Urbane Authors
1. David John Griffin is a writer, graphic designer and app designer, and lives in a small town by the Thames in Kent, UK with his wife Susan and two dogs called Bullseye and Jimbo. He is currently working on the first draft of a third novel as well as writing short stories for a novel-length collection.
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb is a gothic terror of the highest order, delivering a dream-like and hallucinatory reading experience that promises to reveal secrets both disturbing and astonishing. Do you dare meet the Stubbs?
2. Sara Bain. An imaginative thinker with a career as diverse as the number of genres her fiction crosses, Sara Bain is one of those people who has the ability to write to any formula but chooses to adhere to none.
Her debut novel, The Sleeping Warrior, has been described as “talented”, “imaginative”, “remarkable” and “simply brilliant.”The Ghost Tree will publish autumn 2015.
In 1695, a farmhouse on the steading, then called The Ringcroft of Stocking, was reportedly haunted by a violent poltergeist which took two weeks and a good few clergy to exorcise. The minister leading the exorcism published his experiences of the haunting that year. The account was witnessed by fifteen members of the clergy and community and is widely known as the Mackie or Rerrick Parish Poltergeist.
On a hill by the steading stands The Ghost Tree: all that remains of the former Ringcroft of Stocking. There were three of them in living memory but only one still stands. Local legend says, when the last of the Ghost Trees dies, the Rerrick Parish Poltergeist will return. The Ghost Tree is dying and, just days after MacAoidh moves in, he is forced to contend with a number of strange occurrences, beginning with an unexplained fire in a bedroom.
There follows a series of bizarre and terrifying occurrences at The Ring which defy all logical and scientific explanation and which compel MacAoidh to find the reasons for this bizarre phenomena….and why a 17th century poltergeist is trying to kill him.
3. Tess Rosa hails from a small town in Western Montana. She left for Seattle with two bags and a lot of passion at the age of 19. An established photographer, she met a group of writers from New York and through them, found her voice. Freefall into Us is her first published collection of prose and poetry. She currently resides in Seattle, and has been known to quote Kerouac and sling the finest of wine.
This is a rollercoaster of a read from a no-nonsense writer who is unafraid to use words to strip her characters naked and bare before the reader, adeptly identifying the emotions that drive us. Tess Rosa is clearly a writer to watch – follow the shine and be dazzled. ”
Martin Skate, bestselling author of The Spike Collection
4. Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, London. After studying drama and mime in London and Paris, he entered a series of repertory companies and in 1968 formed the London Theatre Group. His plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and in many languages. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, directed and toured, are Kafka’s Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon after Aeschylus, and Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus also playing the title role, Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde’s Salome.
Films Steven has acted in include A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy, Beverly Hills Cop, Rambo, Under the Cherry Moon, Absolute Beginners and The Krays.
John is an actor. He is a man. A man who wants. A man who needs. A man who takes. And he takes from those who always expect him to give. To give them love, loyalty, affection – to give them his soul, his loyalty, his life. Why can’t they just let him thrive? Why can’t they understand the desires and passions that drive him? Why is he a man alone? John has crossed the line from performance to reality, from stage to street, from imagination to visceral breath – and he needs to wrest control before all is lost.
5. James Silvester is an HR professional and former Mod DJ for internet radio, with a neglected talent for the harmonica. He first began writing during his University days, re-discovering his passion for storytelling after delving into the rich history of Eastern Europe.
Prague 2015. Herbert Biely, aged hero of the Prague Spring, stands on the brink of an historic victory, poised to reunite the Czech and Slovak Republics twenty-six years after the Velvet Revolution. The imminent Czech elections are the final stage in realising his dream of reunification, but other parties have their own agendas and plans for the fate of the region. A shadowy collective, masked as an innocuous European Union Institute, will do anything to preserve the status quo.
Institute operative Peter Lowe’s mission is to prevent reunification by the most drastic of measures. Yet Peter is not all that he seems – a deeply troubled man, desperate to escape the past, his resentment towards himself, his assignment and his superiors deepens as he questions not just the cause, but his growing feelings for the mission target.
As alliances shift and the election countdown begins, Prague becomes the focal point for intrigue on an international scale. The body count rises, options fade, and Peter’s path to redemption is clouded in a maelstrom of love, deception and murder – can he confront his past to save the future?
6. PJ Whiteley, who writes non-fiction as Philip Whiteley, is an experienced author, principally about management. He has written extensively about how low wages are bad for business, as part of a bid to try to convince economists that society consists of people. Taking a break from this Quixotic task, he has turned his hand to romantic comedy, seizing on the potential of men preferring to play or watch sport than talk about their feelings and stuff.
Close of Play is the first novel, centring on perennial themes of the human condition: love, loss, hope, life choices and that nagging feeling in the back of the mind that you may not fully be up to date with how your team is doing.
Brian Clarke has an ordered life, a life of village cricket, solid principles, and careful interaction with those around him. He is resolutely fending off advancing middle-age with a straight bat, determined to defend his wicket against life’s occasional fast balls. Then he meets Elizabeth – a gentle, caring, genuinely selfless soul who is a glowing bloom amongst the ordered hedgerows of his existence. As Elizabeth demands Brian’s interest…and breathes hope into his heart…he must reassess his self-defined role as the lone batsmen and fight to find the courage to fall in love. Or risk losing her forever.
