

Andy Lucas—Race Amazon—James Pace, ex-RAF helicopter pilot and amateur cameraman, is still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life when a child’s bullet nearly kills him.

Karen Perkins—Dead Reckoning—A historical adventure of piracy, love and revenge in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century.

C K Raggio—Heron Park—A small Long Island town erupts in a panic when a woman and her dog are found savagely murdered on a popular hiking trail.

Mike Wells—Wild Child—A fast, suspenseful thriller with an ending that you’ll never see coming.

Why I'm not publishing books on paper

A guest reblog from bestselling thriller author Mike Wells

I had to make sure my readers had the benefit of Mike Wells' excellent essay on digital publishing.

    

At present, I only publish my work in digital format—ebooks and audiobooks. Since many of you are also authors or seriously thinking of writing a book, I thought I would explain my reasoning on this, as it might be helpful to you in making your own decisions.

The main reason that I'm a digital-only author is that if I publish my books on paper, I can't get them onto the shelves of physical bookstores.  It's virtually impossible.  Why?  Because I'm an "indie author," meaning that I self-publish my work outside of the realm of the traditional publishing industry.  Like  it or not, traditional publishing largely controls what's on the shelves of brick-and-mortar bookstores.  (Self-publishing my own work is a personal choice—for more about traditional versus self-publishing, see this post).

Also, I am an internationally-oriented author, and I have a large number of readers all over the world—in Australia, the UK, Europe, South Africa, Malaysia, Russia, India, the Middle East, etc.  This compounds the distirbution problem tenfold. Even the biggest U.S. publishers have trouble getting their titles onto the bookstore shelves in every corner of the globe. 

Thanks to digital retailer/distributors like Smashwords, ebooks provide an instant and elegant solution to the problem.  It's a great feeling to know that any reader, virtually anywhere in the world, has equal access to all my books at the touch of a button.

That said, I admit that it sometimes bothers me that I can't pick up a paper copy of my book and hold it in my hands, and that I can't send readers who want my books in paper format to a physical bookstore.  Some people enjoy collecting paper books and building a home library, and I can certainly appreciate that as well. 

While it's true that I could arrange to publish all of my 20+ titles on paper through a company like Lulu or Createspace, this does not fully solve the problem, neither in the USA or abroad.  Readers will still have to order the books online or through their local bookstores—copies will still not actually be sitting on bookstore shelves. 

My experience is that people who want paper books generally expect to walk into a physical bookstore, find the books they want on the shelves, and then take the books the cash register and pay for them.  Having to order and wait for a paper book is a "speed bump" that greatly lowers interest.  Today, most readers, when given the choice of ordering a physical book and waiting a week or two for it to arrive, or downloading the book instantly, in ebook or audiobook format, choose the latter.  Not all, but most.

Despite how easy companies like Lulu and Createspace make it sound, publishing on paper is still a lot of work and takes significant time.  I only have so many hours in the day.  When I ask readers, "Which would you rather I do—produce more new ebooks and audiobooks or slow down and offer everything I write in both digital and paper format?" the answer is always a resounding "More new books please!"  The vast majority of my readers are willing to read or listen to my books in digital format, even the ones who prefer paper.

Of course, there are some people who refuse to read anything but paper books.  I admire their tenacity, but I have to draw the line somewhere.  I believe that there will always be paper books, but I also believe that the number of people who refuse to read anything except paper books will steadily diminish, so that eventually I will reach 99% of the folks who are interested in my work.

But there is another larger, overarching factor in my decision to stay digital.  I struggled for fifteen years in the paper book industry—burned through four literary agents—and made very little progress.  It was the advent of ebooks and digital publishing that allowed me to take full control of my career and caused my book sales to take off.  While I'm sure it would be a wonderful feeling to hold all my novels in my hands and see them lined up in a neat row along my desk, I'm confident that the feeling I have from making a living as a novelist and being able to write full time is far more satisfying.

