Xavier Leret's Blog: Writer. Believes too many of his own dreams., page 5

Interview With Evie Bookish

I'm interviewed by the very lovely Evie Bookish, of Vancouver, BC, and she is offering readers the chance to win a couple of copies of Heaven Sent. What could be better? So make your merry way over to here.

I've Been Interviewed

I've been interviewed by Daizee a character from Heaven Sent, at the top of a castle tower, over-looking a moonlit ocean, on the blog vvb32reads. There is also a book giveaway. Check it out.

Review – Diavolino by Steve Emmett

Diavolino by Steve Emmett, the new kid on the horror block, is a spectacular, horrific and devilish romp that has all the catastrophic ambition of a 2012 disaster movie and it doesn't let you down.

Architect Tom Lupton is brought to the island of Diavolino to design and oversee the building of Sir Roger's Playhouse only to find that the island is the doorway to Hell – but of course it is! Before he knows it Tom and his family are caught up in some seriously dark shenanigans. And we have it all, earthquakes, freak weather, monks that are orgiastically charged devils and a creature that munches on skulls like they are hard boiled sweets. It rollicks along. Moments of pause are nicely played with gentle evocative prose. The choreography of action and spectacle point perfect.

If there is criticism then it would be that some of the decisions made by the characters seem a little rushed and not earned – the narrative flies ahead like a Hollywood blockbuster and as a result characterisation is truncated. The result is that a couple of choices taken by the heroes could have been explored more to make them work – an almost ridiculous statement considering the sheer enormity of the horror at play, but for me psychological logic is important, it supports my suspension of disbelief. But this is a minor niggle, Diavolino's sense of scale is no holds barred and Emmett's play on form is top notch and knowing, he writes with a twinkle in his eye and it's the twinkle of a rough diamond.

Diavolino is a big budget opera of doom and damnation and a hoot to boot. Go get now.

Click on the more link and allow me to introduce you to the very stupendous Steve Emmett.

 

Xavier: Have you always written?

Steve: Not fiction, but I have always had to write in one way or another. One

of my problems as an estate agent was that I wrote property details

with a literary eye. Some people simply just didn't get it. To sell

property you have to forget what is good writing, forget proper

grammar. I always despised the term 'architectural features'; it makes

it sound like architecture is something applied with glue once the

stultifying edifice has been thrown up. I always wanted to write

fiction and dreamed of being a novelist.

Xavier: How do you filter back story through your work?

Steve: Revealing back story is one of the trickiest things to master. I find

that dialogue works well. If you have characters in conversation you

can slip back story in quite seamlessly. In any event, I think it's

something that has be reigned in. Too little and the story is over

enigmatic; too much and it's overwhelming.

Xavier: How long did it take to write Diavolino? And what inspired you?

Steve: From the first thought to publishing contract was twenty-two months

but that wasn't full-time working. Perhaps it represents fifteen or

sixteen months solid work. I didn't have a flash of inspiration where

I said, 'oh! that's it'. It kind of invaded my mind gradually. I was

living in Italy at the time and my office overlooked Lake Trasimeno

and the islands. I was beginning to have concerns about xenophobia.

And there is the old classic, being an atheist as a result of exposure

to catholicism as a child. I think I get my revenge by making the

Church evil.

Xavier: Diavolino's structure is tight and intricately woven, and it moves like a

film script: did you plan before you began writing or did you free form?

Steve: It's a total seat of the pants job. I set out to write a commercial

page turner, knowing that it would need stunning locations and action.

But it had to have a supernatural element, too, in order to satisfy my

own thirst for the dark. That is what guided me. Then I just followed

the characters, writing down the events as they happened, from time to

time playing god with them. In the end I think they did me proud.

Xavier: A key skill to Horror is the manipulation of the audience, to what extent

did you think about your readers as you were working?

