Narrelle M. Harris's Blog, page 12

Quintette of Questions: Annie Pateman

Cover photo by Arek Raincuzk from Five Castles Portraits

Today I’m asking Annie Pateman 5 questions about her new book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

The name of the book is The Strength Within – it was my second choice.  My first choice just didn’t sit right (actually, I can’t remember what the title was – quite unmemorable and glad that I changed it) 

The Strength Within came to me and just felt right – I think it creates a curiosity factor for the reader to discover the story and how they can build their own strength within themselves not in the physical sense, but the emotional and mental strength.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast in the film of your life?

This question was asked of me recently. In my early years, Ellen Page – as a young actor I thought her performance in Juno as a pregnant teenager was stunning; how she handled the emotionally charged situation she was in, initially deciding to have an abortion and then changing her mind to go through with the pregnancy and put the baby up for adoption and how she responds to the adults around her. 

For my later  years, Sigrid Thornton, one of the best actors in Australia – love her in everything she does movies, TV, theatre – from The Man from Snowy River to Seachange.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Enthralling,   Riveting  Inspirational, Uplifting, Amazing (these are comments from my readers)

4. Who is your favourite real life team/couple?

I would have to say my daughter Jessica, and son-in-law, Sean, because they have given us two beautiful grandsons.  Even though they live in NSW, they bring me joy and inspire me every day.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

Well actually this decision was made for me – I have a chapter where I talk about meeting my husband and I called him my Knight in Shining armour – one of my readers reviews referred to the song “The Knight in Rusty Armour” by Peter and Gordon.  Which I think is quite apt for that scene.

About The Strength Within

I am a 3 times cancer survivor, about to celebrate my 40th anniversary after diagnosis in 1st April 1980.  This memoir includes my diagnosis and thereafter.

The Strength Within does not dwell on the disease ,but how I overcame it and the strategies I used.  It is a story of overcoming challenges, adversity and building resilience with a dash of humour and the historical events that I lived through, understanding all the while that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, with a message of hope.  It is directed not necessarily to cancer sufferers, but anyone who is facing adversity and challenges.

Buy The Strength Within

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About Anne Pateman

Photo by Arek Raincuzk from Five Castles Portraits

I migrated to Australia as a two and a half year old child with my parents and sister from Paris, France. The Strength Within, a memoir, is my debut book.  It was a slow process taking me 11 years to write and now is available for you to enjoy. 

I am now retired, and in my working life I was an executive assistant; my last workplace was at Monash University. Being a child of the 60’s and 70’s my book covers these eras to some degree with references to the political situations and times that I lived through such as the swinging 60’s and the Vietnam war. The 80’s brings to the table the trauma of being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 26 whilst pregnant and the circumstances surrounding it which changed my life as I knew it and how I dealt with these changes. I am enjoying this new chapter in my life as an author.

Social Media

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So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Cover Reveal: Duo Ex Machina 5 – Little Star

I’m so pleased to reveal to you the cover of the fifth and final novella of the Duo Ex Machina series, Little Star.

Willsin Rowe has designed the covers for each of the novellas, and he’s brought us to the end with this delight.

About Little Star

Families can be thorny, especially when the closet’s full of skeletons. It’s 2019, and Frank and Milo are realising a dream they only recently realised they had – fatherhood. But they’re not only gaining a daughter – they’re inheriting a some serious issues from little Lyra’s extended family. Milo is also discovering his own family history isn’t quite what he’s been told.

Parenthood. Always full of surprises…

Little Star is currently being serialised on my Patreon for supporters from the lowest tier upwards – so if you don’t want to wait until that’s finished, you can pledge your monthly support now for two chapters a month (and more if you pledge at higher levels) and then the finalised ebook on completion.

(As a bonus, if you join my Patreon now, you’ll get the first four novellas as a sign-up reward!)

