Writing and all that

The lovely Rosy Barnes at MockDuck has mentioned that she is looking forward to Kill-Grief. Hooray! Someone on Goodreads added it to their “to read – forthcoming” list too, so perhaps I will sell two copies! Thank you Rosy and person-on-Goodreads.

Rosy was talking about the Spread the Word initiative, which aims to champion good books that haven’t had the publicity to reach a wide readership. I know exactly which one gets my vote in the fiction section – Jim Dodge’s Fup. It’s a surreal and moving story set on a California ranch, where the cantankerous Grandaddy Jake and his gentle giant grandson, Tiny, revive an abandoned duckling with moonshine whiskey. At only 89 pages, it’s more a fairy tale than a novel, but it is crammed with humour, beauty and emotion, and it brought the exclamation “Shitfire!” into my vocabulary. I was pretty surprised to see it on Spread the Word, as it was published in the US in 1983 and the UK in 1997, so there must be a reasonable number of people reading it to keep it in print that long.

Anyway, Rosy had the great idea of making her own Spread the Word list. I hope she doesn’t mind me being a copy-cat, provided I start with…

Sadomasochism for Accountants by Rosy Barnes, due out on Valentine’s Day 2009 from Marion Boyars. It sounds hilariously original and I can’t wait to find out the significance of the penguin on the cover. (If you’ve arrived at this blog by googling sadomasochism, well… er… hi… hope you’re not too disappointed and will stay and have a read anyway.)

Maloney’s Law by Anne Brooke (P.D. Publishing) – I mentioned this a while back after reading the excerpt on the publisher’s site, and now I’ve read the rest and thought it was ace. Anne Brooke takes the private-investigator fiction mould and centres it on character – her believable, vulnerable protagonist, Paul, is a delight to spend time with, and while he might not have a great taste in men, he certainly has a great taste in whisky! Looking forward to hearing some publication news for the follow-up, The Bones of Summer.

Earth Inc. by Michael Bollen (Picnic Publishing) – This futuristic SF satire is in the tradition of Douglas Adams, with lots of laughs on every page. The endearingly feckless hero, Jorj, and feisty dissident Abi live in a world ruled by SoftCom, a mega-corporation that offers shares in Life Itself. Rogue customer-service robots, ants with human intellects and a disembodied teenage brain threatening to take over the world make for a highly entertaining read. (Disclosure – Mike has the same publisher as me, but if I hadn’t liked the book I wouldn’t plug it – I’d have just had to maintain an embarrassed silence.)

The Book of Love by Sarah Bower (Snowbooks) -The title could apply to a run-of-the-mill romance, but that’s not the case at all. This is an accomplished exploration of the theme of love in all its wonderful, painful forms – not least maternal love. Set in early 16th-century Italy, the story follows Esther Sarfarti, a young Jewish woman caught up in the dangerous world of the Borgias. The historical detail is beautifully rendered, but the themes transcend the period setting to lay bare the truth of the human condition.

And I haven’t actually read this yet, but Silence by Josie Henley-Einion is on my to-read list. From Legend Press, this sounds like a hard-hitting, gripping thriller. By contrast, I’m also enjoying reading Josie’s new light-hearted 1970s nostalgia blog, Pop & Crisps (I’m hoping she will set up an 80s one too.)

Well, phew! All those links took a while… but I have done my bit to Spread the Word.