Perhaps things will change in the future and I will decide to publish on paper.  For example, maybe someday there will be a printing and binding machine sitting in every physical bookstore that can produce a high-quality paper copy of any ebook in a matter of minutes.  There have been attempts at this, but nothing has caught on big yet.  Or, maybe a traditional publisher will come along and offer to print my books as they are, without insisting on fiddling around with the titles and content, and they won't have a problem with me continuing to publish my ebooks and audiobooks independently.  Who knows? 

Never say never.

In summary, that's the logic behind my decision to keep my books in digital format only for the present, and it may or may not apply to your own situation.

Your comments are welcome. 

This post originally appeared on May 1, on Mike Wells Official Website.

Monday blog for writers: Don't ignore e-books

Image from Jorghex’s collection in Wikimedia Commons,  published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unreported License. - See more at: 

It baffles me that there are still authors, intelligent professionals who want to reach an audience, yet who do not use the most effective and cheapest way of doing that — ebooks.

Last Saturday, I participated in the first Ottawa Book Fest held by the National Capital branch of the Canadian Authors Association. While it wasn’t what I hoped for in terms of selling books or engaging with readers, I did enjoy talking with many other local authors. Two things struck me: the number of authors who don’t bother with e-books, and the number who use expensive “publishing services” companies — vanity publishers.

“You can’t wrap an e-book,” was one typical comment. True, there is something very appealing about the tactile experience of holding a book. That’s one reason I went to the trouble and expense of getting paperbacks of my own titles.

Paper has a number of advantages over e-books. I will take a paperback to the beach or poolside, but I hesitate to bring my iPad there. It’s hard to read my iPad in bright sunlight (although the E-Ink screens of the Kobo, Kindle and others don’t have this problem). If you drop a paperback or get it dirty, it’s no big deal. At worst, you might have to spend ten to fifteen dollars to replace it. Or maybe $50 for a big hardcover. If I were to drop my iPad in the bathtub, that would be a major disaster.

Image courtesy Steve
Taffee's Blogg-Ed Indetermination

And yes, you can wrap up a paperback book and enjoy the recipient opening it.

On the other hand, the e-book’s advantages include:

• they’re lighter, important when travelling
• they should be cheaper — the publisher doesn’t have to pay for paper, ink or shipping
• it’s a lot easier to give copies to people who are not in the same room with you — or the same country.

Let’s look at some facts.

E-books outsell paper books. More than two years ago, Amazon reported that its sales of e-books had surpassed paper books, and while that’s just one (the biggest in the world) outlet, the Association of American Publishers also announced that e-books outsold hardcovers in the adult fiction category as of 2011. E-books are the fastest growing sector of the book market, and even though the AAP reported that growth slowed in 2013, it was still growing and hit $800 million, while sales of paperbacks fell to $898 million.

As Hugh Howey pointed out on his blog (which I referenced in my post in February), the book e-tailers don’t report their sales numbers.  That means those numbers do not include any self-published e-books, which according to Howey’s research, outsell all the e-books from all Big Five publishers combined.

Why limit yourself?

E-book technology sparked an explosion in the number of independent authors self-publishing books. It’s an enabling technology.

And it’s not difficult to use. It helps to know about publishing, but if you can create a word processing file, you can create an e-book. Not necessarily a good e-book, but that’s a different discussion.

That’s why it astounds me to hear writers denigrate the e-book format. For an author to choose not to publish an e-books would be like a travel agent choosing not to book air travel and sell train tickets only. Sure, there’s a market for train travel, and trains can be more romantic and evocative than airplanes, but that choice severely limits the travel agent’s career.

Photo by Alexander Henning
Drachmann (Creative Commons)

Need advice? Ask me

Some writers may feel intimidated by e-books and the need to learn a new format. But as I said, it’s easier to format an e-book. There are plenty of free resources on the net, in the blogosphere, even on Facebook. Mark Coker’s excellent and free Smashwords Style Guide gives you step-by-step instructions, with lots of time-saving tips.

Or ask another author who has gone through the process. Most are happy to share what they’ve learned. For free. Ask me.