Steve: I intended that Diavolino would be a success with the readers and

therefore I had their needs in mind all the way. As a horror fan

myself I think it was easier because, if I felt chilled or disturbed

by what I'd written, then it was likely they would. There were times

that I spooked myself so much that I had to stop writing and go join

my partner in the living room. You have to write for yourself in the

sense that you have to be sincere, but if you forget about your

readers they will soon abandon you.

Xavier: Did you consume a lot of horror fiction to help master the form?

Steve: I have consumed horror from an early age and I still can't get enough

of it. I have a garage filled with horror DVDs and enough books to

build a cottage with. An awful lot is rubbish or mediocre, but when I

find something really good it pleases me no end.

Xavier: Do you write everyday? Do you have a ritual?

Steve: Almost every day. Sometimes things will come along and prevent it but

without interruptions to my schedule I write seven days a week. I get

up at about 06.30, do the things one has to, then aim to be at my desk

by 09.00. I try to work until 17.00 with only minor breaks. The

evenings I don't work unless I really have to as I value the time with

my partner. Once you reach 50 years of age time takes on a new

urgency.

Xavier: What are you working on now? And how far off are you from completion?

Steve: I have a few things on the go. A sequel to Diavolino in the early

stages. A horror based on a very real but mysterious phenomenon that I

hope to finish by the autumn. An experimental horror that I am sworn

to secrecy about. I also write other stuff under a pen name but

obviously must keep silent on that!

Xavier: You are an actor, does acting inform your writing in any way?

Steve: It does in so far as it makes you look through the eyes of others,

lets you explore the work of others, but I have to say that everything

- even going to the supermarket – can provide fodder for my work.

Xavier: What are your thoughts on the e-pub revolution? Do you feel empowered by it?

Steve: It was going to happen and it has. I do feel that there is a lot of

snobbery in the traditional publishing world and the current

revolution should change that. I think we are in a state of flux right

now; prices are all over the place, quality control is difficult, the

main publishers seem shell shocked. I don't know if I feel empowered

by it actually. Part of me wishes it were the late 1800s and all I had

to do was write and let my London publisher sell my books in huge

quantities. With the opportunities of e-publishing comes a tsunami of

badly written books sold for pennies. We have to make sure we rise to

the top, but I never forget my uncle pointing out to sea at

Scarborough and telling me that it's the turds that float.

Xavier: What sort of material do you read?

Steve: Horror, thrillers, humour (but it has to be brilliant) and I'm always

delighted when someone hands me a literary novel they've enjoyed.

Xavier: What would you like the inscription on your tombstone to say? And if you had

to choose a statue to sit on it, what would it be?

Steve: Inscription: Gone sightseeing

Statue: The Chucky doll from Child's Play. Chukkie (not spelling) has

been my nickname for decades.

 

Go visit Steve's blog without delay.

The Writer Experience – A True Story

The Writer Experience

The last time I saw him he was wearing a schoolboy's uniform – white shirt, school tie, short grey trousers, long grey socks, boy scout green garters and a pair of black brogue shoes. His hair had a side parting and his boy-band quiff was brushed flat and neat. He opened the door, standing behind it so that he could not be seen from the Covent Garden alley, just a cock spit away from the Garrick Gentleman's Club. He let me in and shut the door. We stood at the bottom of the stairs in the shabby dark stairwell. He looked up at me, a couple of inches shorter than the '6 foot one' he claimed on his adverts. The uniform made him look even smaller and he seemed to have the limbs of a child.

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I thought you had retired, I said.

I'm keeping the one client, he lisped. They haven't released my assets yet. Not until the re-trial, and assuming they find me innocent.

That must be tough. I hope he's paying you well.

I'm earning it.

I'm sure you are. Who is it?

Marty.

Girlie Voice?

He nodded.

I had heard Marty's voice on the phone once. Chris used to put his clients on the loud speaker when I was interviewing him. Marty doesn't have a man's voice: he has a castrato warble, that's why Chris calls him 'Girlie Voice'. When Chris hung up we both laughed. A nasty secret laugh. It was difficult to take Marty seriously as a human being after that, though professionally, at least, he was a very successful man. He had to be. Chris was not cheap.

