A,B &E
A,B & E is my first published novel, out now through Amazon Kindle. It is a novel of two extremely strong female voices, two avenging angels, battling within arenas in which they are besieged. It is a story about the soul of Britain in the 'Noughties'. Unsurprisingly therefore, it is acerbic, irreverent, scurrilous and darkly humourous. A binge drinking session and a happyslap rolled into one. Karen Dash's is a voice you are unlikely to forget. You may not like her values, you may not respect her station in life, but she will infiltrate your psyche through the force of her personality.
Synopsis
A gangster’s moll on the run from her murderous husband who she betrayed between the sheets, has lost everything and has to sing for her supper. She does this by holding court in bars at a Club 18-30 holiday resort by day and capturing prey to take her into a hotel room by night. Back in Britain, an NHS nurse is under siege from her own abusive patients. She resolves to treat not just their ailing bodies, but their afflicted souls. Two avenging angels, one incendiary convergence.
Gangster threatiquette, "Ibiza Uncovered", Cilla's "Blind Date" if it were held in a Police line up, an NHS nurse on the Casualty frontline, Greek Myths, Oxbridge High Table and nightclub Foam parties? A guided tour into the contemporary British soul, conducted by the presiding Mother Spirit and an arse-slapping midwife. Avenging angels both.
Read a Sample
You can have the simulated experience of reading the first 20 pages as if you were turning the pages, through the fReado site. "A,B&E" was a Top 10 viewed book in October 2009.
There will be YouTube readings from the book in the upcoming months. I will post a link. These will not be readings done by a man droning on, manuscript in hand, but will attempt to adapt literature to the different legibility demanded by the new media such as video sharing.
There will be YouTube readings from the book in the upcoming months. I will post a link. These will not be readings done by a man droning on, manuscript in hand, but will attempt to adapt literature to the different legibility demanded by the new media such as video sharing.
Origins
"A,B&E" was inspired, if that's the right word, by the glut of MTV lifestyle programmes in the 90's, centring on the British holidaying abroad. Programmes such as "Ibeeza Uncovered" and "Holiday Reps" showed what the British got up to when playing away from home. In short, exactly the same as they did at home - abuse alcohol, each other & fornicate - but with greater freedom away from prying, familiar eyes. Let's not beat around the bush here, this was and is sex tourism, although like the food consumption of choice, it is kept within its own community, rather than reaching out towards the natives. I watched rapt and appalled at the antics of my people, flush with spending power that meant they could colonise foreign climes and turn them into little Britains, replete with fish and chips, cheap lager and nightclubs cloned from any major British city. Home from home.
So I knew I wanted to write something about this. The binge culture we hear so much about. But I wanted to get beneath the surface of the sunburned skin of my countryfolk. I wanted to explore what lay behind it. So I let my mind churn away at that. Meanwhile, I had also been mulling over the role of a gangster's wife. What the Americans call a moll. I was interested in the balance of being a female in what is a world chock full of testosterone and male violence. How much of her femininity could she retain, unsullied by the male values all around? How much would the male moving within this world, armour himself against being femininised in any way by 'love', knowing that it could be taken as a sign of weakness by a rival. It was a fascinating spectrum I wanted to explore between the genders, where one ends and the other begins and where they may start to elide under each other's influence.
Don't ask me how or why, but it was when I had the idea to bring these two diverse strands together - through the storyline of a moll being on the run for infidelity, hiding out in a Club 18-30 resort in Kavos on the island of Corfu - that I knew I had the makings of my novel. Presumably those ideas having been swirling around my noggin for nigh on six months, when something about the creative imagination brought them together in the alchemical crucible and the spark wrought the transformation.
I discovered a lot about Karen as I wrote her. She was a constant delight as I didn't know what outrageous comment would next emerge from her mouth. Part of her journey was a life prior to being a moll, that spent among academia; a different male stranglehold frustrating a women of great intellect. I had no idea at the outset that this would be part of who she was. But it allowed me to take a slightly longer time period, back to the 1980's, in considering how we arrive in the state we British are in the Noughties. It also explained why she landed up in Greece, a link to her own classical studies. And allowed me to explore classical notions of pleasure and happiness set against our contemporary sybaritic breed's pursuit of it.
