Want to see what I've been working on?

I’ve been busy and I’m absolutely delighted to tell you that my new book Number Nine Downing Street comes out on September 9th (9/9/2025). I’ve been working with the illustrator Karen Donnelly and she’s done this absurdly good cover. Look at it! With your eyes!

The colours! The characters! The poop! It’s one of those covers that really lives in the details. To whit: Karen and I had an in-depth discussion about making the bird poo on the bobby’s helmet less graphic (too much realistic green in the original). I also love that Karen sidestepped the issue of having four children looking round a door being too busy by having one of them (Nora) look through the letterbox.

What’s All This Then?

So, what can we learn from this glimpse into a bright and intriguing world? Well, it’s Downing Street, durr, but not the more famous domicile of the PM, it’s next door - Number Nine. A thin, spindly house that clings to its more famous neighbour like the weaker partner in a three-legged race.

It has been empty for many years, but is now occupied by the Butte children (rhymes with newt, not nut) - Charlie (14), Nora (11), and twins, Pork (8) and Ken Jnr (4). It’s also home to Captain Lavender, but you’ll learn more about him in due course. They only recently inherited the house after their parents exploded at a wedding.

Number Nine Downing Street is a story about young people and power. It’s also about families that explode and how you work your way through the gooey mess to make something whole again. Someone described it as where A Series of Unfortunate Events meets The Thick Of It and that hits it perfectly. Does the world want such a book? Political satire for children? I have no idea, but I, and my mortgage company, are keen to find the answer to that question.

Defucking my TikTok

This is my first book for younger readers and has brought a whole new set of challenges. Like - oh no, most of my existing readers are not aged 8-12, how do I reach them? Also, how do you market a book to 8-12-year-olds when most of them don’t ever check their email, and technically shouldn’t be on social media? I also had to comb through my own social media to prune out the more egregiously sweary videos/posts - defucking my TikTok made me realise how often I lapse into the rudies and I’m going to try and clean up my act. I’ll fail, of course, big dumb shit that I am.

I’m hoping that my new non-sweary persona comes to the fore when I start pitching myself to schools. This, Google/GPT assures me, is the way around the marketing conundrum. Go into schools and bore the little bastards shits (this is so hard!) children with a reading, some poor juggling and then insist that in return for this thin entertainment that the entire class buy my books, which I will then joylessly sign for an extra £5.

“What’s your name, Ken?”

“No, Sir, it’s Ben.”

“There you go, Ken.”

This is a new thing for me. Strangely, schools were less keen on having a middle-aged man reading to children about diabetic amputation or fatbergs - although ironically I should imagine the children would have been a lot more interested. Maybe I’ll slip some in and see how it goes down.

Lovely review

I saw a post a while ago where Holly (aka @deafbookgirly) was talking about wanting books for her birthday. I’d followed her for a while and really enjoyed her posts, so I sent her Before and After - and she put up her review yesterday. I love seeing the emotion in her review; making people feel something, anything, is one of the great joys of writing. It’s also fab for sales, as marketing whizz-kid Maya Angelou was keen to drill home on her book marketing seminar series. She also invented the phrase BOGOF, you know.

@deafbookgirlyBook review for Before and After by @Andrew Shanahan - indie author (There is a spoiler at 4 minutes or so) Thank you for gifting me this book I really enjoyed it! #BookTok #fyp #books #reading #bookcommunity #booktokuk #bookrecommendations #bookreviews [image error]Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

More to come

As the gnashing jaws of my book marketing machine whirr up to mincing speed once more, I should warn you that there will be more messages. Angelou wanted me to go to two a week but that’s insane, isn’t it?

“You’re insane, Angelou,” I told her.

“Boy, I will squeeze you into a funnel and retarget your ass with my foot,” she replied and lunged at me. She ground her cigarette out on my arm. I lost a tooth. She barked her shin. We were banned from all Chef and Brewers. We settled for a slight increase. Don’t blame me, blame Angelou.

Shop Now Or You Will Perish

I’m doing some merch in my shop. It’s not live yet, but it will be soon. In the meantime you can get 10% off anything in my shop with the code ASSMEAT10, but the code is limited, so consume soon. You can get signed copies of all my books there and every sale made on Payhip makes Bezos grind his teeth (one grind per sale).

Until next time.