Quintette of Questions: LA Larkin

Today I’m asking LA Larkin 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

It’s called Prey and it was relatively easy to choose the title because it’s about a brave woman who hunts down a criminal syndicate only to find herself their prey. The title also relates to the main theme of the book.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

Daisy Ridley who played the lead in The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

3. What five words best describe your story?

Tense, secrets, danger, betrayal, feisty

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

Lucifer and Chloe from the TV series Lucifer

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run

About Prey

Olivia Wolfe is a
journalist who travels the world exposing heinous crimes. She has more enemies
that most.

When her anonymous
source is murdered, Wolfe must unravel the terrible secret that connects a
series of gruesome murders. But powerful people want her stopped.

Betrayed and
isolated, Wolfe is hunted by a faceless killer. 
Can she stay alive long enough to expose the shocking truth?

Four murders. Four
countries. One terrible secret.

Buy Prey

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About LA Larkin

Thriller author, L.A. Larkin, has been described by James Phelan as ‘a world-class thriller writer’ and likened to Michael Crichton by The Guardian and Alistair MacLean by The Times.

Her new novel, PREY, reintroduces the feisty and resourceful investigative journalist Olivia Wolfe who was described by Sue Turnbull in The Age as, ‘a new breed of female heroine bounding into the hitherto masculine preserve of the action thriller.’

Social Media 

Website: LA LarkinFacebookTwitter: @lalarkinauthorInstagram: @louisa_larkin_author

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Lockdown Fiction: The Red Shoe Blues

This is another response to a Clan Destine Press writing prompt. The bands referenced in it, Ground Control and 187 Lockdown, are real UK garage bands.

The Red Shoe Blues

When Dave texted, Skinny Mae responded. She should have been
locked in her room, with her ears plugged shut with wax, like her physician
instructed.

But Dave promised her music again, and though she knew she
shouldn’t go, Skinny Mae went.

She found Dave sprawled in a swivel chair, in jeans and
unlaced, sparkly purple high-tops and a net shirt. Louche, lazy, come-hither.
He had one speaker of a high-end set of Bose headphones clamped to his ear.

She tried to repress her desire but, as always, it got the
better of her.

“What you listenin’ to Dave?’

‘Bit o’ garage, yeah?’

 ‘Like, what kind?’

‘UK speed garage,’ he said, grinning. ‘Like, you know, 187
Lockdown, Ground Control, bands like that.’

‘Same mob, different name,’ said Skinny Mae, who knew her
history. The roll call, the beats, the chord progression were still in her
blood. ‘Danny Harrison, yeah? And Julian wassit.’

‘Jonah. Julian Jonah.’

‘The producer. Yeah, but those two ere 187 Lockdown, then
Gant, then Ground Control.  Few more
names after that. Like that Monty Python sketch about Dead Salmon.’

A musical bloodline remembered in her blood, despite
everything.

Dave, the bastard, removed the cushioned speaker from his ear
and held it out to Skinny Mae. ‘Have a taste.’

‘You forget something, Dave?’

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ Dave waggled the headphones at her. ‘You
miss it, but.’

Damnit, she did.

‘If I do this,’ said Skinny Mae out loud, for herself just
as much as Dave, ‘It’ll wake up the infection. Red Shoes will take me over. All
in my blood and body, I won’t hear nothin’ but the music. Won’t speak nothin’
but the song. Won’t move except to dance to it. I’ll live the music till I die
of it.

Some cruel nerd with a vicious sense of irony had cooked up
the infamous Neuro-Aural-Obsession Virus, but those who caught it called it Red
Shoes. It hotwired the brain to take music and drown in it. The whole history
of each song, each genre, each musician, unspooled and colonised that soft grey
matter.

Mae Donnelly, singer, pianist, violinist, had begun half
consumed by the music in her life. Then an incautious tab of E at a
post-Festival rave turned out to be a vector for the Red Shoes Virus and she
became a slave to the rhythm. She’d forgotten to sleep, to drink, to eat for so
long that she nearly died.

