Andrew Shanahan's Blog, page 5

Let me send you a copy of my new story “ad astra”

I’ve been trying to challenge myself to write more short stories this year. Alongside completing Flesh and Blood, the sequel to Before and After, I’ve also released In the Room and now I’ve got ad astra ready to roll.

ad astra, yes I did that design myself

ad astra was written for Jodrell Bank Observatory, a radio telescope that is very close to where I live and close to my heart. In my mind it’s one of the most inspiring places on earth and if you ever want someone to talk at you for 60 minutes then just ask me what I think about JBO. I wanted to give something back and they were kind enough to assist me in answering lots of questions about observing the universe and the destruction of the world. Don’t ask me why everything with me always comes back to the destruction of the world. It just does. So ad astra concerns the very first and very last SETI messages ever received by humans. It very much feels like the first part of something, but I’m wrestling currently with what that might be.

In terms of publishing I’m trying something new for this short story, namely, I’m giving it away for free. Every copy also comes with a unique 1/1 artwork created by me (digitally, because I can’t paint for toffee). This story and artwork is available as an NFT* and the idea is that owners will sell and trade the works and generate a revenue for themselves and me. It could all go to shite, but that’s ok. My friend Jeff Rosenstock taught me that it’s important to keep fucking things up.**

If you would like a copy then you’ll just need to let me know your ETH address. Reply to this email, add a comment below, write it on a rock and throw it through my bedroom window. It’s comically easy to set up an ETH address. Basically, you set up Metamask on Chrome and that’s it. Here’s a really simple link: https://medium.com/…/guide-how-to-setup-metamask… All you need to do is post your ETH address and I’ll send you a copy. It’s free. You’re safe. It’s all good, NFTs are insanely valuable, this is your ticket to retirement.

*It’s minted on the Polygon network, so if you’ve heard that NFTs are about to explode the world with electricity usage then please read up on this first.

**Full disclosure, I don’t know Jeff, but he has chatted to me on Twitter a couple of times and I’m absolutely going to parlay that into a friendship and stalk him at Manchester Punk fest.

New short story “In The Room” Released Today

I have a new short story out today. It’s called In The Room and it’s a fun slice of weirdness. It’s also only 0.99, so it’s a bit of a bargain too (AMAZON UK and AMAZON US) You can also read it for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited type. Perhaps most strange of all is that it features recurring themes from Before and After:

One-legged protagonist

Dog

Living in a flat

Jodrell Bank tea towel

Birds breaking their necks by flying into windows (ok, that’s a new one)

At this point I’m not even sure a psychologist would bother analysing me. I think they’d just stun me and shoot me full of benzodiazepines.

Feel free to grab a copy (AMAZON UK and AMAZON US) to keep you amused during your next toilet break. I’d love to know what you think about it too, so if you’re a fan then add a comment or send me an email.

I’m also looking at doing more short stories in the coming months, so what do you think about that?

I Will Literarily Kill You

I’m well into the sequel for Before and After now and after a few bumps in the road it’s going great. However, I’ve noticed that one thing in particular tends to slow me down and that’s naming incidental characters.

It’s such a dumb thing that sometimes people don’t believe that I struggle with this. However, there’s such a lot of information and sentiment coded in names that if you choose the wrong one it can ruin a whole section, or it does for me anyway.

Consequently, I tend to go back and forth on what people should be called. The other day I spent ages deciding that a character would be called Guy Garvey, only to subsequently realise that the reason this had a fuzzy, warm feeling to it is because he’s the lead singer of Elbow.

See! It’s tough!

Anyway, my solution is to see if you will let me literarily kill you. You submit your name, I use the big long list of willing victims and just pick one that seems right. Plus you get a cameo (almost certainly as a dead body) to show your mates.

www.iwillliterarilykillyou.com is where you need to go if you fancy being a victim.

Guy bloody Garvey FFS.

Before And After Is Coming To The Silver Screen

Typing that post title out it’s just struck me how surreal this is. Let me restate it and maybe it will seem less odd: my book, Before and After is off to Hollywood. People: our friends Ben and Brown are going to LA.

