Brindle Books Interview with C. Q. Turnstone, author of Avarice of Empire, due for release on 6th March 2025.

 

22nd February 2025


C.Q. Turnstone is an historian and author of biographical historical fiction. His debut novel, Avarice of Empire, will be published by Brindle Books on 6th March 2025. We caught up with him recently to ask him about the book and his writing process.

Let's start with your book. How would you sum up what it's about?

First and last, Avarice of Empire is the true story of the life of a nineteenth-century British cavalry officer called Charles Agnew, what drove him to seek adventure in India, and how he came to meet an untimely end 'by the hand of assassin'. More than that, though, it's also about the fortitude of Victorian women, class division and colonial prejudice, early photography and the embryonic intelligence service, a revolution in global communications, and how an Irishman discovered what would become India’s largest gold mine.

So historical fiction, but still a true story?

That's right, yes. It's biographical in spirit and detail, and tells a story about real people and events with as much historical accuracy as possible. However, that 'as possible' is an important caveat. A true story can only ever be as true as an author's interpretation of the available historical evidence allows it to be. Creative leaps of imagination are necessary to fill in the gaps. That's the case with non-fiction biography and history as well. Whether you're talking about things that happened this morning or millennia ago, it's impossible to know everything about a given situation from every perspective or what motivated someone to make a particular decision. 

What inspired you to write about Charles Agnew in the first place?

I'd always wanted to write a novel — it's a pretty common ambition, I'm sure. I toyed with various ideas over the years, but none of them ever quite worked. Then on a chance visit to Canterbury Cathedral on a rainy Sunday in May 2015, I noticed a memorial to a cavalry officer who'd been killed "by the hand of an assassin" in Egypt in 1873. I was intrigued by that unique turn of phrase, just as countless other people must have been during the past century and a half. I wanted to know who Charles Agnew was, what he'd been doing in Egypt, why he was killed and by whom? When I began researching the answers to those questions, I knew immediately it was a story I needed to tell.

How did you approach the research?

About a year after finishing Avarice of Empire I began studying towards a Masters in Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter. As you might expect, that's given me all sorts of insights into how to conduct historical research with academic rigour. However, when I was researching the book I was just figuring things out for myself as I went along — learning on the job, so to speak. I thoroughly enjoy the research process, especially the privilege of examining things like letters, scrap books, and photograph albums that the people I'm writing about actually held in their hands. A great deal of archive material has been digitised in recent years, which makes the research task easier in all sorts of ways, but there's no substitute for visiting an archive or a story location in person. Among many other places, my research included visits to the 16th Lancers' regimental museum near Newark, the Stoke-on-Trent City Archives, and a certain public house in Tilbury.

What was the most interesting thing you found out about Charles Agnew?

Without giving anything specific away, it was fascinating to discover the multi-dimensional and often unpredictable nature of his character.

Does the story have an underlying message or moral?

You can safely assume it isn't a nostalgic celebration of imperial colonialism. I hope that much is obvious from the title alone. Beyond that — and this is something that emerged from the history without me contriving it — is that the expression of human qualities such as courage, resilience, and compassion, cuts across boundaries of race, class, gender, and faith.

How did you approach writing about other cultures?

With great care, particularly to avoid falling into the traps of stereotyping and cliche. Thorough research is crucial. I invited a number of people (from Ireland and India, for example) to act as sensitivity readers, and found their feedback incredibly helpful.

Did you feel a sense of responsibility towards the people you were writing about, perhaps especially those who may have living descendants?

That's a great question and, yes, I very much did. It's something I touch on in the Historical Note at the end of the book. My self-imposed rule from the beginning was a kind of respectful realism: I would always be guided by the available documentary evidence, and I wouldn't knowingly misrepresent anyone, but neither would I pretend that prevailing social and cultural attitudes had no influence. People are complicated creatures after all, and it's those complications that make a story interesting.

What were the differences between writing real versus fictional characters?

I've never counted how many real people feature in the book (lots), but there are only six fictional named characters. They served the very specific purpose of broadening the story and helping to connect its different aspects, and of course I could do whatever I liked with them without breaking my own rules. Fictional characters require much less research than real ones, although I found that the more detailed I made their backstories, the easier it was to bring them to life on the page. The actual writing is really no different at all. In fact, as the story developed the fictional characters became as 'real' to me as the real ones.

