Find the book on Amazon here: http://mybook.to/killingstreets
Sunday 12 July 2020
Thursday 9 July 2020
This is a book I can
recommend for anyone who has an interest in historical novels. The Poisoned Cup
by Edward Lanyon is a different take on the Braveheart story. I believe it to
be a more accurate story, but the reader must judge for him/herself.
What the readers
said about The Poisoned Cup:
-
I bought this one last night and couldn’t
put it down until I finished it. It reads like a Bernard Cornwell novel. The
key character is an aging English knight working for King Edward the First to
try to bring about a lasting peace with Scotland. He is thwarted when the
Scottish king Alexander is killed in an accident. One of the secondary
characters is William Wallace but this is a very different Wallace to the one
you see in the Braveheart film. According to Lanyon’s notes, this is the more
accurate version of him. The book’s portrayal comes across as more credible
than the film image. This is a just a rollicking good historical tale with
knights, battles and a beautiful young maiden. A great first novel from this
new writer.
-
The novel weaves a rich tapestry of
political intrigue with a fictional seasoned knight as the reader's guide to
the madness that ensued from the death of one king and the debatable
obligations of another. The reader will be confronted by the raw brutality of
the war between England and Scotland during the late 13th century. The writing
is truly impressive and readers who are familiar with the brilliant works of
Maurice Druon may find similar writing style with the use of dialogue, delivery
of historical events and overall pacing of the story.
-
The Poisoned Cup was an absolute gem of a
find and I was stunned to discover that this was a debut novel.
-
The book follows an ageing English Knight
who happens to be working for King Edward the first. His job is to bring peace
between England and Scotland; the angst between the two kingdoms is beginning
to build to a startling level. However his plans are scuppered when the King of
Scotland, Alexander is killed in a sudden accident; all must be done to stop
the incoming of a civil war. Lanyon spills a brutal tale of battles, knights,
one beautiful maiden and a rip-rolling story.
-
This feels like a very well-researched
and investigated story; the story feels real and definitely transports you to
medieval times which of course it is supposed to. Lanyon forces the reader to
re-think the portraits we see of such historic figures. What I also found truly
intriguing was the brutal nature of the book: this is an author who does not
step back. Instead the writing is heady, ruthless but also fully formed. It
feels like you’re there in the action, feeling the heat of the battle, the roar
in your ears; it’s a wonderful thing when historical fiction manages this.
-
I thought the characters were fleshed out
with style and precision and I liked the way that some are historical figures
whilst others are fictional and created from the author’s imagination. I
thought the political line of fiction was woven throughout and helped to add to
the action and make it feel all the more real
-
I thoroughly enjoyed this tale. It has a
real sense of what historical fiction should do and how to engage the reader. A
lovely, but rather brutal tale.
Saturday 4 July 2020
THE GIRL FROM THE KILLING STREETS
The Girl From The Killing Streets is a novel, yes, but
it is more than that. It is a lesson from history. The fiction elements of the story
are set against a real event in the Northern Irish troubles: a day in 1972 known
as Bloody Friday. Read this story as a thriller, yes, but let it also help you better
understand what happened that day, and the terrible effect the appalling
violence has had upon the people of Belfast. Even today, twenty two years after
the Good Friday Agreement, the after-effects have not gone away, far from it. Northern
Ireland has the highest suicide rate in the UK, and one of the highest suicide rates
in the world. The causes are not entirely limited to the so-called ‘troubles’,
but there is ample evidence that a legacy of thirty years of bombing, shooting
and hatred has left many Northern Irish people suffering from stress and PTSD. Read
the book and try to understand what it was like to live in Belfast at that time,
and try to understand why the after-effects live on.
Review:
Having read Mr Hough's previous
novels this one is his best yet. The writing has taken more than one step
upwards. Being interested in the Troubles I found the book fascinating, based
around the Belfast Bloody Friday bombings where the reader gets to follow
several different characters during that awful day on 21 of July 1972. This
novel is clearly centred around true facts of that day. The author places you
amongst the action with gritty reality. You receive a vivid insight into the
grim reality of life at that time: the burnt out houses, protestant and
catholic tensions, the dangers associated with taking a wrong turn and stumbling
into the wrong street, the senseless murders and retaliation murders, plus much
more. I can highly recommend the book to anyone that likes a novel based around
true events.