The final element also came from something I had been batting around my mind with something else entirely in mind for its destination. I was and still am astounded at the anecdotal reports from NHS workers on the front line of Casualty. How nurses and doctors trying to treat, help and heal their patients, came under assault by the selfsame patients. Again one can point to alcohol or drug use for distorting their perceptions, but I was interested in delving beneath that. What does the figure of the nurse represent in the popular imagination? Maternal tenderer, through to slatternly tease. Many years ago while prowling around the medicine section of an academic bookshop, stockpiling potential metaphors for future use, I passed by a book on sexuality & nursing. It was a practical text for nurses on how the patient in various states of stress might come to perceive them. I wish I'd bought it back then, for I have never been able to track it down since. However, Klaus Theweleit's masterful studies of the male psyche behind Naizsm "Male Fantasies" did consider in part the image of the German Nurse in WW1. I found this very helpful in my ruminations on the modern day version. And somehow, nurse Billie Rubin was born and became the second avenging angel in my novel. The two never meet in person throughout, but their fates are ineluctable entwined...
So I knew I wanted to write something about this. The binge culture we hear so much about. But I wanted to get beneath the surface of the sunburned skin of my countryfolk. I wanted to explore what lay behind it. So I let my mind churn away at that. Meanwhile, I had also been mulling over the role of a gangster's wife. What the Americans call a moll. I was interested in the balance of being a female in what is a world chock full of testosterone and male violence. How much of her femininity could she retain, unsullied by the male values all around? How much would the male moving within this world, armour himself against being femininised in any way by 'love', knowing that it could be taken as a sign of weakness by a rival. It was a fascinating spectrum I wanted to explore between the genders, where one ends and the other begins and where they may start to elide under each other's influence.
Don't ask me how or why, but it was when I had the idea to bring these two diverse strands together - through the storyline of a moll being on the run for infidelity, hiding out in a Club 18-30 resort in Kavos on the island of Corfu - that I knew I had the makings of my novel. Presumably those ideas having been swirling around my noggin for nigh on six months, when something about the creative imagination brought them together in the alchemical crucible and the spark wrought the transformation.
I discovered a lot about Karen as I wrote her. She was a constant delight as I didn't know what outrageous comment would next emerge from her mouth. Part of her journey was a life prior to being a moll, that spent among academia; a different male stranglehold frustrating a women of great intellect. I had no idea at the outset that this would be part of who she was. But it allowed me to take a slightly longer time period, back to the 1980's, in considering how we arrive in the state we British are in the Noughties. It also explained why she landed up in Greece, a link to her own classical studies. And allowed me to explore classical notions of pleasure and happiness set against our contemporary sybaritic breed's pursuit of it.
The final element also came from something I had been batting around my mind with something else entirely in mind for its destination. I was and still am astounded at the anecdotal reports from NHS workers on the front line of Casualty. How nurses and doctors trying to treat, help and heal their patients, came under assault by the selfsame patients. Again one can point to alcohol or drug use for distorting their perceptions, but I was interested in delving beneath that. What does the figure of the nurse represent in the popular imagination? Maternal tenderer, through to slatternly tease. Many years ago while prowling around the medicine section of an academic bookshop, stockpiling potential metaphors for future use, I passed by a book on sexuality & nursing. It was a practical text for nurses on how the patient in various states of stress might come to perceive them. I wish I'd bought it back then, for I have never been able to track it down since. However, Klaus Theweleit's masterful studies of the male psyche behind Naizsm "Male Fantasies" did consider in part the image of the German Nurse in WW1. I found this very helpful in my ruminations on the modern day version. And somehow, nurse Billie Rubin was born and became the second avenging angel in my novel. The two never meet in person throughout, but their fates are ineluctable entwined...