Close of Play is a thoughtful, funny, beautifully honest story of love and manners. It’s a tale of missed opportunities and a chance at redemption – and the fear of opening our hearts to another when we think we’ve forgotten how to love.
7. Alcina Faraday is a scientist, businesswoman and stepmother who writes literary fiction about the redeeming power of love and the disturbing possibilities of modern scientific reality.
Her Spiral Wound Trilogy “Beauty, Love and Justice”, “These Modern Girls” and “The Commodity Fetish” follows a cultured rabble of unhinged, uncool, reality-averse GenX/Y outliers as they seek success and heroism, survive squalor and indignity, have a few laughs, and – mostly – emerge relatively unscathed from the moshpit of modern life in Paris, London and Lisbon.
Alcina lives in London and Devon with her engineer husband and a small colony of palmate newts.
8. Arpan Panicker is a serial dabbler. He has tried his hand at everything from event management to street theater with an intermittent corporate career that led to him setting up his own learning design consultancy. The one thing he stuck with was writing, and Wordscapist is his first full-length novel. While not drowning in books and gadgets, he’s spending time with his wife or motorbike, and on some rare occasions, both. He loves to travel and most of his trips start out as location research for his next Wordscapist book and end up as culinary binges.
Everything you say is true… somewhere. But for Slick the notion of what is true is becoming very blurred indeed. He always knew the world was one of constant change. He just didn’t expect that change to include witnessing a demon tearing off the head of a stranger. That’s the kind of change that could lead to hearing voices in your head. Which is also happening rather too frequently for Slick’s liking.
But that’s what happens when you’re thrown headlong into the world of wordsmiths, where simple words can shape and reshape reality, and the legend of the Wordscapist becomes more than just an urban myth. Slick must discover the Way of the Word if he is to shape a new reality and discover his true destiny……Buckle up. Hang on. And yes, careful what you say. Everything you say is true…becomes true…somewhere.
Wordscapist: The Myth is the first groundbreaking volume in the Way of the Word series, and Urbane’s launch title for a thrilling new digital only frontlist – open your mind and your e-reading device to a new voice in fantasy fiction.
9. Kevin Murray began his writing career 40 years ago, working on The Star, Johannesburg’s biggest daily newspaper. He soon became Chief Crime Reporter in what was considered to be the crime capital of the world. He once achieved a record of more than 30 consecutive days of front page crime stories, including an aircraft hijacking, several murders, numerous armed robberies and even drug-related gang wars. Since then, his successful career has spanned magazine publishing, public relations and strategic communications. Being a storyteller is his craft. He has written two bestselling business books on leadership and has a cupboard full of ideas for the next novel.
Scotland Yard detective Alan Winters leads a hunt for the elusive prey. As the body count rises, Jennifer Chapman, renowned investigative journalist and daughter of the murdered newspaper editor, sets out on a personal quest for revenge.
Drawn together in their pursuit of a deadly quarry, Winters and Jennifer unwittingly face a fatal surprise, for the killer is closer than they think. As they close in on the truth of the blood red rose, their unseen foe plots a shattering end to his reign of terror, and death awaits them all…
10. Adrian Harvey. Since escaping the East Midlands to find his fortune in the big city, Adrian Harvey has combined a career in and around government with trying to see as much of the world as he can. He lives in North London, which he believes to be the finest corner of the world’s greatest city. Being Someone is his first novel.
James has fallen through life, plotting a course of least resistance, taking each day as it comes and waiting for that indefinable ‘something’ to turn up, to give his story meaning. His journey lacks one vital element – a fellow traveller.
Then he meets Lainey. Confident. Beautiful. Captivating. And James rewrites himself to win her heart. Lainey gives James a reason to grow, paints a bright future, promises the happy ending he has sought so keenly. But when we discover we can live the greatest story of all, are we able to share the pages with someone else?
Being Someone is an emotive tale of love, of self-discovery and adventure – a story of the eternal search for happiness in another, without ultimately losing ourselves.
11. Chris Parker is a specialist in Communication and Influence. His fascination with the power of words and how they can be used to create intrapersonal and interpersonal change began in 1976. It became a lifelong study that has underpinned almost four decades of work in a variety of professional roles and contexts. A Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Chris is a highly experienced management trainer, business consultant, lecturer and writer. He has more lines on his face than most and is afraid to read them.
12. Albrecht Behmel is an award winning-playwright and novelist. He studied history, arts and philosophy at Heidelberg University and at Humboldt-University, Berlin before his career as a writer for German tv, radio and film in Berlin. He has written over 20 novels and non fiction books, games and plays. Almost a renaissance man, Albrecht is also a painter and designer He enjoys the nature of the German Black Forest where he lives with his family.
Albrecht Behmel’s authoritative reinvention of the William Tell legend is a masterful historical novel, blending myth and fact to craft a compelling page turner of love, honour, adventure and revenge.
love and light,
Trace
xoxo
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