Three years in rehab, recovering, learning how to eat
instead of falling under the thrall of music. She emerged with a new moniker
and medical advice that music would never be hers again. It could kill her.

God, she missed it.

‘What a way to go, eh?’ 
wheedled Dave, still holding out the headphones.

Dave had a point. Living without music was only life after a
fashion. Mae had undergone years of retraining so that she even walked without
establishing any kind of rhythm, in case it set off the obsessive pathways
again.

Mae poked in her ear with a finger, dislodged the plug that
blocked out all the music. She put her hand out for the headphones. Pressed the
soft vinyl of one speaker to her ear.

Heard nothing.

Dave’s head was nodding along with an absent beat.

‘Aw, Dave,’ she said sadly. ‘You did it.’

‘I did,’ he confessed, waving his arms in the air like he
just didn’t care. ‘I got the music in me, Mae-by Baby.’

‘It’ll kill you, Dave.’

‘Nah. I’m invincible!’ Dave lurched out his chair, sending
it spinning, and danced, hips gyrating, feet flashing.

Mae couldn’t hear the song in Dave’s neurological pathways,
but the virus in her cells called to her.

Instead of plugging her ears, instead of returning to her
tuneless, heartless life, Skinny Mae took Dave’s hands in hers and began to
dance.

What a way to go.

Quintette of Questions: Jennifer Mackenzie

Today I’m asking Jennifer Mackenzie 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

My book is called Navigable Ink. It came to me quite early in the process of writing the book. It is a poetic image combining the themes of ocean voyaging, of distances travelled over the waterways of the Indonesian archipelago, and of the writing process itself.

2. What three main things inspired you in writing these poems? 

My book was inspired by the life of Pramoedya and the quality of his writing. I find his example of standing up to his persecutors, and being true to himself to be very moving. I also wanted to have the challenge of writing a collection which would in many ways hold a mirror up to history, as Pramoedya’s writing does, and present important political and environmental themes. I was also inspired by some young environmental activists in Indonesia and have included poems dedicated to them.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Immersive, sensuous, tragic, heartbreaking, defiant

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

The narrator and Albertine in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

The sound of a Javanese gamelan as you approach it from a distance

About Navigable Ink

Navigable Ink is a homage to the Indonesian writer and activist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Pramoedya spent most of his adult life in jail, imprisoned first by colonial powers and later by Indonesian governments. This poetry collection is a response to his life, and the beauty of his writing and of the Indonesian natural environment.

Buy Navigable Ink

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About Jennifer Mackenzie

Jennifer Mackenzie is a poet and reviewer, currently living in Melbourne. Her first visit to Java and the Buddhist temple of Borobudur inspired a lifelong interest in the Asian region. She regularly attends writers’ festivals and conferences there, including the Ubud, Irrawaddy and Makassar festivals. Her previous collection, Borobudur was also published by Transit Lounge, and by the Lontar Foundation in Indonesia.

Social Media

Facebook

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Quintette of Questions: Donna Mazza

Today I’m asking Donna Mazza 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

My latest book is called Fauna. It started life as a short story called ‘The Exhibit’ but it soon outgrew the title as it moved past the exhibition of de-extincted animals that was its namesake.  I had wanted a more complex title with more words in it but when I finally settled on Fauna , nothing else seemed to fit. In the end, the title and my name have a delightful symmetry on the cover of the book and I can’t imagine anything would suit it better.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

As I was writing Fauna , I realised it was a very visual work and would make a great movie. I imagined Sam Worthington as Isak because he seems gentle and isn’t extremely handsome but he’s alright. If he’s reading this I do apologise!  Isak is from South Africa so I think Sharlto Copley would be wonderful and he has the best accent for it.  He has already made movies about aliens (District 9) so he’d be quite comfortable with my not-quite-human baby. Essie Davis, who was the mother in The Babadook, would be great as Stacey and she’s had that experience of being a panicky mother under threat.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Poetic – Raw – Maternal – Prescient – Empathic

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

They aren’t fictional but they are legendary – Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley are my all time favourite couple. I mean she wrote Frankenstein and he was the most passionate and sublime poet of all the Romantics – what’s not to love?

