Astonishingly, I wrote two books during Lockdown. The first one was ‘dictated’, in part at least, by an old character, Booby Fellatio (a woman of negotiable affection with a penchant for young men): she first appeared in 2014, had her say in a previous book and then rode off into the metaphorical sunset, never (or so I assumed) to be seen again. In this, I was wrong!
Those weeks, and then months, of being in silence, for the most part, and fear and loneliness; those months in which loved ones were far away and out of reach, and human physical contact was prohibited; those months in which Covid 19 strode the Planet’s highways and byways, a modern-day Grim Reaper, with scythe made up of toxic virus particles, felling all-too many; those months – you know! – also provided the ironic stimulus for writing.
It started with sharing Booby’s misadventures with friends on Facebook. She proved very popular, and made many people laugh. This gave me the idea of combining her outrageous diary entries with my own genuine, though carefully edited, ones. The contrast between Booby’s humour(inadvertent usually) and the grim reality of what was going on in real life actually works well. The two reflect upon, and feed off, one another.
The finished book, ‘Booby Fellatio’s Lockdown Diary,’ was published in September 2020, and received some good reviews.
In October 2020, I went back to a book I had started in my mid-twenties – and basically re-wrote most of it over the next three months. There were two reasons for this: I had lost great chunks of the original over the decades, and I felt that the writing styles of my younger and older selves needed to be smoothed and combined into one. A great deal of hard, concentrated work went into this novel – and it was finally ready in early January, actually being published on the 7th of that month.
This second book – ‘Under Cader Idris’ – is set in West Wales, and has some excellent reviews on Amazon.
It has a Press Release and this will be sent out later in May.
It is three years or so since I last blogged, so this piece may remain unseen. We shall see!
Torrid Tales From Booby's Boudoir! 