What kind of reader do you think will enjoy Avarice of Empire?

I'd certainly like to imagine that it will appeal to anyone who already knows they have a taste for historical fiction, or failing that at least a general interest in nineteenth-century life. The story inevitably features a degree of military history, although perhaps not in a way that might typically appeal to enthusiasts. Based on feedback received from test readers, in terms of factors like age, genre preference, and existing knowledge of the period, I'm delighted that the book seems to appeal to a much wider audience than I'd expected.

If you had to be one of the characters in the story, which one would you choose?

That's quite a tough one! I suppose it would have to be Morgan Farrell.

Whether historical or otherwise, which authors of fiction have been most influential on your writing?

I'm drawn to crafted storytelling with complex plot interconnections and memorable characters, and the more sweeping in scope the better. With that in mind, the three authors I'd say have had the most influence on my writing aspirations are Bernard Cornwell, Hilary Mantel, and Ken Follett. There's a long list of others I admire and enjoy as well though, of course, from Robert Louis Stevenson, R.M. Ballantyne and Arthur Conan Doyle, whom I read over and over as a child, to the likes of George Orwell, William Golding, Sebastian Faulks, R.F. Kuang, Anthony Doerr, Percival Everett, Tan Twan Eng, Elif Shafak, Kazuo Ishiguro, Douglas Stuart, and Simon Mawer.

What do you think is the most important quality and/or skill for a writer of historical fiction?

Without a doubt, the most important quality is empathy — for both characters and readers. The most important skill is harder to pinpoint, because so many are crucial. I'm going to dodge the question slightly and say that the skill I've probably found most useful is being able to 'be in the scene'. In other words, visualising what a scene looks/sounds/smells like from the perspective of an invisible observer standing next to, behind, in front of, or far away from the other characters.

Can you tell us a bit about your writing process?

I discovered a while back that listening to classical music (headphones rather than 'in the room') really helps with maintaining focus and lubricating the wheels of creativity. Personally, I write better in the morning and edit better in the afternoon. I'm also someone who continually edits as they write rather than rough drafting and editing later (although there's plenty of editing later as well.) I don't set myself word count targets per day. Some days the words come easy, some days they don't. My preference is always for quality over quantity. Once I find my way into a new chapter or new scene, the rest usually emerges readily enough.

What advice would you give to new writers?

I'm quite certain I'm nowhere near qualified enough to give anyone advice about writing, except perhaps to recommend ignoring advice on social media and just write what you'll enjoy reading. That said, you can't go far wrong with George Orwell's six rules of writing and Stephen King's prohibition of adverbs (other than in dialogue.)

After Avarice of Empire, what's next?

The story will continue.


Avarice of Empire will be released on 6th March 2025
published by Brindle Books Ltd.
You can pre-order the e-book now by clicking


Summer At Tangents makes the Country Life 'Books of the Year' List for 2024

 

15th December 2024




Country Life magazine has named its Books Of The Year in its 316-page Christmas double issue, and we are delighted to see that among the ten novels selected is one that Brindle Books brought out – Summer At Tangents, which we published in May.

The magazine writes that “Summer At Tangents, hopefully the first of many P. G. Wodehouse-esque tales of golf and village life from Roderick Easdale, is effervescently amusing.”

This is Roderick’s first novel, but his is not the only debut novel to make its way into the long-standing weekly magazine’s Books Of The Year. It is joined by Miranda Pountney’s “wow of a debut novel” How To Be Somebody, which is published by Vintage.

These take their place among works by more established writers such as Robert Harris’ Precipice, and Armistead Maupin’s Mona of the Manor, which is the tenth novel in his Tales of the City series.

Roderick’s novel is not the only one of Country Life’s selection to be set against a sporting background, as Charles Blanning’s 1920s-set thriller Electric Rabbit is about the first Greyhound racing activities in the country. 

Crime and detective works feature heavily, with Peter James’s One Of Us Is Dead; the “witty, perceptive” Kate Atkinson’s Death at the Sign of the Rook, and John Banville’s The Drowned, “a darkly compelling procedural that is unnervingly astute about human foibles.”

David Nicholls’ “tenderly funny” love story You Are Here and Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road round out the 10 novels selected. 