If you still feel unsure, or want to get someone to produce your e-book for you, then I’ll certainly charge a lot less than any vanity publisher.

If we work together, we’ll all succeed.

A first novel by a skilled writer: An independent review of The Devil of Light by Gae-Lynn Woods

I began reading Gae-Lynn Woods’ The Devil of Light in January, at about the same time I started watching True Detective on HBO, the gritty series starring Woodie Harrelson and Matthew MacConaughey, and was immediately struck by the similarities between the two stories.

Both stories feature victims of ritual murders, corpses found in bizarre poses and clues pointing to occult behaviours. Both stories also hint at a circle of sexual abusers of children, men who use their powerful positions in their communities to cover up their crime and enforce the secrecy of their cults.

And a further connection between the two: True Detective is set in the Louisiana coastal plain, just across the state border from east Texas, where you could find Arcadia, the setting of The Devil of Light.

This novel bears an uncanny resemblance to Project Truth, a police investigation in Cornwall, Ontario of a suspected ring of child abusers, men, including priests, who traded their child victims among themselves.

I was so struck by all the similarities that I even emailed Gae-Lynn Woods, author of The Devil of Light, to tell her about it. She responded that she had not watched True Detective, nor heard of Project Truth, but she was going to look into both.

But this post is a review of the novel by the independent author from east Texas, so let’s concentrate on that.

The story: A complex series of murders

The Devil of Light begins with a drifter, who adopts only the name Hitch, ritualistically killing an unnamed victim at the behest of an “old man.” Cassandra “Cass” Elliot and her partner, Mitch Stone, are assigned the investigation, which is hampered because the body has no identification. They suspect it’s a missing migrant worker, but before they can make much progress, a local businessman and hobby farmer, Lenny Scarborough, is murdered by his long-abused wife in a spectacular, if very rural way — she drives the spikes of a hay loader through his chest.

In Scarborough’s house, the detectives discover the motive of the murder: photographs of men having sex with young girls and with other men. All the shots are very close-up and show no faces; scars in one picture, though, match the murder victim’s body. It seems Angie, Lenny’s long-abused wife, had discovered the photos while Lenny was working in the cow barn, and that was enough to channel the anger from years of physical abuse into driving the specialized fork-lift truck through her husband.

The photographs lead the police to suspect their idyllic town harbours a ring of pedophiles, and the investigation indeed uncovers it — a ring comprising some of the most powerful and respected men in the community.

This being a crime novel, the bodies begin to pile up, as do layers of secrets and conspiracy.

Where a writer’s skill is critical

Woods is a skilled and talented author. She creates detailed and believable characters, people readers can picture and hear. The main character, Cass Elliot — who insists that the coincidence of her name with that of the late singer from the Mamas and the Papas is really nothing more than a coincidence — has an interesting back-story including rape and a scar around her breast, as well as an older brother serving a long jail sentence for something he may not have done. But Woods knows how to keep the back-story from bogging down her plot, and brings out details when they’re needed, just enough to keep us turning pages (or swiping the e-reader screen) to find out more.

Very few weaknesses

There are a lot of characters in this book, and sometimes it’s hard to keep them all straight — especially the younger minor policemen, most of whom seem to be blond and athletic. This is in opposition to most of the baddies, who in addition to sharing a compulsion to sexually abuse young people, share a propensity to obesity.

The family and social links among the police, suspects, victims and those who discover the bodies also get thicker and more tangled, enriching rather than confusing the story.

The main characters are clearly drawn and consistently presented — except for the main bad guy. The author never names him, and provides only enough detail to make us suspect he could be one of two people in Arcadia.

Overall, an enjoyable and thought-provoking novel

While this novel has an enthralling climax and satisfying conclusion, it did not solve the mystery or end the story. Again showing her writing skills, Gae-Lynn Woods leaves us on the last page of The Devil of Light with a reason — no, a need — to buy the sequel, Avengers of Blood.

Well done, Ms. Woods!

