Tim Roux's Blog – March 2009 Archive (7)

Tony Flynn’s “Body Politic” eloquently addresses an intractable theme: how does the suffering and death of a political martyr relate to the ordinary lives of the rest of us? Is there a difference? Are all our lives not governed by politics and the effects of policies, yet experienced privately at the same time?



These are the questions that Tony Flynn asks as he nurses his fevered child in his arms (“Lullaby”), watches a small child, and maybe an adult, peeing in the bushes… Continue

In 1980, Tony Flynn published “A Strange Routine”, a compelling map to his terrain of loss – the loss of his mother, of his wife, of his child, of his past. Twelve years later, his “Body Politic” came out, another outright masterpiece, this time including an extended mourning for the victims of state repression.



It has been sixteen years since then, sixteen years in which you get the impression from his new collection “The Mermaid… Continue

Published twelve years before “Body Politic”, Tony Flynn’s “A Strange Routine” is, if anything, the darker work, penned, it would appear, in a particularly despairing period of his life given the topics covered, which include revisiting a childhood town as a stranger, separation and divorce, drifting and self-abandonment, silent rooms and institutional care, and stolen moments of romance.



The power of all of Tony Flynn’s work is that it is so personal, so incidental, permeated here… Continue

Nick Quantrill is a prize-winning Hull crime fiction writer whose work is highly-rated by all who come across it, with one notable exception - himself. However, even Nick reckons that his upcoming novel 'Broken Dreams' is a belter (we'll see what he says about it in a year's time).



Nick started out as a short story writer, winning the 2006 HarperCollins Crime Tour Competition for 'Punishment', an elegant 1,000 word piece which plonks an evil twist down onto the table. Other short… Continue

The Slab #1 mostly gives a distinctive voice to Northern England, and is stuffed full of wholesome goodness, as you might expect, and much brilliance too, from Fiona Curran’s twin racing track “The Penultimate Bet”, or Dan Fante’s wrecked lines and his “meanest bastard starving cat”, to Gaia Holmes’ stunning “Possession”:



“My shoulder blades crack

as he pushes them back

against the carpet.

He holds me down

until I stop twitching.

This

is true… Continue

This is an extract from a current book I am working on ('The Blue Food Revolution') which is a series of interweaving stories about a couple before they meet as they travel around the world, told on the day of their deaths.



Don't worry, I am not on this site to promote my books, more to indulge my love of reading (which is why I write books in the first place - I want to know about the characters and what happens to them), so this is a one-off:



SAASTOPIA



My… Continue

Byker Books was set up because its founder got tired of being told by publishers that they liked his work but they couldn’t possibly publish it because it wasn’t commercial enough. So, he decided to come back at them with a baseball bat, and “Radepacket #1” is definitely a baseball bat. Every story makes a play for a home run.



In fact, the “Radgepacket” series is doing for short stories what “The Slab” series is doing for contemporary… Continue