I need to get going, I'll leave you to it, I said.

No rush, he's occupied.

Oh… right… yeah… What's he doing?

His home work.

I nodded. Marty likes Chris to dress up like a school boy. Marty likes to pretend that he is the teacher but has lost control of his pupil. He likes to sit at an old school desk and be forced to write out lines and then have Chris slap him on the knuckles with a ruler. He likes to do this once a week. There would be no sex, Chris said. He was at pains to point out to me that he never had sex with men anymore. He said he found found it disgusting. I never really believed him. He was gay for pay. That was his act. His insistence that he no longer had sex with men, or that sex with guys was disgusting, seemed to be all part of his performance persona. Chris did fuck women, he did do that. He told me that. He'd said, I fucked a lot of women. Though, mostly, he did that for free; gifting the ladies. He knows what women want. He wrote a book about it, after he fired me, with a woman writer. A woman. Its called, What Women Want.

He talked about being the fulfiller of fantasies. It was all about fantasy. I handed him the Tesco carrier bag full of his papers, the writings of his three previous ghost writers. His three previous writers. Writers. He had played me on my fantasy. I wasn't much different to Marty.

In Chris's flat, I'd type away, interview him, and then go away, write it up, shape it, create a story and give it back to him, for assessment. I was playing at being a writer. No money exchanged hands but still he played me like a client. Like Malcolm. He gave me my fantasy experience. Not the boyfriend experience, the writer experience.

I never saw this coming, he said.

No?

No.

I had seen it coming. I'd watched it play out like a flash-forward the first time we met. I interviewed him for a theatre show I was working on, and he asked me to write for him.

I'll give you half of everything, he said.

I didn't want half of everything, I just needed the work, but money, money, money put a pause on my premonitions.

I was poor, he said, I was poor, and then I had a revelation.

He used words like revelation, he used them a lot. He talked in tongues too, the gobbledygook of evangelical Christianity. It shocked me every time.

Poor, as a Christian leader, he said, poor as a student, poor teaching English in Spain. I got back to England and I was working in a cafe, I looked outside at a parking meter. The parking meter was earning more than I was.

He wasn't wrong, I had to admit, but the jump from poverty to selling your body? I am poor, not a penny to my name, but I don't need a man stand there with his dick out telling me to stroke it, suck it, to get on all fours to get fucked. I don't need to have it pounded into me that this is what it is to be a man, to be a human being, cocaine high, sex hungry eyes, cock after rutting cock.

I said, a parking meter is a parking meter, it's an inanimate object that collects money for a Council. It's just a slot machine. Isn't that what you have become, Chris? A slot machine with two holes for the cash.

I don't know if I like your imagery, he said.

The slot machine has no self to loose. What have you lost of yourself? I asked.

I haven't lost myself, he said, I found myself.

Are you happy with who you are?

I am happy, he said. And I have made money. I can now retire. At the age of thirty two.

Money, money, money.

I bet you do things you never imagined you would when you started out, I said.

Of course, but there are still boundaries.

But you have no power. Ultimately, you do as you are told.

If the price is right.

You'd do anything?

If the price is right. Wouldn't you?

I couldn't do it to myself.

It's not about me, he said. It's about the client. If you want to be moral, what about the men who want me to dominate them? I make men lick toilet brushes. I shit on some men.

Don't you find it demeaning? To make a man do that. To do that to a man. To be in the same room as that. To be party to it. To know that about people.

Do you find it demeaning when I tell you these things? He asked.

Yes.

I am living, he said. You could live.

But I am living.

In comfort. No more arguments with your wife about money..

I wouldn't have a wife if I was having sex for money.

I did.

Yes, Chris, but she left you.

That was nothing to do with prostitution.

You don't think it undermined to your relationship?

She was a prostitute, she understood.

She became a prostitute because of you, Chris. She was just the girl next door when you met her. She was just a student, that you turned into a-

He cut me off, corrected me before I said it. Sex worker, he said.