Country Life’s Books Of The Year also includes their extensive selection of non-fiction works as well as Rupert Everett’s “witty collection of short-stories, The American No, which shows he is as magnetic a writer as an actor.”


Summer At Tangents is available from Amazon by clicking HERE
and from Blackwell's by clicking HERE





Yet another great national press review for Summer at Tangents


11th November 2024



The good reviews continue to appear in the national press for Summer At Tangents. As Roderick Easdale's novel was the first comic novel to be published by Brindle Books, we are pleased that the reviewers are enjoying it every but as much as we did when we first read the manuscript!

The latest review is by golf magazine Planet Golf Review which has reviewed Summer At Tangents in its issue 29. We will happily leave you to read the full review, but we will just say its conclusion is:

“Roderick Easdale, a golf writer of long experience, clearly knows his way around golf clubs and depicts the actions of a cast of colourful and entertaining characters with a real eye for their absurdities, frailties and mostly well-intentioned natures in this witty, warm-hearted, beautifully written, cleverly told story.” 

Roderick Easdale


This follows on from the other positive previews that this novel has been receiving in the press. Country Life said that “Roderick Easdale is an authority on P. G. Wodehouse and he is clearly channelling the great author in this rollicking tale of golf-club shenanigans in a very English village. Sentences are brilliantly crafted, tongue twisting in their ability to inspire befuddlement in the book’s more unfortunate characters. These hail from a cast list of which Evelyn Waugh would be proud.”

Golf Monthly said it was “a superb comic novel ... a beautifully crafted tale involving many laugh-out loud moments.” 

Golfshake described it as “a brilliant comic novel but also, ultimately, a feel-good story”; and Golf Today wrote that “Roderick Easdale effortlessly delivers in this witty, feel-good novel.” 

 You can buy the eBook or paperback from Amazon by clicking HERE

You can buy the paperback from Blackwell's by clicking HERE

The Road To Madrid: Book Five in David J Blackmore's Wellington's Dragoon Series - Out Now.

 18th October 2024

Brindle Books are pleased to announce the release of The Road to Madrid, the fifth book in David J Blackmore’s acclaimed Wellington’s Dragoon saga. The action-packed series chronicles the adventures of Michael Roberts, an officer in the 16th Light Dragoons, fighting against Napoleon’s armies in the early 1800’s.

Dr Blackmore’s series has received praise for the way in which he blends action and adventure with solid historical background, due to his in-depth knowledge of the period. He worked for the Royal Armouries Museum for 26 years, for most of them as the Museum’s Registrar, and was part of the creative team for the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

He is also the author of four non-fiction books; ‘Arms and Armour of the English Civil Wars’, ‘British Cavalry in the Mid-18th Century’, ‘Destructive and Formidable, British Infantry Firepower, 1642 – 1765’, (the published version of his PhD thesis from Nottingham Trent University) and ‘So Bloody a Day; the 16th Light Dragoons in the Waterloo Campaign’.


The Road To Madrid

Returning to the Peninsular, Michael Roberts finds himself plunged back into the intelligence war in Lisbon.

Joining the army in Spain he meets old friends, fights at Villagarcia, and, with Don Julian Sanchez, scours the road to Madrid, finding romance on the way.

He is present at the great victory of Salamanca and marches with Wellington to Madrid, where his success in the intelligence war comes at a price.

To find out more, or to purchase The Road to Madrid or any volume in the Wellington's Dragoon series, please click HERE


Summer At Tangents by Roderick Easdale added to Brindle Books 99p E-Book sale - Limited Time Offer

 

3rd September 2024

Summer at Tangents is currently available in e-book format at the reduced price of 99p

You can find out more, read a sample or purchase the e-book by clicking HERE


For a Limited time, Brindle Books Ltd are adding Summer At Tangents by Roderick Easdale to our 99p e-book sale.

The book has received great reviews from critics for its quintessentially English humour, Easdale's style being reminiscent of the late, great P G Wodehouse.

Here at Brindle Books, we are on a mission to get more people reading new books and discovering new authors, so the books need to be affordable for people to try out, especially when we are competing for readers attention with all the classics and public domain books that are out there for free. This is why we've convinced some of our authors to agree to put their books out, for a limited time, at a bargain price.

You can see the full list of the books in our 99p e-book offer on our BOOKS page.






Brindle Books Ltd 99p e-book sale. Ten great reads at an affordable price.