Nope, it’s still very odd.

Let me rewind. How did this happen? About five months ago I got an email from a man called David. It was a polite email introducing himself and his impeccable writing credentials (he’s worked with Rob Reiner! Yes, Rob Reiner!). Ok, hi – how can I help? It seems he read Before and After, loved it and wanted to option it so that he could make a film from it. Ok, sure?

So we talked. He seems like a great guy. He’s adapted books into films before. He’s worked on series for NBC. He’s written series for Amazon. He’s got lots of experience. We talked through the book and what he thought about it and how he saw it being adapted. It was really apparent from the get-go that he had the right heart to tell Ben’s story on screen. So, cor blimey, he’s going to do it.

The paperwork was all signed last week and the announcement will be going out tomorrow. That means that from tonight the arguments can begin: who should play Ben? More to the point, who has the range to play Brown?

Bonus news: I’ve started writing the sequel, first draft will be done by April 1st.

Two more interviews

I’ve been chatting with more fine folk and if you want to have a listen then you can find the interviews here.

First up was an interview that I did with Mysterious Goings On podcast supremo Alex Greenwood. This was a fun one as we had an interesting chat which ran across a whole gamut of topics, including advice for new writers.

Next up, I chatted with Andy from Spoken Label, who do a whole heap of great things supporting creativity and writing in Manchester, Gawd bless ’em.

You can also get the Spoken Label pod on Apple, Pocketcast, Youtube, Radiopublic, Castbox, Listennotes, Bullhorn, Podcastaddict, Podbean, Himalaya, Podbay, Amazon, Tunein, Anchor and Spotify!

You are officially up-to-date with all Shanahan related news. I’m hoping to have two more posts up before Christmas with 1) BIG NEWS and 2) SOME WRITING FOR YOU.

Best get back to it then. As you were.

Podcasts, Ramblechats and Interviews

I’ve not been neglecting Before and After while I’ve been writing my next book. I’ve been doing quite a lot of podcasts and interviews, where I ramble at length about the book, my brilliance and what Shanafans can expect next. I’m going to round up some of the posts in this post so you can listen (or not) as you see fit.

Reading in Bed is a podcast where Amanda Steel records extracts of her reading from various books she’s enjoyed. She kindly read from Before and After and did a great job. You can find her reading below and her website here.

Next up I spoke to Eric Eskenazi who runs the excellent Erratic Dispatches podcast. It was fun speaking to someone from America about the book and getting a different perspective on it from that point of view. This one is 58 minutes of me chatting, so if you’re really finding it hard to sleep then this is the one for you.

I also spoke to BBC Lancashire about being a writer in the North and what it was like releasing a book about being trapped at home during a pandemic (spoiler: it’s a fun challenge!)

I’ve done another couple of interviews recently and I’ll add them to the blog when they go live. In other news, I’m experimenting with taking a break from social media as it seems to be sucking my time into a vortex of self-recrimination and Trump Derangement Syndrome and I need some fresh air. Consequently, I might just make some more time for blogging and further ramblechats. You lucky things…

Short Story – Vic is not having a good September

Recent seasonal factors reminded me to put this story back up on the blog. Hope you enjoy it.

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Vic Is Not Having A Good September

Vic stops for a Cadbury’s Boost. He had seven lagers earlier so it’s time he thought about food. There’s something about that layer of a Boost just under the chocolate, it’s this sort of caramel and biscuit mash. It’s beyond sweet. It makes your mouth ache. That’s the real stuff. That’s what Vic wants. He’s never really had much of a sweet tooth, but just recently he’s become obsessed. It could be to do with trauma. It could just be because Boosts are nice and Vic never realised. Sometimes he finds that even as he’s started eating, he’s thinking of what he’ll eat next. Vic used to be focused, but these days he’s more flighty. It’s the thoughts that do that. He realises he can’t be doing with the Boost after all, so he moves on.

