Hello everyone.
Life has been very busy of late in the mindflayer’s pelagic dwelling place. I have had a few epiphanies, and I have re-focused my energies and intentions. That all translates into this: I am now fully committed to becoming an independent author!
As a result of that, I am announcing my next novel, Dark Hilarity! Check out the cover and blurb below!
Tara Dufrain and Nicola Morgan are eleven year old girls growing up in the ‘90s, obsessed by Valentine Killshot, a metal screamo band. In particular, they’re enamoured by the lead singer, the mysterious yet charismatic Jed Maine who bears the epithet “The Cretin”. In Jed’s lyrics, he describes a world beyond the Dark Stars that he hopes one day to reach. The girls think it’s all just make-believe they share together, until a freak, traumatic incident makes this world very real.
As adults, Tara and Nicola try to come to terms with the devastating catastrophe that changed their lives growing up, but to do so they will have to step once more into Jed Maine’s world, and confront the man who took everything from them.
Dark Hilarity is My Best Friend’s Exorcism meets The Never-Ending Story, a fantasy that explores addiction, depression, and the healing power of friendship.
I have no doubts in my mind that Dark Hilarity is the best thing I have ever done. This is for several reasons. Firstly, I’ve been taking a lot of time to work on my craft and improving my prose sentence-by-sentence . But secondly and perhaps more importantly, because I have finally found a way to write about some really personal stuff that happened in my childhood. There are some elements of this people might find surprising or even shocking. It is not my intention to be provocative to shock for shock’s sake, but there are things that I have finally been able to explore in fiction which I never could before. Not all of those are bad things, however. The friendship at the heart of this novel is very real, and has been one of the most redeeming things in my life.
Finishing this book nearly killed me (it’s longer than my usual fare at 110,000 words, but more than that, the emotional dimension of it was so much deeper than anything I had attempted previously), and I wrestled for a long time with whether I should be pursuing agents and publishers, or going my own way. Ultimately I realised I could not “sit” on this novel for years waiting for someone to notice. I had to show it to you, to share it with you. Every word is infused with love. And love is for sharing.
The book will be released in full (paperback and Kindle) on 31st January 2021. Meanwhile, you can pre-order the Kindle from one of the links below! Please do pre-order and help me generate some momentum and interest in this!
If you’re a reviewer and would like an ARC, please reach out to me via the Contact form of this website, or the usual email address!