4th August 2024


Here at Brindle Books Ltd, we like to ensure that as many people as possible have access to great reads. We also know that times are hard and budgets are tight for a lot of people right now. With this in mind, we have decided to offer a selection of our titles at a reduced price.

Listed below are a list of ten e-book titles which we are now offering at the reduced price of 99p (or 99c in the USA). You can use the links below to go straight to each books sales page, or go straight to our books page to see our full list of titles by clicking HERE 

Here are our 99p/99c e-books:

   



NORMANBY by P G Dixon 
Pawns were made to be sacrificed.

When Tom Grant is transferred from the glamour of MI5 to a little-known intelligence department, he begins to think that his career is on the slide.

Then, the investigation into the death of an agent leads him into a plot to strike at the heart of the UK…

...But who can he trust? The Colonel – the loud and overbearing Department head?

Major Green – the dashing war hero with the dedicated team?

...or Normanby – the prim bureaucrat with dark secrets in his past?

To buy NORMANBY for 99p, click HERE



A Little Book of Strange Tales by Richard Hinchliffe

A Little Book of Strange Tales, is a short collection of stories and rhymes to send a shiver down your spine.

Journey with us from the coldest depths of Outer Space to the burning pits of Hell in this small collection of unsettling weirdness..

To buy A Little Book of Strange Tales for 99p, click HERE


My Time Again by Sophia Moseley

Everyone turned to look at Kathy as she walked slowly past. She knew in her heart it was wrong. Her head screamed "No", but she went ahead anyway.
Have you ever wished you could undo a decision you’ve made? Return to that crossroad in your past and take a different path instead. What alternative life might have awaited you? And what of those you now know and love? Change what has been, and they might never exist at all.
Fate, which you cannot control, predetermines all events. Yet, your destiny is in your hands. Or is it? Which one is the dominant force?

To buy My Time Again for 99p, click HERE

Unseen Follower by Sophia Moseley

How many friends and followers do you have on social media? Tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands?

Hidden in the shadows of the digital realm, an ominous presence lurks.

In Unseen Follower, the virtual world become a labyrinth of secrets. A place where you cannot know who is watching your every click, tracking your every move.

The twenty-first century obsession to be part of the global social circle may lead you into the clutches of the follower who monitors your every post, every like, every share.

That person who glanced at you from across the road or stood behind you in the supermarket; you don’t know them, but they may know where you live, where you work, and where you buy your coffee.

Do you know who’s following you?

Based on real events, Unseen Follower will make you question who is.

To buy Unseen Follower for 99p, click HERE


The ERASED series by Mark Bridgeman


ERASED 1: The Missing Millionaire
Erased: A new series of intriguing missing person cases from around the world by Mark Bridgeman, author of The 'Lost' Village of Lawers. The first book in the series is 'The Missing Millionaire', in which the author investigates the mysterious disappearance of an American millionaire in London, England, in 1913.

To buy The Missing Millionaire for 99p, click HERE


ERASED 2: The Empty House
The second entry in Mark Bridgeman’s ERASED series takes us back to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the late 1940’s, and a true-life mystery as intriguing as any film noir classic of the period.

To buy The Empty House for 99p, click HERE


ERASED 3: The Dancer Who Disappeared
Los Angeles 1949. A series of brutal unsolved murders and unexplained disappearances has terrified the female population and confounded the authorities. But for one beautiful, budding dancer and actress the world seemed a very different place. Days after appearing alongside one of Hollywood's biggest stars in her first big movie break, she kissed her 5-year-old daughter goodbye and headed out for a mysterious night-time rendezvous - never to be seen again. A spine tingling and bewildering true story set in the golden era of Hollywood, when the silver screen reflected the City of Angel's menacing side. But what really happened to The Dancer Who Disappeared?

To buy The Dancer Who Disappeared for 99p, click HERE


ERASED 4: When The Trail Goes Cold

Five people go missing in five years, all within a few miles of each other. Always at the same time of day, and always at the same time of year. The police are baffled. Are the disappearances connected or is it purely a coincidence? Or is it something far more sinister . .

To buy When The Trail Goes Cold for 99p, click HERE



ERASED 5: The Legs on the Train Murder

A gruesome discovery on a London train shocks the nation. Has the man behind a series of unsolved murders struck again? As Scotland Yard detectives race to solve the riddle of the missing man, another macabre discovery changes the course of the investigation.

