Pulp Idol Firsts 2015: Pulp Idol Firsts, #5

By Writing on the Wall

Pulp Idol is a unique writing competition for novelists. Pulp Idol focuses on supporting new original voices and getting them heard. We strive to provide a platform for up-and-coming writers, helping with exposure to new audiences and providing contacts with key publishers and agents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writing on the Wall
• Release date: Dec 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502200471

Book preview

Writing on the Wall

Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre

4, Princes Road,

Liverpool L8 1TH

Published by Writing on the Wall 2014

© Remains with authors

Design and layout by Rosa Murdoch

ISBN: 978-1-910580-02-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

0151 703 0020

[e-mail]

www.writingonthewall.org.uk

Foreword

Earlier this year we received the news that Pulp Idol 2010 winner James Rice has signed a two-book deal with Hodder and Stoughton who will publish his debut novel, Alice and the Fly, in January 2015. James is a talented writer who has produced an incredible debut novel.

Good news knocked on our door again when 2014 finalist Clare Coombes (nee Doran) called to say her debut novel, Dictionary of Departures, which appeared in last year’s Firsts, is to be published in spring 2015 by Bennion Kearney.

We offer them our congratulations and are proud to have played some part in their success, which is well deserved.

Both James and Clare confirm that talent plus dedication, with an eye to using opportunities like Pulp Idol to put your work into the path of readers, agents and publishers, are some of the key ingredients you need to get your work published.

This year we welcomed as Pulp Idol Final judges, literary agents Tom Witcombe of Blake Friedman and Alex Christofi from Conville and Walsh. Their participation confirms Pulp Idol’s growing reputation among the wider literary world as a standard mark for new, quality writing.

The quality of the writing presented here gives us the expectation that more than one of our writers will follow in the successful footsteps of James and Clare, and numerous other Pulp idol writers from previous editions.

We are sure you too will enjoy their work as much as we have. We wish them all every success in the future.

Mike Morris, Editor.

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Introductions

Pulp Idol 2014/15 winner Craig Whittle’s Driven To Rust introduces Detective Creager, a desperate man in a race against time to find his own son as he works the underbelly beat of death and despair in Liverpool’s docklands.

A Game of Two Halves concerns a fantasy football match unlike any other and Rob Knipe’s sharply-written chapter is terse, vivid, compelling and will have you on the edge of your seat.

In The Grass is Greener, Cheryl Joyce gives us an intimate portrait of a new mother, as this devastating account of Danielle's struggles to preserve her identity and bond with her baby unfolds.

Jack Tasker's novel, Currents, deals with old hurts, loss of love, and new beginnings. The novel is full of conflict, both internal and external within an unpredictable, dangerous setting.

You’ll love to hate Roger Cashmore, Michael Taylor’s protagonist in Forty By Forty, who is taking no prisoners on his mission to hit the big payoff in time for his fortieth birthday. This is a fast story of greed and excess told with great energy and a good ear for ‘banter’.

Readers of People’s Parties by Debbie O’Brien can be sure of excellent company as they follow the fortunes of her lively cast of characters searching for the meaning of life in witty dialogue and exuberant prose.

In Paul Clark’s Difficult First Album Andrew’s search through what remains of his dead father’s desolate flat turns up a chapter of a life he never knew. This softly told tale will hold you in its subtle grip. 

Lee Butcher’s Desperate Dad is a wild tale of a child caught in the cross-fire of a parental war, trying desperately to hold on to a sense of normality as his father slips rapidly over the edge.

Laura Kate Barrow’s Dale Street opens with an idyllic Sunday morning scene. But as the day unfolds and the faces of uniformed men begin to appear, it becomes clear all is not what it seems.

In My Father’s Academy Stephen John Horay captures teenage angst and first love, amidst a scandal born of young Tom Bradley’s mother’s lurid affair. The tension builds as this horror story threatens to explode at any moment.

Editors, Penny Feeny & Debbie Morgan

Craig Whittle

[e-mail]

In 2014, I graduated LJMU with a degree in Creative Writing. Born and raised in Liverpool, I want to write stories about this city and it’s people. I have been writing in some capacity, whether it be song writing, prose or poetry, for as long as I can remember.

Driven to Rust

In 2011, DI Harry Creager’s son disappeared in Liverpool and was never seen again. Two years later, Creager’s life has fallen apart, but when the body of a little girl is found he hopes to find redemption in bringing her killer to justice, and soon suspects the two cases are intrisincally linked.

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Driven to Rust

What was left of the kid lay behind the abandoned biscuit factory off the Rainford By-Pass, the grass growing through his tiny bleached ribs. It had taken me close to an hour of combing through wild grass and weeds to find him. Twenty years ago it would have taken me half the time. I pulled the photograph out the inside pocket of my raincoat, the crease white from too much folding. Hard to recognise anyone from their bones.

This kid looked too tall to be Eric.

I called it in. While I waited I knelt down beside the kid. I had wanted to move him out of the weeds and mud but knew I couldn’t. He’d been out here for over a year, freezing in the snow, decomposing in the summer heat.

Within ten minutes the place was alive with flashes and noise. I drank weak tea out of a polystyrene cup while SOCOs gathered evidence. They wouldn’t find anything of course, it had been far too long for that.

Eventually the bones were zipped in the black bag, wheeled past the police tape and flashing cameras and slid into the back of the forensic van. A handful of reporters stood behind the yellow tape below the faded Bernard’s Biscuits sign. I recognised a few, Liz Hampson from The Echo, a couple of bloggers, no TV. People have short memories and this case was old news.

‘Detective! Detective Creager!’

‘Care to comment on what you’ve found here today?’

They stretched their microphones out like the undead crawling from their graves. I kept my head tucked into the collar of my raincoat and walked past them towards my car.

‘How has your family coped the last two years? Torn apart?’

‘What? Who was that?’ I stopped and turned.

A student reporter pushed his way to the front of the crowd, his curly black hair blowing softly in the wind.

‘Your family must’ve been torn apart-‘

I lunged towards him. Flashes erupted from behind him. I’d got within striking distance when I was tackled to the ground. More flashes. I was hauled out of sight behind the biscuit factory as officers made a small circle in the crowd to shield the reporter.

‘Harry! What the fuck was that?’ Mason slammed me against the wall. Ed Mason was probably my best friend,