It’s early afternoon. Got to keep moving, that’s the thing now for Vic. Onwards. Upwards. That way. Through a door. In the atrium of a library. Into a car. Push on. Maybe that’s why the hunger is there. Maybe the hunger is fuelling the movement and the movement creates the hunger. Is that what it is, wonders Vic – but the answer and eventually the question gets lost in lager. The aim with moving is to reach that point where everything peripheral blurs and your brain can only worry about what’s coming directly towards you. It’s a form of focus when that background buzz eventually goes away, it’s probably something motorcyclists understand, thinks Vic.

Vic is in a pub. The late Summer evening sun is weak in the sky and there’s a big smash of pink clouds. Be nice again tomorrow, Vic thinks. He’s at the back of the beer garden. Not hiding, but not advertising his presence. He drinks lager. He drinks lots of lager. He’s spent a lot of time quietly contemplating the meniscus of lager, how you can almost sense from the curvature of the top of the pint that the liquid would return to being droplets if given its freedom. Vic likes to drink a proper lager with the head all frothy and white but somehow his lager always seems flat. Why is the pint nearly always gone too? Cider tastes better, but it comes in those stupid bottles, whereas lager is in those welcoming pint glasses. So it’s lager; lager is the thing. Vic drinks lager. It’s good and it’s strong. Sometimes if you have lager you don’t even have to keep moving to get the thoughts gone.

This is his sixth lager in this pub. He’ll get kicked out soon. Moved on. Don’t want you or your sort around here. Vic gets angry when he hears that. What’s wrong with him? What’s my “sort” anyway? That’s usually when it gets violent. Vic doesn’t think of the violence, never has. It’s just a fact; something that happens. He doesn’t get scared, he couldn’t care if it’s the biggest bloke in the world, some total Jason with tattoos and stubbled head, or some flappy woman screaming at him – he’ll have a dig at any of them. To be fair he doesn’t usually start it and he often loses and is forced to tactically retreat, but he’s seen more than a few off over the years.

Look at that big pink fucking sky, Vic thinks – it’s the lager that’s thinking now – I’m going to get up there and fight that sky. What a stupid drunk thought. What a pointless fighty thought. Vic moves on and finds another pub.

It’s morning and Vic doesn’t know where he is. Don’t think he slept much, but he stopped moving for a bit and the thoughts weren’t at him. That’s perhaps the best Vic can hope for now. He’s wandering round this house wondering who it belongs to. Not many photos on the wall, it’s all art and cobwebs in the corners. Trying to remember how he got in. It was late, or early. Maybe it was days ago. He’s not going to wait around now he’s up anyway. All the doors are shut up, so eventually he tries the bathroom and finds he can get out of the big window. Then he’s off and away and suddenly starving. Vic used to be one of those who would have protein for breakfast – sensible meals, sensible portions, plenty of exercise – there didn’t use to be a scrap of fat on him. He’s not fat now, he just feels like he’s losing definition. He wonders sometimes if this will be what kills him. Not violence or illness, but a gradual Gaussian blurring until he stops being recognisably him. Keep going for now.

Vic is in a pub. He’s in the back room of some dim and bad jukebox pub that smells of bleach. There was this blue-purple light in one of the other rooms that gave him a banging headache, so he’s come back here. He’s got lager and the thoughts are going now. He watches them recede as the lager does what it should. He risks a look at her, she’s still bright in his memory. She was everything to Vic. He knew that she was bigger and more than him. Everyone knew she was out of his league, but it worked. Vic didn’t even mind the others. Well, not much. Vic didn’t have much education, a number of schools made it clear that they didn’t want him there, but in her he found his purpose. His family had always been on at him about getting a trade, but it was only when he was with her that he knew what he was meant to do. Yeah, well, it didn’t last. The home, the family, the everything – it didn’t last. Bigger and more. Bigger and more lager.