To buy The Legs on the Train Murder for 99p, click HERE



ERASED 6: Her Fame is Oblivion
New York. 1910. The end of The Gilded Age. When the heiress daughter of a millionaire businessman vanishes without a trace from one of the busiest streets in the world, in broad daylight, the ensuing investigation only seems to raise more questions.
Where did she go? What happened in the House of Mystery? Why did she rent a private mailbox? And, what secret was she really keeping?
The author's comprehensive investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a socialite and heiress to a fortune, is the most detailed study ever written of, what the New York Police Department, called the 'greatest missing person mystery of the 20th century'.
'Her Fame is Oblivion' is the sixth in ERASED, the eBook series of real-life missing persons mysteries available on Amazon Kindle, from Mark Bridgeman, best-selling author of The Nearly Man, Perthshire's Pound of Flesh, and The Dark Side of the Dales.

To buy Her Fame is Oblivion for 99p, click HERE


Happy reading, and don't forget to bookmark our BOOKS page to keep up to date with our new releases.

One For Sorrow by Sophia Moseley

 14th July 2024

Brindle Books Ltd are pleased to announce our latest release, One For Sorrow by Sophia Moseley is available now in paperback and eBook formats.



One For Sorrow

There wasn’t a day that went by without Laura feeling a sense of guilt for what happened to her daughter.

Charlotte’s fear was so entrenched in her subconscious, and conscious mind, she had to be sure she could trust those people around her.

But fear goes hand in hand with vulnerability, and with vulnerability comes weakness, and when you’re weak, you crave security, but it can come at a cost.

You can purchase One For Sorrow in eBook or paperback from AMAZON by clicking HERE

You can purchase One For Sorrow in paperback from Blackwell's by clicking HERE




Brindle Books interview with Roderick Easdale, Author of Summer At Tangents


Roderick Easdale, author


Interview by Richard Hinchliffe


8th May 2024


The latest release from Brindle Books Ltd, Roderick Easdale's Summer At Tangents, takes us into new territory as a publishing house. Our output to date has comprised mainly of Action Adventure, Thrillers, Dark Fantasy/Sci-Fi and True Crime. Most of the manuscripts, or the pitches that we receive from authors fall within those genres.

It was a surprise then, to be confronted, a few months ago, with a comic novel. It's not the sort of thing that I had read much of before, nor had I really given much thought to publishing anything outside of the above mentioned genres.

Still, I decided to give it a go. Whenever I have the time, I do try to read at least three chapters of any new submission. With Summer At Tangents, however, I didn't stop at three chapters. I carried on. As soon as I had read the manuscript, I was determined that we would publish this book.

It had been a long time since a manuscript actually made me laugh - (at least, for the right reasons) - and this one did. In Summer At Tangents, Roderick has managed to create character-driven humour which is funny without ever being cruel - something that many modern authors fail to do. It is, I imagine, his experience of living in the world of his characters that makes it possible for him to poke fun in such a warm and affectionate manner.


I managed to catch up with Roderick to put a few questions to him about the book and his writing process:

In three sentences, what is your book about?

Tangents is a decaying village with a poorly attended church and a struggling golf club. Now the church is threatened with closure. So the vicar’s good friend, a wily golf club committee member, acts to save the church in ways which also benefit the club and his friends and involve duping almost everyone along the way. 

When did you first start to write?

Gosh. Very young – but don’t we all? We are made to write stories in school English lessons aren’t we, and get examined on this – it’s how we pass our English exams. A lot of my work at school and university involved essay writing, as I went down the arts and social science routes. Then after university I became a journalist. So I have been writing most of my life.   

What is it that drives you to write?

A love of words I think. I also compile crosswords and that definitely stems from a love of words.

What is your writing process - do you have a fixed schedule or method?

No. As a journalist, I have learnt to write anywhere, anytime. I am freelance and no freelancer likes to turn down work; nor can they risk missing deadlines if they want to continue to be commissioned! 

How much research did this novel require?

Hardy any as it is a world I know well. It was a case of ‘write about what you know’. One of the characters in the novel has moved to a new part of the country where he knows no-one and gets to know people through the golf club, which mirrors one of my experiences. I have been a member of six golf clubs, so can write about golf-club life with confidence. The club in the novel is the main meeting point for its village as it serves as the local pub and restaurant, and non-golfers use it. I have also been a member of such a club.