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

When the family go on a doomed holiday to the South West of WA they sing along to Ed Sheeran’s ‘Galway Girl’ and it brings back memories of when they met, before they had children, especially ones that weren’t really human! 

About Fauna

A compelling near-future literary novel, psychological thriller and family drama set seventeen years into a very recognisable future, Fauna is an astonishing psychological drama with an incredible twist: What if the child you are carrying is not entirely human?

Using DNA technology, scientists have started to reverse the extinction of creatures like the mammoth and the Tasmanian Tiger. The benefits of this radical approach could be far-reaching. But how far will they go?

Longing for another child, Stacey is recruited by LifeBLOOD®, a company that offers massive incentives for her to join an experimental genetics program. As part of the agreement, Stacey and her husband’s embryo will be blended with edited cells. Just how edited, Stacey doesn’t really know. Nor does she have any idea how much her longed-for new daughter will change her life and that of her family. Or how hard she will have to fight to protect her.

Fauna is a transformative, lyrical and moving novel about love and motherhood, home and family-and what it means to be human.

Buy Fauna

BooktopiaBooktopia audiobookFauna [image error]Amazon US

About Donna Mazza

Donna Mazza is a writer and academic whose debut novel, The Albanian (Fremantle Press, 2007) won the TAG Hungerford Award. Her short stories, poetry and other works have been published in literary magazines and she was recipient of the Mick Dark Flagship Fellowship for Environmental Writing at Varuna Writers Centre for her short fiction. Her short story ‘The Exhibit’, which was the seed of her new novel, was joint winner of Westerly Magazine’s Patricia Hackett Prize.

Her poetry is featured on several public art works in Western Australia. Donna teaches at Edith Cowan University and lives in a small country town in the South West with her family, including many chickens.

Social Media

Allen and Unwin author page: Donna Mazza Instagram: @donnamazza_authorFacebook: @DonnaMazzaWriterTwitter: @donnamazza14

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Lockdown Fiction: Punch line

This story was written for an Improbable Press blog prompt. If you need to give your writing mojo a leg up, give the Improbable Press and Clan Destine Press writing prompt posts a go!

This story is very silly but hey, it’s what my brain gave me. Sorry/Not Sorry.

Punch Line

The legend of the Loch Ness monster hides a truth behind the
lie. Underneath that deep and murky water is a joke waiting to happen.

P’neth-ac’c cannot describe what a disappointment it is that
nobody on Earth has figured it out yet.

(For the record, to pronounce the name P’neth-ac’c
correctly, you require a lot more teeth than you currently have, plus four
extra oral appendages and a tonal range only dolphins can hear, but that’s by
the by.)

P’neth-ac’c is considered a genius by his peers, in case
you’re wondering.  They, too, are waiting
for that ripe and perfect punch line to finally hit the beat.

It’s become the thing to act out the expected denouement at
gatherings.  That is, at hatchings,
matings, poetry duels, and on the high holy days when fledging art is exhibited
and the most artistic achievers watch with pride while their work is eaten by
the runners up: Absorb the art, absorb the talent, as the Creator says.

With tentacle, tooth, song and sonnet, mime and dance, the
great enactments are performed, and the funniest rendition of the exact same
story wins the prize. (No person is
eaten, of course. They’re not barbarians. The winner’s set, however, is an open
smorgasbord.)

It boils down to this. Humankind, determined to solve the
mystery of the Loch Ness legend, will either send a sophisticated submariner
device into the murk, or they’ll drain that mighty lake. Settled into the mud,
the human explorers will find a large metal orb covered in green algae. The
preserved wreckage (note, it was never wrecked, it never flew) comes complete with dead engines, defunct wiring, a
suggestion of desperate last days.