Wooooh, Vic is seriously flying now. It’s lunchtime and he’s twelve lagers in. Shit. Time and place are fractured. Maybe his leg as well. It certainly hurts. There was a lorry that nearly hit him and a central reservation. Something then a roundabout. He was on a big field and a blue slushy ice drink. There was an awful smell and coughing. This family wouldn’t let him share their picnic, what are they getting so fussy about? Did you lose your home? Who do you know that died recently? Stupid fucking picnic! Stupid fucking tablecloth! It’s a fucking council park, if you want tablecloths then fuck off to a field of wheat with your tablecloths and your crying kids. Did he fight the children? Yes. Both of them. Ha! Their little faces all red and puffy and shouting. He left. He noticed the family packing up their picnic stuff as he left the park. We’ll call that one a draw, thinks Vic. Lager!

It’s night and Vic is inside again. He doesn’t care where he is. It’s a room, like other rooms. Vic can’t sleep and there’s no lager here, so he has to sit with the thoughts. Some of the deaths come back to him. Friends. Family. Vic has known murder. He’s never murdered, but he’s known it. One time he saw the insides of – he pushes that thought away and hopes it won’t complete itself. Down and away. He can’t have lager and the terror of 4 a.m. sobriety is reaching out for him, so he has to have movement. Vic bumbles around the rooms. It feels so repetitive, like he’s banging his head against a wall, maybe that would help him sleep? He tries banging his forehead into the wall, but it doesn’t help. Sleep can’t find him, so the thoughts do.

Sunrise comes. Vic feels that it’s his last day. Can’t say why. Perhaps dying is a choice. Perhaps it’s simply an awareness that has come to him – a gift from the universe to allow him some perspective at the last. Vic decides to take the universe’s gift back and exchange it for lager. Vic finds lager. Three pubs in quick succession. Thrown out of the first two for violent behaviour. He leaves the third one because he wants to find a fourth. What sort of reason is that for leaving a pub? Stupid. Vic’s thoughts are all lager and death. He thinks of her. She was my Queen, is his thought. It was an honour to serve you. He drinks lager in her memory.

Vic looks out of the window and realises with a slow surprise that he’s not far from what was his home. It will be empty now, but he could stop by if he wanted after the pub. From the window he can see the trees he used to play in. The trees bulge outwards and suck inwards as his back is crushed. The air whooshes out of his trachea and sacs. Four of his legs snap as he is pressed against the window with a magazine. Vic hears a too loud splitting noise in his head. His thoughts goo out. His vision blurs and the last thing he sees is the magazine’s pressure pushing the pattern of his wing against the window. Vic is not having a good September.

************

This is a story I wrote because I’m trying to see the good in wasps. I’ve been stung twice this summer and I realised that it’s really no worse than a nettle sting, so all of the flapping and hysterical flicking I’ve been doing for years was rather silly. I hope that wasps will acknowledge this magnanimous artistic gesture and leave me alone the next time I’m eating a Calippo on the beach.

I trust that all good-hearted entomologists will forgive the poetic licence I’ve used in the story around the true nature of wasps. Perhaps most egregious is that adult wasps don’t actually eat solid foods – they use their mandibles to tear up prey which they then feed to the wasp larvae. The larvae then emit a sweet secretion which the adults eat.

That’s revolting isn’t it? Wasps really don’t help their PR cause with such grotesque behaviour.

I danced around that fact in the first paragraph by having Vic alight on a Boost but not actually eat it. I did however manage to edit the story in time to change my mistake that male wasps don’t have stingers, who knew? Certainly not me.

My thanks to Kate Feld, John Ossoway, Yolander Yeo and Emma Shanahan for early draft feedback and suggestions.

If you liked this story then I’d love it if you would share it but please no spoilers about the sting in the tale (unlol).

Listen to Before and After For Free!

Earlier this week I was contacted by a Manchester radio station who wondered if I might be interested in reading Before and After for them to broadcast. I ummed and ahhed because recording good quality audio is opening a Pandora’s box of niggles, hissing, pops and flubs.

After thirty seconds it appeared that my legs were walking me to the office and my hands were opening the Easy Voice Recorder app on my phone. 45 minutes later I’d recorded the first chapter. Given that this is one take I’m inordinately pleased with it. That is until I start listening to all the niggles, hissing, pops and flubs.

