
September the 10th, Famished is out with Influx Press - but you can subscribe and read it a little early. xxxx https://www.influxpress.com/subscript... What's coming? In April, you can read my new novel, Saving Lucia. Here she is above. The book that started with a chance sighting of that photo above - the one where the elderly lady is feeding the birds, so very tenderly. She was the Honourable Violet Gibson and, in April 1926, she went to Rome and tried to kill Mussolini, She shot him in the nose. She got closer than anyone else. Lady Gibson was knocked to the ground, put in prison and, eventually, deported; thereafter, she was certified insane and spent the rest of her life in St Andrew's Hospital, Northampton. Later, a fellow patient was Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce. What if...and do you see the other women above? That's Blanche, Queen of the Hysterics at the Salpetriere and that's Monsieur Charcot demonstrating what happens under hypnosis. She is most remarkably responsive. To her right is Bertha Pappenheim, a prominent Jewish social worker, whose institute was razed by the Nazis. It was not until twenty years after her death that she was also revealed to be 'Anna O', in Freud and Breuer's On Hysteria. These women have an extraordinary story to tell you, so stick around. The book is published on April the 24th, but Bluemoose Books is starting a subscription service, where it will be available to subscribers from (I gather) late February. Follow all news here: https://bluemoosebooks.com/ Saving Lucia is part of Bluemoose's all women catalogue for 2020. Also in 2020, Famished, my first short story collection, with Influx press, assorted short fiction, two further books being read, one being written and the novel I have just done for my literary agency is about to go out of submission. OOOOH.