You turned her into a sex worker.

I didn't turn her. She chose the life.

Did she?

Yes. She wanted to try it out. She was poor, it was easy money.

Easy?

Yes.

Did you work together? In a duo?

Yes. Once or twice.

And what was that like?

Strange. For her. So we stopped.

Right.

But she was happy.

She ran out on you, within seconds of getting married.

We said our vows, he said. I still believe in them. I dropped all my female clients.

That was generous, I said.

It meant something.

You got married and she cleared out a week later.

My wedding day was the happiest day of my life.

It was a fantasy, Chris.

You don't understand, he said.

That's true, I don't.

We had everything.

But it wasn't real.

My feelings were.

You were taking it up the assfor her, was that the proof?

He stopped me. Not at that point, he said. I'd finished with doing that by then. It was just straight forward finger massages.

Right. And the blow jobs.

Through a condom, he added.

Of course, I forgot. That changes everything.

That was just sex stuff anyway, he said, and it wasn't even sex.

What was it then?

I make people cum. It's a function.

Is that how she saw it?

We had everything we could dream of, he said. Nothing was out of reach. We had so much money, he said. She loved the money. We had boxes of it. Under the bed. The floorboards. It was bursting out of the walls.

Did she really love the money? I asked.

Yes.

And the life?

Yes.

Are you sure?

Yes.

But she left. She took everything.

That's the risk, he said.

The risk of what?

Marrying a…

He never finished the sentence. His eyes had clouded with tears. He still loved her. He still wanted her. She was his dream girl, his fantasy.

I thought about my wife and my relationship with her. When my wife met Chris she said afterwards, that he was uncomfortable with himself. He was ill at ease. I said that it was because he did not know if he was a dream or not. It was like he was stuck between two dimensions.

For someone whose everyday involved sexual contact with strangers, Chris never talked about sex. I always brought it up. He always avoided it. When he spoke about it he did so without animation, without personality. With a sense of disgust. I had to draw it out of him. He was a magician who was tired of his tricks. But enjoyed an audience. That was his game; sex for pay. The trick was to make the audience want it. Don't give it up too easily. Make the act exclusive, be the prima donna.

He was lying on his bed in a dressing gown. I was sitting at a small desk, typing everything down. He opened his dressing gown revealing white Lycra underpants. That made me really uncomfortable. I didn't want that. I wanted to write.

Not the gay stuff, he said, it won't sell.

Yes, it will. There's a huge market for it. It's kept you well heeled.

He shuffled on his bed. I don't want my mother to read it.

OK, I said, lets go straight.

To be honest, I was relieved, with him lying on his bed, like that. I didn't feel enthusiastic about riding the conveyor belt reality of his hotel homosexual existence.

Who would you like to talk about? I said.

Cheryl.

Who's Cheryl?

She thinks I'm a sexual superman. It's all in her head though.

OK. What do you do with her?

What do you mean? I fuck her. Within an inch of her life.

I waited for more, but he was not forthcoming.

Who's Cheryl? I asked.

A woman in her late forties, early fifties.

Married?

To a gangster. If he knew, he would kill me.

For a moment I saw him in a concrete boot. What does she look like? I asked.

Blonde. Well presented.

Attractive?

In an Essex sort of way.

What's the sex like? I guess if she's married to a gangster she comes to you for something tender.

There's nothing tender about Cheryl. He looked out of the window. When he looked back to me he said, times up. I have to see my lawyer.

