Laurie Cusack, "The Mad Road"

Congratulations to Laurie Cusack, University of Leicester PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose debut collection of short stories, The Mad Road, has just been published by Roman Books, as part of its Stretto Fiction series!

Laurie Cusack (PhD) hails from Leicester. He studied Creative Writing at Leicester University. He writes from the gut −  The Mad Road is published by Roman Books, and is his debut collection of short stories. The stories were first drafted as part of his PhD thesis at Leicester.

About The Mad Road, by Laurie Cusack

The Mad Road is a collection of short stories that deals with raw Irish experience in a ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ meets Trainspotting sort of fashion. There is a comic-toughness about Cusack’s narratives that keeps you turning the page. They are working class in nature and aren’t for the fainthearted. 

You can read a review of The Mad Road on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories. 

From The Mad Road

Usher’s Well

“Do you want the shamrock on the cream, Davey?”

“What?”

“Brewery directive.”

“Just give me the fucking drink, Hughie.”

“We’re like Sainsbury’s now. We have to ask.”

“Brand Ireland, eh?”

“Now you said it.”

It was just the two of them in The Angel. For the last fifteen years, Hughie O’Connor had been the landlord of the Irish pub tucked in the back streets of Hackney. Traditional music often thrived within its walls.

“Was I missed?” Davey Murray whispered, trying to gauge Hughie’s mood.

Hughie gave his old friend an odd look followed by a shrug. He liked order, liked being kept in the loop. He kept a tight rein on things; a no messing policy; barred meant barred. No early-doors; no late ones. But Davey was the exception to his rules. Hughie often wondered why. Maybe it was because they had been on the shovel together during Hughie’s early days in London. Demolition. Dusty and dangerous work. And most of their wages went on drink in and around the pubs of Cricklewood.

“There were a few asking for you, come to think of it.”

Davey hadn’t shown his face for ages. Unusual. Not a sight or a whiff of him. Hughie had scratched his head a good few times during the past few weeks.

“Look… I had to split, alright?”

“Going off grid is a mortal sin, nowadays.” 

“Am I daft or stupid, Hughie?”

“Now − that, might take a long time to answer, Davey.”

“Ruffled a few feathers?”

“You could say that.”

“Who?”

“Your manager − coming in here, making a show, Where’s the fucking bollix?”

“Eejit.”

Davey’s manager, Rory Higgins, was a character who handled Irish, showbands and other novelty acts. The Impresario of Kilburn High Road − that was what they called him. He had the knack for smelling money. He was always bucking the trend. Davey would still be busking tube stations if Higgins hadn’t chanced upon him ...

Charlie Hill, "Encounters With Everyday Madness"

 

Charlie Hill is a critically-acclaimed writer of novels, short fiction and memoir, whose work has been compared by his peers to Kafka, Georges Perec and Beckett. His new book of short stories, Encounters With Everyday Madness, is published by Roman Books, as part of the Stretto Fiction series. His website is here. 

About Encounters With Everyday Madness, by Charlie Hill

Encounters With Everyday Madness is a collection of short stories about the manifestations and causes of contemporary "madness." Looking at grief, PTSD, romantic obsession, domestic oppression and work, it asks the reader to reconsider what they know about "difference" and the psychological other.

Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories. 

From Encounters With Everyday Madness

A New Job

Today there is a difference. He wakes as usual to a residual fear from dreams that seep and overflow, his eyes are heavy-lidded – it is as if he knows he will not like what he sees when they are open – and yet, despite it all, his heart is light. This is because today is a new day. Today he will catch a bus he doesn’t know and travel to work in a new job in a different part of town. Today he will begin again.

He was in his old job for five years. Five will-sapping, personality-crushing, energy-draining years. People there joked about his leaving. They referred to it as his escape but they were missing the point because this is precisely how he views the change. It has been a long time coming. It is not just the particulars of the position – it is, nominally at least, a promotion – but the fact that it will allow him to make a fresh start. He understands this concept is a loaded one but it is no less a necessary goal for all that, for he was tired. He was tired of his job and he was tired of the people he worked with; he had played out the novelty of spending time with "colleagues" – a word he finds strangely infuriating – who, if asked to name his favourite music or novels or TV, if asked to describe his hopes, dreads and perversions in a sentence or two, would have been so far off the mark they may as well be talking about a different person: he was tired of the fact that the incremental degradations of this supposed familiarity made him somehow smaller and less vital than he was or could have been.