Wednesday 10 June 2020
Two
new non-fiction books are now on the market, published by Luscious Books. They
are essentially the same book, but one is a UK edition and the other a US edition.
The news items differ.
I
REMEMBER THAT differs from other memory journals. It is aimed at those older
people who need just a little help to bring their memories back into sharper
focus. It does this by using news items as ‘memory triggers’: it briefly
describes a variety of news events that have occurred between 1945 and 2000. It
then prompts the reader to recall what was happening in his/her own life at
that time. This book is available as UK and US versions, both in standard and
large print.
To
find out more go to:
Saturday 6 June 2020
Yesterday I began a journey through my published
novels, a journey that will take you up to my latest thriller published by
Darkstroke. This latest one is called The
Girl From The Killing Streets.
I explained that writing this latest novel demanded
every skill I had learned in my career as a writer. I doubt if I could have
written it sooner. It was Highly Commended in the 2019 Yeovil Literary Prize
competition.
This account of my writing career, isn’t written in
chronological sequence. I am grouping my
books for convenience. I told you yesterday about my three aviation novels. I
have written other books along the route towards Killing Streets. I was born in Cornwall, but half my life has been
spent in the beautiful county of Dorset. My
Hampton Warlock Trilogy tells the stories of three different families who
live in a fictitious Dorset village which I call, not surprisingly, Hampton
Warlock. The name is adapted from the real village of Witchampton. Keen-eyed
lovers of Dorset will recognise the descriptions of the location as coming from
the real village of Worth Matravers. When the original publisher went bust,
these books were quickly taken on by Cloudberry and republished under different
titles.
The Long Road to Sunrise (Republished
as The Legacy of Shame)
The Hadleigh family of Hampton Warlock learn about
a child lost in the Amazon rainforest.
King’s Priory (Republished as The Legacy of Secrets)
Colin Portesham searches for secrets hidden in King’s
Priory, his parents’ home in Hampton Warlock. He discovers what happened to his
grandfather, a WW2 fighter pilot.
The Gallows on Warlock Hill (Republished as The Legacy of
Conflict)
Rose Greenwood unearths family secrets going back
to the civil war. Her discoveries reveal conflicts in Dorset and Ireland.
Friday 5 June 2020
The Girl From The Killing Streets is my new thriller
from Darkstroke. It is a truly dark read, one that demands a painful journey of
discovery for the key characters. Writing it demanded everything I had learned
from my personal history as a novelist.
I have
been writing seriously for the past twenty years. An insight into me, the
writer, may help to know my books. I’ll begin with my trilogy of aviation
thrillers.
If you
want to write about aviation, you need to know about aviation. My working life
was spent as an air traffic controller. I had an insight into the workings of
aviation at airfields and at air traffic control centres. I worked at numerous
locations around the UK and was the Belfast aerodrome controller on duty the
day troops were airlifted into Northern Ireland in August 1969. In the late 1970s
I was an area controller at the Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre in
Prestwick. I wrote
most of my books with a degree of inside knowledge.
PRESTWICK
Four hundred frightened passengers
Two badly crippled aircraft
And nowhere to land
HEATHROW
Thousands of passengers
Hundreds of aircraft
One plan to end it all
DEAD
RECKONING
Three unarmed aircraft
One dangerous mission
And no hope of return
An Amazon reviewer
wrote about Prestwick: “I read every
aviation related book that I can get my hands on and this one I can safely say
had me totally hooked. Excellent piece of work and the degree of technical
accuracy could come only from a professional.”
Sunday 24 May 2020
In my
previous post I aimed to explain why I wrote The Girl From The Killing Streets. This morning let me try to
amplify that.
I am no
longer in what is often described as “the full bloom of youth.” One day I will
not be here. I will be a part of the past. History. Maybe that is why two
thoughts so often occupy my mind these days. Firstly, what have I learned from
the experience of being here? And, secondly, what will I leave behind for
future generations?