Anyway, I present it hear for you in case you fancy some listening material. I’m still available for readings and I’ve now done a few chats with book clubs who selected Before and After and I’m always pleased by how open those discussions are. It would be a bit embarrassing if everyone was just saying they liked the book because I was there. As it stands it’s clear that everyone is very happy to say what they do and don’t like – much as it should be.

Enough – pin back your lugholes and cop this:

Quick work update: hard at work still promoting Before and After and The Bossy Book. I have also finished the first draft of 232 Miles Of… the novel that’s set on the M6. There’s lots of good things in there but it’s still a bit raw and could probably do with five years in an oak barrel. I’ve now started work on a very dark tale of ghosts, fatherhood and medical-grade psychedelic drugs. Hoping to have draft #1 done by year’s end.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the first chapter.

Starter for Ten w/c 9-3-2020

Starter for Ten is a daily writing exercise where the aim is simply to write for a full 10 minutes. No editing or revision is allowed after the 10 minutes is up and blank pages are not allowed – if all else fails type out song lyrics. The aim is to try new things, experiment with voices and styles and be bold!

Suckage often occurs. I have no idea what Friday’s is all about, please don’t phone the authorities.

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MONDAY

It’s like being dragged unconscious from the sea. As you’re
jostled around strange pressures and pains radiate out. Then as your awareness
returns you realise that it’s a localised pain and that you just need to empty
your bladder. There is a minimum period of at least three minutes, during which
you wonder, nay hope, that you can ignore it and just return to the depths of
the dream from which you were pulled. Of course, you can’t, but it doesn’t mean
you can’t contemplate how wonderful it would be.

Your legs shift out of the bed and into the cold, away from
the amniotic warmth of your nest. If it were done, then it were as well it were
done quickly. So you stand, rather quickly and feel your balance struggle to
adapt to the sudden change in position. The black bees of consciousness flit,
but the room is dark and you stand and breathe and soon they disappear. You
stalk your way across the bedroom, a dropped pullover would gladly ensnare your
leg and make you trip but you are awake now and swiftly guide your feet around
it. Your recalculated route accidentally takes in the foot of the bed which
produces a crunch of a toe and sees you stifle a cry as you consider how broken
the bone must be – fractured into dust probably.

Your bladder pain saves you and you hobble onwards to the
toilet. Once again you marvel at the brilliance of the low wattage, movement
sensor light which is triggered by your arrival in the bathroom. It emits a
dull, fudgy light, enough to see by, but not enough to scar the retinas. You
lift the seat and urinate. Approximately an hour passes. You lower the seat and
waft your hands under the tap, arguing internally that it’s too early for germs
and Bear Grylls once said that all urine was sterile. Not that you’d take an
affinity for urine as far as him.

You plot your way back to the bed, moving with the
exaggerated motion of a pantomime villain sneaking up on the hero. The bed
creaks as you lower yourself back in and chase after the ghost of the warmth –
cursing your stupidity at not replacing the duvet and letting those precious
molecules of warmth out into the bedroom.

You check the time. It’s 2.03AM. The house is quiet. You
have plenty of time left for sleep. You snuggle and wiggle into the bed,
stretching limbs and cuddling pillows into comforting shapes. You breathe
calmly, your bladder is calm and the throbbing in your toe has subsided into a
distant warmth. Your mind drifts into the ether, but you find it is anchored to
consciousness by the thought of Bear Grylls talking about urine. Your mind
turns this over. Pointlessly. To no good purpose. You look at the clock and it
is 4.55AM.

TUESDAY

The weird thing about it was that it looked a little bit
like a purse. Not that it’s unusual to see a man carrying a purse, but it was
the combination of that and the way that he looked as he got out of the car
that drew my attention. He was a tall man and he looked willowy and tired. He
looked exhausted. His face was a pale grey but his metal-rimmed glasses
couldn’t obscure that his eyes were red. Not like he’d been crying – more like
he was working through the final reserves of energy before total collapse. I
think I felt sorry for him.

Anyway, he sort of unfolded himself from the car and as he
did so his purse swung out and tapped the car next to him. This car park is a
nightmare – it’d be fine if everyone drove clown cars, but everyone’s got these
four by fours and everyone is always just on the line or a little bit over, so
in the end if you get the last spot you’re often better getting out of the
sunroof. I noticed because I was still waiting for himself to get back from the
shop and I was watching in the rear view for anyone coming out of the shop.