Now fully awake, he is ready to begin the process of renewal. He showers, deciding not, for once, to condition his hair. He dresses in a stripy shirt before choosing to wear instead one decorated with bold flowers; for breakfast, for a change, he takes an omelette, made with a shake of soy sauce, and a hefty dusting of the chilli powder he keeps for every other Friday night. He has never eaten this much spice in the morning and the effect is invigorating; he  blinks his eyes and there it is, his kitchen, hall and bathroom the same of course, but shifted on their axes too ...

Invitation to a Joint Book Launch!

You are cordially invited to the book launch on Tuesday 11 May 2021, 7-8pm, for Hannah Stevens and Alexandros Plasatis. The event is free and open to all.

Hannah Stevens took her PhD in Creative Writing at Leicester University, and also taught undergraduates at the university. She will be launching her book of short stories, In Their Absence (Roman Books, 2021). The book includes stories first written during her PhD, and is published by Roman Books as part of their series Stretto Fiction, edited by Jonathan Taylor. You can see more details about Hannah's work and In Their Absence on Creative Writing at Leicester here, and you can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Alexandros Plasatis worked in the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester. He will be launching his novel-in-stories, Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), which was also first drafted during his PhD in Creative Writing, at De Montfort University. You can read more about Alex's work and Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness on Creative Writing at Leicester here, and you can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here.

The book launch will take place via Zoom and hosted by Jonathan Taylor. Further details and tickets are available here. We look forward to seeing you there!

Hannah Stevens, "In Their Absence"

Hannah Stevens is a writer from the UK. She writes short stories, flash fiction and creative non-fiction and has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She has stories featured in The Fairlight Book of Short Stories Volume 1, High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories and Unthology 10: Fight or Flight. She's also published by Archer Magazine, Loose Lips, Litro Magazine, Idle Ink, Losslit, Necessary Fiction, TSS Publishing and others. She is a director of Wind & Bones, an organisation dedicated to Writing, Creativity and Social Change. Her short story collection, In Their Absence, is published by Roman Books, as part of their Stretto Fiction Series, in 2021. You can read more about the collection below. Hannah's website is here. 

 

About In Their Absence 

In their Absence is a powerful dissection of what it means to go missing. This compelling debut explores the human complexities behind the headlines and statistics to reveal unsettling truths about what it is to live in the shadow of absence. These stories lay bare the agony of unknowing for those left behind. And they show us just how easily a human life can disappear. 

 

From In Their Absence 

Drought  

I’ve been missing for months: here, nobody knows who I am.  

We’re in the middle of a drought: everything is drying up and burning down.  

At the party I catch a man’s green eyes and eat from his paper plate. He has black hair and doesn’t remind me of home. I follow him outside and we kiss on the step.  

Later, the last bits of light fade away and, in the tangle of sheets, I try to show him what it means to touch me. I love his weight on my bones, his breath on my neck. I wonder how long he will stay for.  

In the morning he asks for water. He takes the glass and drinks to the bottom.  

I follow him to the door and he doesn’t look back as he leaves.  

 

"Between the Lines" by Matthew Bright and Christopher Black

By Matthew Bright

Between The Lines (I realised only when I sat down to write this post) was originally written ten years ago. It was the penultimate project of my Creative Writing undergraduate degree, and the theme was 'writing for publication.' It was a collaborative project, and so my classmate (and housemate) Chris Black and I decide to produce our project together, reasoning that surely this would be easier (it was not). In preparation we toured a printing press, which gave us an unnecessarily thorough understanding of CMYK colour matching and not much else, but what it did spark was the idea that we wanted to create something that could only work when published in print. 

Then naturally, we let the six weeks we had to produce the piece go by, until the deadline loomed a mere week away. We were proud of ourselves for getting to work so ahead of schedule.

Over four long, long nights – working on two computers and somehow patching the whole thing together with a pirate copy of Powerpoint – we pulled together what would become Between The Lines. We hit on the idea of two books on a shelf whose stories bled into each other, and extrapolated from there. It begins as two separate stories: a Victorian gentleman unhappy with his social lot, and a contemporary student negotiating drugs, drink and ennui. They begin to exchange messages across time and, as the book continues, the stories begin to literally merge on the page, eventually becoming one single story. Contrary to expectation (Chris being mainly renowned for his drinking skills, and me being known for a fondness for top hats, bow ties and Victoriana), Chris laboured on the story of Mr Dashby, and I wrote the story of his modern counterpart, Bex. But of course, it wasn't that simple—writing something of this nature was complex for all the usual reasons writing is complex, but also in numerous practical ways. To make the stories work, we had to inch through each one slowly, keeping them moving at the same pace, mirroring each other. Sometimes we had to write character, and make it work for the layout; sometimes we had to write for layout, and make it work for character. Of everything I wrote in my three years of undergraduate work, Between The Lines taught me more about the intricate workings of text than anything else.