He was always rushing out to see his lawyer. A client had got him into trouble. The client would pay him with signed, blank company cheques. The client said that the company was his. Chris would then pass off the cheques as his own. The client bought an antique leather dentist's chair with company money so that Chris could do things to him on it. The chair gave me the creeps. It was aged in pain. The company that the client worked for made decorative tree lights, they only thing they wanted to tie up were angels on christmas trees. They did not need a dentist's chair. That is how they were caught. The police thought that Chris and his client were in cahoots. Chris always denied this. The police thought it was fishy that Chris would pass the cheques on when he needed to pay for things himself like when he had a ball pool installed in his loft. The police wanted to put him behind bars. The whole thing put Chris on edge. He gave me a full copy of the court files on a USB stick. The USB had a lot of other material on it. Secret stuff. It put me on edge. I could have got into a lot of trouble for possessing them. I did get thrown out of court during his first trial. They thought that I had court notes in my bag. The police wanted to come round my house and search it. They said that if they wanted they could take my computers away. I wouldn't be able to work. If Chris lost the case that would also be the end of the book because no one would publish it; I didn't want to think about that.

OK, I said, closing my my laptop. I'll write Cheryl up tonight. When I left I walked my usual route to the tube station. I kept looking over my shoulder. I felt like I was being followed. I thought the police were after me. Then I thought that people were just looking at me because they wanted to do things to me. I walked past the Garrick Gentleman's Club. Men in dapper suits. Young men, old men. I saw them on all fours. Eating toilet brushes. I saw Chris going down on them.

I watched a woman get out of a cab and cross to a door and ring the bell. She was in her early fifties. I have no idea what she was wearing, I saw her naked, going up to fuck Chris.

That night I replaced Chris with me and thought about that woman when I looked at my wife. When my wife went to bed I sat down to write.

When I had finished dawn was breaking. I was pleased with it. I'd got off on it. I had really put myself in there. I had made a lot of it up, but that was the way that the book seemed to working. I was excited.

Yeah, that's good, he said. I don't like the 'positively vice like' bit. Can you change it?

What to?

I don't know. I just don't like it. It's not something I would say.

I bit my lip and changed the subject. I think we have enough to show to an agent.

He didn't say anything.

Why don't I send it out?

He frowned. It might be a good idea.

Why do I sense that you're none-too-keen?

He thought for a moment. I don't know, it's just it's my story. If you send it out, then it's your work.

It's your life. It'll have your name on it, not mine.

He took a breath.

Would you rather send it out? I asked.

He thought for a moment. No, no, I think it's fine for you to do it, you know what you're doing.

The next day he made me sign a confidentiality agreement. It came out of the blue. I thought that he trusted me. I signed because after six months working I was broke. My wife was pushing me to find a proper job. I needed to get the book into the market place to see if it would sell. I didn't sign with my blood. I used a cheap biro. Black. That afternoon I emailed what I had written to a handful of agents. Within half an hour I got a call, then another one and another. One agent wanted to sign us on the spot. He was also interested in what else I was writing. Chris said no. He wanted to shop around. He started to see some other agents. They buttered up his ego, told him his writing was stunning, his story amazing. Two days later I got a call from an agent, the kind of agent who can make you millions.

Before I knew it I was shaking her hand and looking into her high definition eyes reflecting the colours of the books that populated her office, like multicoloured sweets, a Hansel and Gretel literary honey trap. It was the way she said, you're going to make a lot of money.

Money, money, money.

I fall for it every time.

Chris and I were separated and taken into different rooms.

You write, said the agent, as if you are capturing him talking. Are you writing to dictation?

No, I said. He tells me things and then I go away and turn them into stories.

Turn them?

Yes.

You make it up?

No. Yes. Sometimes. I dramatise. What he tells me is just raw material.

Well, we love what you've done, said the agent. That bit about Cheryl's vagina being vice like, that's brilliant. Did he say that?

I shrugged my shoulders trying to look modest.

What angle would you say you have?

Angle? I just capture him and make it interesting.

You must have an angle.

Not really.

And what's it like to work with him?

I want to say, I don't like him. I don't think the man has a soul. He'll do anything for money. Anything. I have never done that. Never. For me the work is important, doing it well. Creating the art. For him it's the money.

He's a nice guy, I told her.

Good, she said, good. It all played out to cue, each line played to perfection.