At first I thought he was just feeling bad about tapping the
car – although as I say I don’t think there was anything he could have done
about it. But his eyes didn’t look sorry, and he didn’t make a sort of guilty
face like I would have done, but his eyes just went wide. Bigger than the rims
of his glasses almost and he held this purse with both hands to steady it. It
was black leather with a white clip on the front and it seemed expensive. Don’t
know why, maybe it was the way he was treating it. And then he slowly pulls
this purse next to his ear and just listened for about ten seconds. Well, that
was weird. So I turned around in my seat so I could get a better look and
that’s when he noticed me.

He was still listening to his purse but he noticed me
turning around and looking at him. Then he seemed to make his mind up and he
squeezed between the car and what was weird is that he never shut the door. He
just carefully placed the purse down at the back of the car and then he ran.
Straight into the shop, didn’t look back, just head down and sprinted.

So, what do you think’s in it?

WEDNESDAY

“So you know what Tantric Sex is right?”

“It’s that weird shagging that Sting does isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sort of, it’s about achieving a sexual union with a
partner through all of the available energy channels of the body and mind,
rather than it just being about hiding the sausage.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“I watched a YouTube thing on it.”

“YouPorn more like.”

“Shut up, that’s not the point. This isn’t about sex. I
think this could be a big idea.”

“How big?”

“Massive.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Shut up Mark, this isn’t about shagging!”

“So what is it about?”

“Goalkeeping.”

“Come again.”

“Goalkeeping. Or more to the point Tantric Goalkeeping.”

“Riiiiiight. You know the FA are thinking of banning heading
– I think it’s too late for you.”

“No, listen. This season do you know what our goal
difference is?”

“I think mathematics has lost the ability to express just
how poor our goal difference is.”

“Exactly. For accuracy it’s scored – 48 and against – 339.
To give us a goal difference of minus 291.”

“Shit the bed that’s awful.”

“It’s a useful metric though because it tells us what our
problem is – we’re scoring all right but we’re shipping way too many goals.”

“Aye, 339 of them.”

“Now, it’s not all Olly’s fault. He’s had that thing with
his contact lenses and the defence aren’t really helping him out, but that’s
where I think tantric goalkeeping could help out.”

“Ok, it sounds like bollocks, but I’ve got nothing else to
listen to, so I’ll indulge you. What the fuck is tantric goalkeeping?”

“It’s a holistic system of goalkeeping that involves a
physical and spiritual union between Olly, the back four, the ball and the
opponent’s attackers.”

“I was with you right up until the bit where you started
talking. What is tantric goalkeeping?”

“Olly needs to try and unify with the universe and see that it’s
not about him stopping the ball. It’s about him forgiving the ball. It’s about
him being the ball.”

“Right, right. And in practice how does that work?”

“He needs to start hugging the ball.”

THURSDAY

We had the bear for 48 hours. Two days, two nights. It was enough.

I personally blame Beverly Instagram, that’s not her real
name, but everything she does gets filtered through that bloody site and
consumed by a ridiculous number of followers who all fawn over the lifestyle
she presents. They had the bear for the same length of time and naturally
turned his stay into an outrageous lifestyle brag. The bear went shopping for
diamonds and got a small diamond stud bracelet which it came back to school
with in his little blue backpack. The bear had a Michelin star meal. The bear
watched a football match from a padded, leather seat, safely enclosed from the
standard fans in the rain.

In every image she’d dressed the setting perfectly so that
the bear looked smart and desirable. Say what you like about the woman, but
anyone who can make you jealous of a bear has some kind of genius. The school
mums’ WhatsApp group cooed appreciatively and said, “Lucky bear!” and “Wish I
was him!”, but on all the sub-groups that existed under the main school group
minus the insufferables we shared our real feelings. Kim said: “Fuck me ragged,
can’t she get enough of showing off what she’s doing. I’d love to know what
really went on.” And I couldn’t help but think, yeah – me too.