It was an
eye-opening thought when it first occurred to me: what will I take with me when
I leave this life? Only one thing, I decided. I will take with me only what I
have learned from the experience of being here. Everything else will be left
behind. From that I deduced that ‘learning’ has been a major part of my purpose
in this life. Not classroom learning. My task has been my personal develoment through
‘experiential’ learning. In other words, learning from my various life
experiences. So, I ask myself, what have I learned? Well, some of that
experiential learning went into my books.
Then I
turn my thoughts to what I will leave behind for future generations. As a
former air traffic controller, I have very little to pass on. But as a writer,
there is a lot I can leave behind when I eventually leave this life. When I
write a novel I aim to do more than relate a story. I aim to make the reader
think. No more so than in my latest book, The
Girl From The Killing Streets. Outside of Northern Ireland, most people
have only an edited view of The Troubles, based on what they read in their
newspapers or saw on their televisions. As for the younger generation, how can
they possibly fully understand what it was really like in Northern Ireland in those
harrowing days? I cannot take anyone physically back to that time but, as a
writer, I can help them understand how it felt. And, when I am gone from this
life, the fruits of that exercise will remain… in my writing, in the words I
leave behind. People will still be able to read my book and gain some
understanding of what it felt like. If they can learn about the past
through my writing, and make sure it never happens again, my work as a writer will
have been of value.
That’s a
comforting thought.
Monday 18 May 2020
THE
GIRL FROM THE KILLING STREETS
My revealing novel
I learned more about
the Peninsular Wars from reading Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels than I
learned in school history lessons. I learned more than the bare facts; the
dates and places. I learned what it was like to be there in the heat of battle.
I learned what it felt like. A
novelist is well-placed to show the reader those emotions. There’s nothing new
in it. Through the medium of a novel, Dickens showed us what it felt like to be
a penniless orphan.
Why am I telling you
this? Because historians try to give an accurate account of the past, but their
output often comes across as too academic. So many history books are devoid of
that important element: the collection of sentiments, hopes and frustrations
felt by the people who were there at the time.
I lived and worked
in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, at the height of the Troubles. I
remember more than simply what happened.
There are many detailed accounts of that already in the public domain. I now
live in England and people ask me what it felt like to live in Northern Ireland
in those distant days. Their questions go beyond what happened. I find it
difficult to explain in a conversation, in a way that fully captures the feel of the moment. However, I am a
novelist, so I had a solution in my writing.
My way around the
problem was to write a novel that encapsulates the essence of what it felt
like. As Bernard Cornwell did with his Sharpe books, I have used fiction as a
means of bringing out the feelings of reality. Fiction in place of reality?
Ironically, it seems to work.
The Girl From The Killing Streets is a crime story, but it is more than
that. It is a story set against one fateful day in the lives of the people of
Belfast. Bloody Friday, 21st July 1972.
The story begins
eight years later when a young woman is incarcerated in Armagh Gaol for two murders
committed on Bloody Friday. A journalist interviews her and comes away with the
clear impression that her story does not ring true. So he interviews others who
were in Belfast that day in 1972 and puts together a totally different story of
what happened. It is a story of family intrigue, family secrets and dangerous
relationships. It is also a story of how people felt when their city was blown
apart.
The Girl From The Killing Streets is published by Darkstroke. With
bookshops now closed, it can be ordered in paperback or ebook from Amazon.
Follow this link:
“This book is a thriller from start to finish I was hooked.
Well written from an expert storyteller.”
Amazon review
A remarkably dark and stylish thriller. The
next best thing to being there.
Della
Galton. Novelist and creative writing tutor
Thursday 12 March 2020
Wednesday 11 March 2020
What do I do
when I’m not writing fiction? Answer: I’m writing non-fiction. “A Lifetime of
Memories” is selling nicely. One reviewer wrote that he bought that book and a
similar one for an older relative. He preferred mine and discarded the other. I
also write stories for my grandsons, but they are not for publication.
As a writer I have a keen interest in
how other writers create their stories. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. We can
learn so much from each other. When people ask me where my stories come from I
tell them the seeds are all around us in our own lives. The ideas can come from
things we see, things we hear or experiences we have been through. The idea for
THE GIRL FROM THE KILLING STREETS came
from my distant past. Back in the 1970s I was living and working in Northern
Ireland. It was an experience I never forgot and I long wanted to write about
that time and place. It took a long time to get round to it, but the novel will
be published soon.
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