Over Christmas I wrote the book proposal. The Agent said, this work you sent me isn't him. So I re-wrote. I learnt that Chris had been signed.

Chris would phone at all times of the day and night, with suggestions and re-writes. The re-writes were awful. He wanted to write a holistic 'how to' book. I kept asking for a contract. No contract came. I sent angry emails. I should have just stopped writing. But I didn't because I had come too far. I needed a pay off. And the advance. I needed the advance. There was no money coming in. I was penniless. I wrote a massive amount of words over that Christmas. I argued some more with the agent. I carried on. I made the deadline. I made it. It was sent to publishers. Everyone gave me a pat on the back.

The publisher said, a woman should write this. And take out the gay stuff. Chris phoned; he had no alternative but to go with their advice. He had to go where the money was.

Now I'm standing in the low-light epilogue of Chris's stairwell.

Is that it? he asked.

No. I delved into my pocket and pulled out that USB disc drive of secret stuff. The stuff that could get him thrown into prison.

You don't have any copies?

Why would I do that?

He raised his eyebrows.

No, I'm finished with this, I said.

OK.

Right.

He held out his hand for me to shake it. No hard feelings, he said.

I thought, I have spent six months working on this. I took on your thoughts and feelings and ran them through me. Put them on me. I worked and worked and my work has got you in the door of a top agent and now you shaft me.

Yeah, sure, I said. No hard feelings.

Oh, I forget, he said, pulling out of his back pocket a copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

I'd mentioned one of the poems during an interview. He had never heard of Blake. There were no books in his flat, apart from carefully hidden ones about being on the game and a hustler handbook. There was no music either. Just that ancient black leather dentist's chair which always gave me the shivers, and a fossil, a trilobite. He had a BA in history and an MA. He had managed to gain an education without the aid of books. His MA, he boasted, was written by a client, who'd also paid for him to do it, both the course and the fucking.

I gave that to you, I said.

I don't want it. I told you I don't read.

How can a man not read and claim to work on a book, I thought? Bin it, I said. Or burn it.

Burn it?

Yeah, it's just words on a page, they don't mean anything to you and I don't want them back. If you don't want to burn them, give them to a client. They might appreciate it. You'll get a tip.

He was determined that I should take it back. He was making a clean break. I had called him a cunt on the phone. I probably threatened to kill him, although I don't remember. I said things in the heat of the moment and, if I'd said them, and I probably did, I meant every word. But I am not a killer. I wouldn't know where to start with killing a man. I did fantasise about it. But always at the moment he gave up the ghost I felt empty. I wanted to stand him up and kill him again. And he would stand up and tell me that it was fine, he would do anything if the price was right. The fucker had me. I couldn't even have an innocent fantasy without him warping into it.

I took the book back. I saved it from him. I couldn't bear to leave it, whatever I had said. Blake is Blake. A devout man who, if aware of where his words had been, would weep like Samson held captive by a Philistine. Which is what Chris was. A Philistine. Blake would have hated what I hated and I hated the fact that he didn't read, didn't listen to music, claimed he knew history though knew nothing beyond the trilobite. He wasn't interested in culture in any way. He was the same with people's feelings, and I hated that too. His talent was that he could limpet into people's minds and make them do whatever he wanted. His other talent was making money. For himself. He made the client cum quick and fit three more clients into the hour. A good whore, he would say, is the one with the most money.

Money, money, money; it's always escaped me.

Right, I'd better be off, I said.

He nodded.

That costume, I said, you look ridiculous.

He nodded.

I opened the front door wide and the daylight flooded in. Chris didn't have time to find a shadow and hide. We were caught there, framed in the doorway on a busy Covent Garden lunchtime. I stepped out without looking back. The door on his world closed. I wasn't aware of him pushing it to. It just shut. With a soft click.

Another 5***** On GoodReads for Heaven Sent

*****"Xavier Leret is an accomplished author of screenplays and short stories; "Heaven Sent" is his debut novel. Leret displays a deftness with language and dialect that leaves the reader feeling eerily connected with the teenaged protagonists, who feel severed from the society in which they live.

