Gutshots: Ten Blows to the Abdomen – Now on Sale!

To celebrate the release of my latest eBook Gutshots: Ten Blows to the Abdomen I thought I would share the stories behind the stories.

I hope you enjoy reading where I get my inspiration and ideas from. Please feel free to leave a comment or two.

A Girl I Once Met

This story came from a recent role as best man at my cousin’s wedding. After the obligatory stag party, I started thinking about the possible consequences of a one night stand taken on such an “away day” event. I must stress though that the story is entirely fictional and not based on a personal experience.

Country Goes to Town

This story came from a news story about the demonstration marches in London against plans to outlaw hunting. My own imagination added the “what if” factor.

Author Meets Reviewer

My previous eBook releases have only had positive reviews, for which I’m extremely grateful. I do though expect a bad review one day as someone will not enjoy my work. That’s fine with me and I’m the first to admit that I’m always learning. This little tale comes from me exploring the idea of an author who cannot accept that he can’t please everyone.

Following Full of Fear

This is based on my own worries when following an ambulance carrying my wife and infant son. All I could think about was what I would do if the blue lights suddenly came on. The story is a very honest answer.

Hannah’s Last Hurrah

I based this story very loosely on an old joke and the fear every parent has over the next drug craze.

My Job is Murder

After having a story accepted into an anthology about action heroes who were larger than life. I wanted to write another in a similar vein albeit with a darker feel. My Job is Murder tells the tale of a most unusual assassin.

Not to be Sneezed at

I wrote this after a half heard radio topic rekindled an old biology lesson. Of course me being me, I couldn’t help but add a different perspective.

A Day of Deception

This story was born from mixing my day job and my love of crime fiction together once again. This story is entirely fictional although I know for a fact that it could happen. One of the aspects of my day job is to see that it doesn’t.

Accounting for Dummies

I derived this story from a short online piece I wrote. I fleshed it out differently as I wanted to explore the causes a little further and there’s something to be said for keeping accurate and detailed accounts.

Suburban Combat

With most of my stories revolving around the seedier side of life I wanted to see what would happen if I pitted a couple of middle class neighbours against each other. The results surprised even me.

Pursuit

When I first wrote this story it was a piece of micro fiction for a Facebook group. When Near to the Knuckle were looking for submissions, I fleshed out the earlier story and was delighted when they featured it on their site. http://www.close2thebone.co.uk/

Downloading Disaster

I co-wrote this story with Rosalind Smith-Nazilli after a mutual friend’s encouragement. The story spawned from Rosalind having to reset her computer’s settings as she couldn’t download Ebooks at her home in Turkey. An idea sparked, so I laid down the basic plot and Rosalind polished and buffed the story into shape. It first appeared in her eBook Fourteen Flashes of Fiction.

The Mourning After

I wrote this story as a practice exercise as I have a Harry Charters story I want to tell in the second person point of view. A friendly editor over at Near to the Knuckle ran an eye over it and found a home for my story on the site. http://www.close2thebone.co.uk/

Star Struck Shooter

After writing Shooting Stars I knew that the story couldn’t end there, so this is basically the next chapter. This story first appeared at ThrillsKills’n’Chills as did Shooting Stars. http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.co.uk/

Mad Dog and Evers’ Bird

This is a little exercise I gave myself, where I put four characters into a room and tried to give each one an individual voice and speech pattern to see if they were recognisable throughout the piece. I made it my goal to tell a story and solve a crime entirely through dialogue without any speech tags such as said, asked or queried.

It first appeared here on my blog, where it received enough positive comments for me to feel confident enough to share it.

The Birth Of True Brit Grit by Paul D. Brazill

Today I welcome the Grand Master of the Brit Grit scene. Paul D Brazill gave me one of my first breaks as a writer by including my story Adult Education in True Brit Grit. 
Here’s what he has to say about True Brit Grit.

At first, I spotted the odd one, here and there.  

Then I peeked another.  

And then they seemed to be everywhere!  

The first one I saw was Banks, I think, then Quantrill, Williams, Guthrie, Black. Later, Griffiths, Bird, Sant, Morrigan, Ayris, Rivers. And more!

The Brit Grit mob were here. Crime fiction; social realism; horror; black comedy.The lot!

And it was great!

So, I had the half-bright idea of trying to nab a few of them together into an anthology. A taster of this new bitter-sweet sub-genre.

And so I asked a handful of writers to donate stories. Then loads of other people. And you know what? They almost all said yes!

And then I really lucked out.

Luca Veste, who had edited and published Off The Record, offered to publish the anthology –now known asTrue Brit Grit- through Guilty Conscience publishing. And co-edit, too. Then Steven Miscandlon designed a brilliant cover. And the legendary Maxim Jakubowski agreed to write the introduction.

And then we were LIVE! And kicking ass!

How nice is that?

True Brit Grit is available from Amazon.

Amazon UK

And in print from Lulu.

Paul D. Brazill’s blog, You Would Say That, Wouldn’t You? is here.

In addition to having Paul D Brazill on my blog today I’m delighted to announce that the other anthology which features a story of mine is being given away free for two days on Amazon.

That’s right folks Action:Pulse Pounding Tales is free on the 6^th and 7^th of June so head over to Amazon and grab your copy of this excellent action thriller anthology.