5*

Visit Gae-Lynn Woods' website

Find The Devil of Light on Amazon

Find The Devil of Light on Smashwords

Book launch: Tube Riders 2 — Exile

Book 2 in Chris Ward's original and excellent Tube Riders trilogy has just launched.

Earlier this year, I gave five stars to Ward's stand-alone novel, Head of Words. It's a deep and dark psychological story that shows Ward's talent and professionalism as a writer.

Now, I'm telling everyone I can to pay attention to this original writer's steampunk-inspired Tube Riders series, which achieves the same standard of excellence.

What are Tube Riders?

Set in Britain in 2075, the Tube Riders are a gang of young people who defy a brutal dictatorship by playing a dangerous game of riding on the outside of London's Underground trains.

Book 2, Exile: 

Having narrowly escaped the Governor's savage Huntsmen, Marta Banks and the other surviving Tube Riders are on the run in northern France. Trapped inside a government-assigned quarantine zone, they search for a way out of a bleak countryside littered with abandoned worker robots and haunted by sinister monks, while at the same time a far deadlier threat than any they have faced before is searching for a way in ... 

From the towering spires of Mont St Michel through the dark horrors of the Paris Catacombs to the treacherous peaks of the French Alps, The Tube Riders: Exile is an epic continuation of Chris Ward's Tube Riders series. 

Chris Ward is from the UK but currently lives and works in Japan. In addition to the Tube Riders Trilogy, his work includes a number of short stories (available on Amazon) and the stand alone novel The Man Who Built the World as well as Head of Words.

What inspired the story?

"For the whole of my novel-writing life, I always wanted to write in different genres, try different styles and push myself as a writer and an artist. I had a rule that no two novels could be the same. In around 2009 I decided I wanted to write a big sci-fi dystopia. While my novels had always ranged from horror to comedy, my short stories had usually been in the speculative fiction vein, because they were easy to write and relatively easy to sell to magazines. Looking for ideas, I came across an old story I wrote in 2002 about a group of kids who hung off the sides of trains for fun getting into trouble with a rival gang. And hour and two sheets of A3 paper later, the Huntsmen, Dreggo, the Governor and the dark world of Mega Britain was born.

"I once promised myself to never write a sequel, but by the time I had written all 165,000 words of the first draft of the Tube Riders, I realised that it was really just the first part of one long story. Now, with Revenge, that story has reached its end.

"It felt strange to leave the Tube Riders behind, but while the main story is done there is a likelihood that there will be prequels or possible novels set within the three years between Exile and Revenge, mostly focusing on side or minor characters."

Exile launched on December 16, and book 3, Revenge, will appear in January. Watch Written Words for a cover preview!

Where to get it:

Amazon: Tube Riders: Exile
Tube Riders: London

Visit Chris Ward's Amazon author page to see all his published work.

Visit Chris Ward's blog, A Million Miles from Anywhere.

Independent novel review: Double Bind by Seb Kirby

“The guy with the bad attitude has been following me all week.”

Seb Kirby gets right into the story in Double Bind. There’s not a wasted word in this book: no background, no world-building, no nonsense. The writing is spare and clean, active yet evocative, told in first-person present tense, which enhances the action and immediacy.

Take this for an example: “Elmington Drive is a wealthy suburban street. Smart gardens, no parked cars, large houses, most with gravel drives and tall shrubs.”

Because he gives readers credit for knowing something, Kirby is able to painted a picture in a few phrases.

In short, Kirby is a true professional writer of fiction.

The story begins with the narrator, successful author Raymond Bridges, meeting his double at a book signing. The double accuses Bridges of stealing his face and identity — and his pen name. Soon, Bridges finds himself in a new body, victim of spreading ripples of identities displaced into new bodies. Double Bind is a science-fiction story presented like a mystery — not an easy assignment for any writer. Kirby has the skill to pull it off.

Kirby makes it all make sense by explaining the process and the science through the characters’ actions. Bridges, who becomes Erin Pascoe (that’s a man’s name in the UK, apparently) gradually learns the details, like one of Raymond Chandler’s detectives.

