Red House

Red House is an unpublished novel set in the famously long and hot summer of 1976. In two south coast towns and a nearby university, their originals easily surmised.

The story follows the fortunes of two couples: Snyder and Mothy, Matthew and Jinty. Snyder, a renegade academic, is close to losing his job. He embarks on a research investigation - something like Walter Benjamin’s Arcades project - that disintegrates in parallel with his mental state and his relationship.

Matthew and Jinty’s relationship stews more quietly in the heat, but with a buildup of tensions that breaks into catharsis. An uncertain reconciliation follows.

The story might be seen as wall-to-wall pathetic fallacy. Drug-enhanced freak-summer motifs – overheat, a forcing of nature, progressive exhaustion – run their course. When a storm finally breaks its turmoil is mirrored in three of the four characters - for instance in Snyder’s descent into amphetamine psychosis …click here.

I had hopes of publication, but after around 50 rejections I gave up. I might take another look at it with a mind to self-publish, though – watch this space.

A couple of samples meanwhile. Much of the writing is pretty experimental – my influences included Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Lawrence, Cormac McCarthy, no doubt upping the one-glance rejection rate. Here are two passages from a chapter I’m quite pleased with: Matthew and Snyder, with some interleaved commentary from their partners, are visiting a church as part of Snyder’s project - see here.

(The church is more or less exactly St Mary de Haura in Shoreham-by-Sea. The dedication on the bench is still there, though since I took notes - it must be thirty years ago, more even - the elements have completed their task of rubbing out the names on the Juniper gravestone.)

There are five and a half sex scenes. The half - here.- comes after Matthew and girlfriend Jinty have had a near-violent row.

Stories

I have written maybe a dozen short stories over the years. Not all came off, but three have been published and I thought a fourth was interesting enough to put out.

Dugga Dugga Dugga – the first story I wrote – appeared in the Winter 1994/5 issue of Metropolitan, a now vanished literary magazine. It also won joint first in a Radio Clyde competition – judged by Janice Galloway no less.

A Story by Borges was published by Chapman in 1997. It is very loosely based on fact – I did have a Borges-fan girlfriend who I’m sure told me Borges had written such a story. I might have another go at it in due course; this is the published version.

1 Samuel 17 – a re-telling of David and Goliath story – was in Southlight 5 in 2009. I’d picked it up and put it down several times – again, I might have another go.

I just found (to my relief – tucked away in an old email) my only recent story – A Career, written in 2018. It’s partly a bit of near-future dystopia, partly a chewing on my ambivalence about the heavier end of female combat sports (I have an MMA habit). Also a coll-narrative experiment. Re-reading it, I’m more pleased with it than I thought I’d be. My apologies to Glaswegian MMA fighter Joanne Wood (nee Calderwood) whose nickname I lifted but who bears no other resemblance.