Sam told me we had the bear a week before he arrived. That
gave me just five days to plan. I bought the equipment from a part of the
internet that you’d need a decent VPN even just to think about. I paid double
for speedy delivery and was relieved when an anonymous brown box turned up in
our parcel storage box within two days. I felt nervous as I unboxed it. Was
this insane? Was it illegal? I thought back through how it could be traced back
to me. It would broadcast the signals to a fixed IP which you could only access
if you had the password, and I wasn’t linked to any of the technology or the
website. It was untraceable.

When the bear came to stay at ours he did normal stuff. We
went for a walk and there was a photo of him riding on my Sam’s shoulders, she
was laughing as he covered her eyes. We went for a swim and he sat on the side
wearing goggles, wrapped in a towel. He had a curry. I posted the photos to the
WhatsApp group and laughed about how it was a bit of a step down from the time
he’d spent with Beverly Instagram. The group laughed and said it looked like a
fun time.

It was fun. Especially unstitching him and fastening the tiny microphone behind one eye and the camera behind the other. After I carefully re-stitched him you couldn’t feel any unusual bumps or lumps. And on his last day with us I checked the signal. He was broadcasting perfectly. I wonder what this bear will really see and hear when his hosts aren’t aware he’s watching. Let’s see.  

FRIDAY

The smell of onions frying rises from the pan and slowly atomises its way through the floorboards, plasterwork and paint and reaches the nostrils of Karen as she lies on the floor. There is just enough brain activity that she drools and it moistens the corner of her mouth and runs up her cheek. It builds into a pool and the weight of saliva reaches critical mass and a string forms between her cheek and the floor.

The spider scuttles around the droplet and follows the outline of this shape on the floor. It traces the profile of Karen’s nose, forehead and browline and across the spill of brown hair on the floor. It also creeps around the pool of sticky red blood that rises from her head like a thought bubble. It changes tack and walks into the gap under the dishwasher.

The sound of the onions fritzing in the pan is faintly audible. The louder noise is the singing. It’s from The Muppets. Manah Manah. Doo doo dee doo doo. Manah Manah doo doo doo doo. Karen’s eyes are blank but even so they register the frog sitting on the kitchen bin. Manah manah doo doo dee doo doo. Manah Man-

Book Club Discussion Topics for Before and After

WARNING: As you might expect this post contains a number of spoilers for Before and After.

You’d be well-advised to go and read the book first. Or, form a book club, inveigle your way into the presidential position and then insist on all the members reading and enjoying Before and After.

If you don’t belong to a book club and you’d like to drink wine and talk too loudly about Before and After then jump into the comments and say your piece, just remember ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING.

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What songs did the book make you think of? As a bonus, why not add your own tracks to this collaborative Spotify playlist or just have a listen. Some of the tracks were what I was listening to when I wrote the book (especially Alexandra Streliski, John Moreland and The Gloaming) and others have been suggested by readers and book clubs! Add your own!

What do you think the wraths signify in the book? Do you feel any sense of sympathy for them? What do you think caused the change in the world?

How did the style of the book going back and forth in time change your opinion of what was happening?

What genre category should Before and After be in?

Why did Ben have such a problem with his weight and what would have helped him to change?

What do you think happens next?

Some readers have suggested that Brown was a continuation of Anne (Ben’s mum)’s love for Ben – do you agree? If not what was Brown’s role in the book?

Could you imagine staying inside your house for nine years? How would you pass the time?

What was your favourite quote or passage from the book? Did you highlight any passages as you read?

Would you read other books in this genre?

Can you understand the relationship that Ben has with Helen? Why couldn’t Ben face the prospect of moving to America with her?

Did the book give you an insight into the sort of issues that people of Ben’s size face? In 2016 nearly two billion adults in the world were overweight or obese – what could they get from reading Before and After?

What did you think of the ending? If you could have changed one thing about the book what would you change?

Ben says that he prayed for God to save him and he did – what role do you think religion and faith played in the story?

Who should read this book?

What’s your Bourbon biscuit?