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Psychological Thriller ROADRAGE Free on Kindle for a Limited Time

16/5/2018

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Someone recently asked me how I’d come by the idea for ROADRAGE. I explained to her that the seed of a plot came about quite by chance at about 2.30 am on the M4 motorway around Briton Ferry near Swansea in South Wales. I was driving, and my passengers, my son and wife, were both fast asleep. We were on our way to visit my mother who had not been widowed very long at the time. Almost at the end of a four hour car journey and late at night, you can imagine my eagerness to complete the last few miles. As I came onto a long, dark, deserted stretch of road, I saw, in the distance, a solitary car moving slowly up ahead. I was covering the gap between us fast, so as I approached I indicated to let the other driver know I intended overtaking. As I passed this car, it took me a few moments to realise that I wasn’t making the progress I might have anticipated. I still didn’t quite get it, and simply accelerated, thinking it would immediately be the solution.  Yet the car alongside me maintained its position, despite my having increased my speed. Suddenly, I realised what was going on and felt, I’m almost ashamed to say, a sudden burst of anger at the other driver’s rank stupidity. For a minute or so I reacted (as I was undoubtedly meant to) by continuing to accelerate, but nothing I did could shake the other car off. Then, sanity came to me by way of a simple, clear thought: “The people I care about most in this whole world are asleep in this car, am I going to risk their lives, and my life too, for the sake of some daft vendetta?”

I slowed down to forty miles an hour and immediately dropped behind the other car. As soon as I’d reduced my speed, and had drawn in to the left hand lane, and was once again following, the car in front immediately dropped its speed down to forty miles an hour again. We remained travelling in convoy like this for the next few miles; fortunately, my exit from the motorway was fairly close. Incidentally, I made sure they’d passed the exit before giving them any indication that I planned on taking this route myself. It occurred to me that I didn’t want someone like this following me to my destination!

And there you have it. Naturally I make this incident considerably more dramatic in the book, fleshing out a back-story for my seemingly hapless hero, and take the antagonist’s malice well beyond the bounds of sanity. The underlying theme of ROADRAGE is the corrosive nature of hate. I used an appropriate classical quotation to set the mood for the book:

Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour.
Euripides, Medea

ROADRAGE, which has never been offered free on Kindle before (and may never be again!) is available to anyone with an e-reading device from midnight PST on Thursday 17 May - midnight PST on Monday 21 May.

It’s scary. Enjoy.

Here's the link: ROADRAGE free on Kindle


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Past and Future

13/5/2018

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I was prompted to read 1984 again, after recently watching the  movie (1984) starring John Hurt, Suzannah Hamilton and Richard Burton, who all give superb performances. It is a very watchable film, presenting us with a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world, with which we are sadly all too familiar as modern cinema-goers. The last time I read this book was as a teenager, forty-odd years ago, and although it undoubtedly influenced and shaped my view of the world, I always felt Orwell was out, at the very least, by a few hundred years.

After re-visiting the book, one instantly becomes aware of how inferior and far short of the book, despite remaining fairly faithful to the story, the movie is. This is because Orwell’s 1984 is not simply about the dysfunctional love story that happens within a totalitarian state; but far more than this, it is also a polemic on the abuse of state power wielded against the individual. Orwell depicts for us a fully-realised world where rebellion is not possible, in which a global elite constantly perpetuates itself, where history is unceasingly reviewed and updated, and the thinking of the individual is repeatedly crushed by the application of Newspeak and Doublethink.

I think the movie version was, as I’ve already said, engaging, yet it largely misses the opportunity to take full advantage of the talents of a truly great actor in Burton, sadly in his last film role before his death, and who was simply made for the part of O’Brien, Winston Smith’s interrogator and nemesis. There are so many brilliant speeches of O’Brien’s in the book that Burton would have delivered with aplomb and the most impeccable world-weariness and cynicism. Film however, despite having been once known as The Talkies, tends to shy away from long speeches - perhaps movie moguls fear losing their audiences through too much talk; it’s always a far better bet to concentrate on the torture and horror! Unfortunately, Orwell mostly conveys the message behind this terrible futuristic vision, through his mouthpiece, O’Brien. The movie of 1984 is a decent film, but if only it had had the courage to increase its running-time by twenty minutes, it might have been a masterpiece!
​
We live in strange times, where government spokespeople are heard to refer to 'Alternative facts', and we are warned by many in authority and in the mainstream media that much of the news we see is 'fake'. In such a time, it behoves all of us to exercise our hard won democratic rights to free speech, to ensure that we are served by a free, fair and unbiased press, one that is not simply the mouthpiece of a handful of powerful oligarchs. Like I said at the top, when I read this book when I was fifteen, I don't think I thought it could really happen; now, many years on, I'm not so confident ...
 
I highly recommend this brilliantly written book, justifiably a classic.

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    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    Amazon.com
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    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    Amazon.com
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    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    ​Amazon.com
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