Inside that slime-coated orb, that sphere of a space ship,
they will find a smaller articulated vessel, shaped like a ripple, like a row
of hills, all rises and falls, the skin of it dark, the head of it a peculiar
periscope.  The sight of it, in the
plays, is always greeted with a sudden silence, gravid with anticipation.

‘Aha!’ the humans cry, alarmed and yet satisfied that the
mystery is at last being solved. ‘Aliens!’

That’s not the joke.

The joke is that the rippling serpent-shaped exploratory
craft is full of skeletons.

Chicken skeletons.

(That’s still not the whole joke.)

And no matter how hard they look, the humans will never find
a single egg. Because all the chicken skeletons are roosters.

(Still not the punchline.)

The human explorers will, however, find a star map and
they’ll believe that the Space Chickens traversed the great expanse of space
only to reach this lonely death.

And once the humans translate the language, they’ll discover
that the putative Chicken People called this great expanse…

The Road.

Quintette of Questions: Meg Mundell

Today I’m asking Meg Mundell 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

My latest book is called The Trespassers, but it was originally called The Fever Diaries. The book evolved during the writing process, so needed a new title. It took awhile to come up with another name, but it fit perfectly. I love the word “trespass” — it’s poetic and evocative, strong and ominous, but also allows for nuance and ambiguity. Who decides what constitutes “trespassing”? Perhaps it depends on where you’re standing.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

Billie, the ex-nurse/singer, would be played by PJ Harvey – a tough, hard-drinking, Scottish version of PJ Harvey, but with that same incredibly powerful singing voice.

I’d try to case a talented Deaf child to play Cleary. But if we couldn’t find the right person, I’d go back in time and hire Henry Thomas (ET), when he was 9 years old. And give him an Irish voice coach.

For the teacher, Tom, I’d hire Dev Patel. He’s got the sensitivity, the English accent, and the soulful eyes (but he’d have to be clean-shaven, for plot reasons).

3. What five words best describe your story?

Tightly-paced, terrifying, compassionate, multi-layered, resonant

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple ?

Pooh Bear and Piglet.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

Stand By Me, by Ben E. King –a timeless song about love and loyalty in dark times. For me it reflects the relationship that blooms between Billie (the nurse) and Cleary (the young boy). When Cleary’s left all alone on the ship, terrified and victimised, she becomes his protector, his anchor, his best friend.

About The Trespassers

A shipload of migrant workers flees the pandemic-stricken UK, seeking a fresh start in Australia. For nine-year-old Cleary the journey promises adventure, for former nurse Billie it’s a chance to put a shameful mistake behind her, while struggling schoolteacher Tom hopes for a brighter future. But when a crew member is murdered and people start falling gravely ill, the Steadfast descends into chaos. Trapped on the ship, the trio must join forces to survive the journey and its aftermath. 

The Trespassers is a beguiling novel that explores the consequences of greed, the experiences of migration and exile and the way strangers can become the ones we hold dear.

Buy The Trespassers

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About Meg Mundell

Photo: Joanne Manariti Photography

Kiwi born and bred, writer and researcher Meg Mundell migrated to Australia by boat in the late 1990s. Her second novel The Trespassers (UQP 2019), a near-future literary thriller set on a migrant-labour ship, has been shortlisted for a 2020 Aurealis Award and optioned for TV. Her first novel Black Glass (Scribe 2011) was shortlisted for two Aurealis Awards, the Barbara Jefferis Award, the Norma K. Hemming Award, and the CAL–Scribe Fiction Prize.

Her journalism, essays and short fiction have appeared in Best Australian Stories, The Sydney Morning Herald, TheAge, The Monthly, The Guardian, Meanjin, Overland and elsewhere.