Young Carlo struggles against his parents' unrealistic expectations and the crushing weight of their religious fanaticism. Carlo is a "good" boy with a bright future, but he finds himself irresistibly attracted to Daisy, a young prostitute who does what she must to survive.

"Heaven Sent" addresses themes of class, morality and judgement, as Carlo and Daisy fall into love and iniquity. This is a gripping, fast-paced read that will keep you guessing until the final scene plays out." Majorie on GoodReads

Check out the review here

Another 5 ***** or in this case Ratties for Heaven Sent

"A heartbreaking, beautiful, romantic story, if you ever find the same love that these main characters have keep it!"

Check out the whole review at mybookaddiction

And I'm interviewed on mybookaddiction too.

 

I've been interviewed by Top Author Steve Emmett

I've been interviewed by the up and coming new horror fiction star Steve Emmett. You can find the interview here.

I can't believe it – another ***** amazing review!

*****"Mix together Romeo and Juliette with Bonnie and Clyde and throw them into J.D Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and you'll get an explosive, brilliant and breath taking novel: Heaven Sent, by debut author Xavier Leret." evie-bookish Read the rest of the review here.

Keep an eye out on Evie's site as she will be interviewing me next week, I am also writing a guest post for this week. And, as if there could be no more – she'll be holding a giveaway of Heaven Sent – what could be better?

Other news, I'm just putting the finishing touches to some questions that electric author Steve Emmett has thrown my way – so keep an eye out on his site too – (check out the video of the Canadian ex minister of defense too). I will of course make announcements here. 

Finally you can buy Heaven Sent here. Go Get!

An Incredible review for Heaven Sent by Steve Emmett *****"a work of genius"

***** Heaven Sent is a self-published book by debut author Xavier Leret. When I started to read it I was ready for the disappointment that all too regularly accompanies the foray into self-published books. I could not have been more wrong.

In his telling of the story of Carlo and Daisy, two young people from opposite sides of the tracks, Leret lays bare many of our prejudices. With great skill he subtly tackles the damage which over-zealous religious beliefs cause to the lives of the innocent every day, and how the results are the direct opposite of what is intended. I was reminded of the legionary making that final wound in Christ's side, forever a weeping hole in the doctrine of The Church. He draws his bow across the strings of child abuse and prostitution with all the sensitivity of a great violinist, the music rendering us weak and drawing tears to the rims of our eyes.

It is not an easy read. If your book library consists of Jeffrey Archer and Stephenie Meyer you may not like Heaven Sent. Leret has opted to write Daisy's heavy Bristolian accent literally and it takes some getting used to. And there are typos that a good edit would resolve. But none of these should stop you reading it and appreciating it for what it is: a work of genius.

 

And here's the review on Amazon – don't it look purty!!!

An Incredible review for Heaven Sent by Steve Emmett

***** Heaven Sent is a self-published book by debut author Xavier Leret. When I started to read it I was ready for the disappointment that all too regularly accompanies the foray into self-published books. I could not have been more wrong.

In his telling of the story of Carlo and Daisy, two young people from opposite sides of the tracks, Leret lays bare many of our prejudices. With great skill he subtly tackles the damage which over-zealous religious beliefs cause to the lives of the innocent every day, and how the results are the direct opposite of what is intended. I was reminded of the legionary making that final wound in Christ's side, forever a weeping hole in the doctrine of The Church. He draws his bow across the strings of child abuse and prostitution with all the sensitivity of a great violinist, the music rendering us weak and drawing tears to the rims of our eyes.

It is not an easy read. If your book library consists of Jeffrey Archer and Stephenie Meyer you may not like Heaven Sent. Leret has opted to write Daisy's heavy Bristolian accent literally and it takes some getting used to. And there are typos that a good edit would resolve. But none of these should stop you reading it and appreciating it for what it is: a work of genius.

 

And here's the review on Amazon – don't it look purty!!!