Kirby makes his characters real through their words and actions more than through verbose descriptions. Bridges is actually not that likeable. He’s a liar, an imposter, someone more than willing to take shortcuts to get what he wants, no matter what they do to others.

Victoria Bletchley, Bridge’s love interest, is one of the most desirable and admirable women I’ve read in fiction lately. An English professor, she’s a long-legged looker, too. She loves “rutting” and reading, more or less in that order, and she’s smart. Even for an English professor.

Here’s my favourite passage featuring Victoria:

Strang [a cop] is sounding impatient ... “Pascoe is a suspect in at least one, possibly two, murders. Keep stalling like this and you’ll leave me with no option but to take you in for obstruction of justice. That’s if I don’t arrest you as an accomplice to murder.” 

I’m wondering how Victoria is going to get out of this when she uses her contextualizing skills to great effect. “OK. I do porn. Looks like I’m well off, but this is my mother’s place and I have expensive tastes.”

Smart, sexy, beautiful, brave and able to think on the spot of something sure to throw a cop off his game — what more could anyone, even a writer, want in a woman?

All the characters are believable, especially the villains, who range from London gangsters to corporate types. Again, Kirby is able to evoke them clearly in the readers’ minds with a minimum of words.

All the way through (it’s not a long book), Kirby keeps us hooked with tantalizing clues and a style that you just cannot put down.

Double Bind may not be Kirby’s best-known book, but if you want a read that won’t let you go, that tells a good story well and doesn't waste your time, download Double Bind now.

5*

Find Double Bind on Amazon

Seb Kirby's Amazon Author page

Seb Kirby's website and blog

The reader as co-conspirator

Independent novel review: Head of Words

Sometimes, you see where a novel is going and guess the surprise twist well before getting to it. Sometimes, if the writer is really good, it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the novel.

In the case of Head of Words, I felt like a co-conspirator with author Chris Ward. I guessed what he was going to do with the story line, and I kept going for two reasons: first, because this new novel is such a good read; and only secondarily because I wanted to make sure that I was right.

I was, and I loved the novel.

The plot

Head of Words is narrated by Daniel Barker, a university drop-out who’s set up a “doss house” in a very small apartment in Bristol. For my readers on the western side of the Atlantic, that means he takes in as roommates just about everyone he meets. At the opening of the novel, there are thirteen people living in the one-bedroom flat, plus a small dog: Daniel himself; the angry and dangerous Shane; Stevie, who dreams of being a rock singer; Aunt Rita and Uncle Rick; the cynical Clive, Dan’s oldest friend who’s endlessly playing chess with Uncle Rick; the bickering, indecisive twins, Ernie and George; Polly, the exotic pole dancer; Angelo, the great seducer; Bernard from Jamaica, who has an inexhaustible supply of weed; the eccentric tinkerer Franz; and the latest addition, Lisa, the talented artist.

The book chronicles the adventures, stresses, arguments and compromises inevitable among such a large group in a small space. Aunt Rita establishes some kind of order, cooking meals that somehow stretch one income to feed thirteen people and a dog. Angelo alternately pursues Polly and Lisa, while dodging a former lover’s phone calls; Shane gets into fights, justifying his actions by claiming he’s defending the group; and Stevie exasperates everyone with futile striving for rock stardom.

The style

Ward writes a story or two for almost every character. He shows us how each one came into Dan’s life and, usually immediately, into his house, too. Every character is believable and developed, except maybe for Clive — as Dan’s oldest friend, he should have more ink in this book.

The writing is funny, touching, moving and absolutely compelling. Ward is obviously a professional writer, and although (I hate to admit it) I had never heard of him before he contacted me with an advance review copy, I find he’s already published several collections of short stories. From the style, any reader can see he knows the craft of writing. Another example of the kind of writing that the publishing companies and critics SAY they want to see, but don’t actually support.

Head of Words is one of those books you cannot put down. And if you, too, guess the twist, I don’t think you’ll be able to close it on that account.

Chris Ward knows how to keep readers on for the ride.

5 *

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CBDD73Q/
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CBDD73Q/