Meg is also the author of the digital short story collection Things I Did For Money (Scribe 2013), and the editor of We Are Here: Stories of Home, Place & Belonging (Affirm Press 2019), a collection of true stories by writers who have experienced homelessness. Her academic research focuses on place, homelessness and spatial justice.

Social Media

Website: www.megmundell.com FacebookTwitter: @MegMundell

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Quintette of Questions: Kate Murdoch

Today I’m asking Kate Murdoch 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

The Orange Grove as a title came to me quite easily as I was writing the novel. It’s a central location in the story where the characters meet and interact and it also conceals a crucial event in the story.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

Henriette would be played by Cate Blanchett, Romain by Ewan McGregor, Letitia by Rose Byrne, and Charlotte by Margot Robbie.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Romantic, compelling, surprising, dramatic and twist-filled.

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple ?

Katharine and Almásy in The English Patient.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto, ‘The Emperor’, 2nd movement. This could describe the emotional balance I tried to strike between joy and sadness in the novel.

About The Orange Grove

Blois,
1705. The chateau of Duc Hugo d’Amboise simmers with rivalry and
intrigue. 

Henriette
d’Augustin, one of five mistresses of the duc, lives at the chateau with her
daughter. When the duc’s wife, Duchesse Charlotte, maliciously undermines a new
mistress, Letitia, Henriette is forced to choose between position and morality.
She fights to maintain her status whilst targeted by the duchesse who will do
anything to harm her enemies.

The
arrival of charismatic tarot reader, Romain de Villiers, further escalates
tensions as rivals in domestic politics and love strive for supremacy.

In a
society where status is a matter of life and death, Henriette must stay true to
herself, her daughter, and her heart, all the while hiding a painful secret of
her own.

Buy The Orange Grove

Regal House PublishingBooktopiaAngus and RobertsonReadingsBoomerang BooksQBD BooksDymocksFishpondAmazon AustraliaThe Orange Grove[image error] Amazon USBook DepositoryKoboBarnes and NobleWaterstonesFoylesBlackwells

About Kate Murdoch

Kate Murdoch exhibited widely as a painter both in Australia and
internationally before turning her hand to writing.

Her short-form fiction has been published in various literary journals
in Australia, UK, US and Canada.

Her debut novel, Stone Circle, a historical fantasy
novel set in Renaissance Italy, was released by Fireship Press in December
2017. Stone Circle was a First in Category winner in the Chaucer Awards 2018 for pre-1750’s historical
fiction.

Kate was awarded a KSP Fellowship at the KSP Writers’ Centre in 2019 to
develop her third novel, The Glasshouse.

Her novel, The
Orange Grove, about the passions and intrigues of court mistresses in
18th century France, was published by Regal House Publishing in October 2019.

Social Media

Website: https://katemurdochauthor.com/Blog: https://kabiba.wordpress.com/ FacebookTwitter: @KateMurdoch3PinterestInstagram: @katemurdoch2Goodreads

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Lockdown Fiction: Stone and Herring, INc.

This was written for the prompt at Clan Destine Press.

Bill Stone is built like an undernourished ferret. His
associate, Gaz Herring (known as Red to his mates and the police) is built like
an over-nourished four year old, all round, short softness and guileless eyes.

Do not, under any circumstances, let that fool you.

Red and Bill are a lot brighter than they look: bright
enough to encourage people to think them stupid. Bright enough to see a gap in
the market and to develop a skill set to fill it. (Red learned about this sort
of thing when he did his economics degree; Bill learned it from his Uncle Stew,
a small time drug dealer who is doing ten years for drug trafficking,
consecutive with 10 for manslaughter: he didn’t know the gun was loaded.)

Together, these men fix problems of the human type. When
someone is in the way, they remove the blockage. They don’t even care if the
pay is meagre. You see, Stone and Herring have a business model inspired by
rock and roll. Dirty tricks aren’t so much done dirt cheap as for a laugh.

And they have an awful sense of humour.