And somehow, by 9am Friday, bleary-eyed but proud, we had Between The Lines complete.

Years later we came back to re-read it. That's normally a pretty horrifying experience, returning to writing and finding it's now juvenilia, but we were delighted to discover that Between The Lines still stood up. The version now released in the Stretto Fiction series of Roman Books is largely the same as the original version; there's some cleaning, some softening, some polishing—it turned out Mr Dashby drank a lot of tea; it was symbolic tea-drinking, but nonetheless, some of it really had to go—but otherwise this was the Bex and Mr Dashby that first came to life in a small back bedroom of a student house in Leicester. And now it's the Bex and Mr Dashby who are out in the world for everyone else to discover—this strange, unusual book that we created. We hope you love it as much as we do.

You can see more about the book here. 

You can read a review of the book here. 

About the authors

Christopher Black is a relentless optimist despite a total lack of success or recognition. He works as a Data Manager for clinical studies specialising in oncology and makes music with dated rock outfit Rhyn. 

Matthew Bright is a writer, editor and designer who’s never too sure what order those come in. He is the editor of several anthologies and his fiction has appeared in various publications. His short story collection, Stories To Tell In The Dark, is out from Lethe Press this October. www.matthew-bright.com

"Sparrow": Short Story by Nora Nadjarian

Nora Nadjarian is an award-winning Cypriot poet and writer. She has been cited or published in the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Telegraph and has also won prizes and commendations in international competitions, including the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, the Féile Filíochta International Poetry Competition, the Binnacle International Ultra-Short Competition and the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. Her work deals with the themes of women, refugees, identity, exile, love and loss, as well as the political situation in Cyprus. Best known in Cyprus for her book of short stories Ledra Street (2006), she has had poetry and short fiction published internationally. Her work was included in A River of Stories, an anthology of tales and poems from across the Commonwealth, illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski, Best European Fiction 2011 (Dalkey Archive Press), Being Human (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) and Capitals (Bloomsbury, 2017). Her latest books are the collections of short stories Selfie (Roman Books, 2017) and Girl, Wolf, Bones (Armida, 2017). The author Anjali Joseph has said of her work:  ‘Nora Nadjarian’s distilled short stories are abrupt and intense, as invigorating and aromatic as a double shot of literary espresso.’ Selfie and Other Stories is published by Roman Books, as part of the Stretto Fiction Series. 

Sparrow

My sister said she was carrying a bird inside her, a bird which would soon be drinking water out of her navel. I wasn’t supposed to say anything about it. To anyone. 

“I am a cage,” said my sister. “Inside me I keep secrets, inside me I keep a bird.” And she laughed and I laughed, too. We laughed until we no longer remembered what we were laughing about.

“His name is Sparrow,” she said one day.  “He’s only little now, as tiny as a seed – but he’ll grow and grow, you’ll see. And then I’ll set him free.” She placed her hand on her stomach and her mouth curved upwards, as if she were smiling at another world in the mirror.

I couldn’t wait. Time was too still, it was taking too long. I squinted into the future. “When?” I kept asking. “When, when, when?” My sister looked luminous as she replied: “Soon, soon, soon.” She said he was practising a song for us. “He’ll sing it so well that he will astonish us all.”

Time passed. I rode my bike and I skipped and whistled and played and waited. Sparrow was going to be my small gift for keeping my sister’s secret. The air grew heady and my sister soft and heavy, like ripening fruit. When she fluttered her eyelids, I thought she was dreaming with her eyes open. 

It was the longest summer. My sister turned sixteen. She wore a long, flowery dress, put her hair up in a ponytail. There were sixteen pink and red balloons bobbing around her head that hot, sticky afternoon of cake, cellophane and candles. My mother spoke loudly and happily about nothing and everything, my stepfather handed my sister the knife, helped her cut the cake. Then she said: I have an announcement to make. 

And the world stops there, a sharp intake of breath.

I squint into the past now for details, terrified of what I might remember. The sky is a dazzling blue, the earth hot, sweaty. I am pregnant, says my sister. She wears a necklace of grapes with which she will feed Sparrow. She performs her own birthday song beautifully, she sings her heart out – until her throat is chalk dry and her ribcage breaks. There are feathers everywhere. I run to pick them up as the balloons pop one after the other, leaving sixteen pieces of rubbery flesh on the floor, things torn and shapeless, parts of my sister which will never again be whole.  


I sit beside her and ask if it hurts. She whispers: “Truth always hurts.” Then there is a sudden, white silence which reminds me, years later, that she is no longer here.