 There are some hidden, I’m not sure you would call them jokes so much as references to things which if readers do no pick up on them – and most will not – would not detract one iota from the story, but are there for a bit of fun, an added bonus for those who know the history, for example, of the Beatles or Leeds United. These required me double-checking some facts. There are also various references to other writers’ work. When quoting from literature I had to check I was not misquoting through my faulty memory; not that it matters that much as the character who does most of the quoting is somewhat indifferent to accuracy anyway. But when the vicar quotes from the bible I had to make sure he was getting it spot on!

Is that why you set a lot of the action at a golf club – your familiarity with that world?

Yes, that and also the beauty of golf clubs is that all sorts of people mix there. It is hard to think of places where people from different walks of life socialise together, become friends and acquaintances. The advantage for a novelist is that this is a natural setting for where you find people who would not naturally come into each other’s orbit, let alone socialise with them, doing exactly that. 

Towards the end of novel a character reflects on a treasured friendship: “If you add up the hours I have spent with him – I have just been having a wee stab at it – I reckon it comes to years. Literally. All of them at the golf club. If it wasn’t for golf I would never have known him.”

You say you have referenced other writers’ work in your novel, which authors are your biggest influences?

I have written a book on PG Wodehouse’s novels, so it is perhaps inevitable some of his craftwork would have rubbed off on me, if only sub-consciously. Not in terms of writing style but in the way he formed his plots. 

His early success was not as a novelist but in musical theatre. He described his novels as musical theatre without the music and how he would imagine in his novels that he was writing for a cast of actors. He believed major actors have to be given enough to do, and if they appear in a scene they had to have an important role in it. So, for example. PG Wodehouse rewrote part of Leave It To Psmith to give the Efficient Baxter a scene where he ends up lobbing flowerpots through Lord Emsworth’s bedroom window, as Wodehouse realised that Baxter’s was a more major part than the novel scenario had allowed for, so he added in this episode to boost Baxter’s part.

I wrote a conversation involving the membership committee chairman, as it suited the plot at that point. I realised that this was a character who would be fun to write for, so I had to give him other things to do and involve him in other scenes. His ended up being the part I probably most enjoyed writing, in fact. 

Once Wodehouse had the idea for a plot of a novel he would write out a detailed structure, often as much as a third of the length of the finished work. Into this he would also set down bits of dialogue in skeleton form to be written up later. (He claimed that he always thought that in writing the book he was wasting valuable time, as the difficult part of writing was drawing up the plot.)

I also wrote up sections of dialogue in advance. However I was far more free-wheeling as regards the scenario. I did not have a rigid structure to follow, rather a destination and various stopping-off points. This means at times I can think ‘hang on, what if such-and-such happens now, so that person does this in response and that means…’  and from this you can get a new idea, maybe a subplot, or just a humorous incident or a simply a funny line.

I have always worked this way, much to the ire of one of my Politics A level teachers. She was firm in her view that the only way to write essays was to start with about a six-line précis of what you were to write and then you follow this outline to write the essay. I was far more free-flowing – you write something and another idea pops into your head from this, so you include that also; or you realise the flow of your argument means that something you were going to introduce later should be brought in now, and so on. 

To mollify her, I would leave the first seven lines blank, write my essay, and then do a précis of what I had written in this blank space at the start. My B grades from her turned to A grades as “your essays are much better now that you are structuring them properly”. I never let on.

An analogy: if you meet up with friends in the pub say, or for dinner, do you know what you will be talking about three-quarters of an hour in? Of course, not. You will know in advance the topics you are likely to talk about during the course of the evening, maybe some news you want to impart, or a question you wish to ask; but your conversational topics are not rigidly structured or pre-determined in advance. 

What are your future plans?

That may not be up to me! I bumped into an acquaintance I’d not seen for a while, who asked what I had been up to. I said I was having a comic novel published. He looked at me sternly and replied: “It’s up to the reader to decide if it is a comic novel, not you.”



Summer At Tangents is available now in eBook and Paperback, and can be ordered from all good book shops

Alternatively, you can click HERE to purchase from Amazon, 

or click HERE to purchase from Blackwell's



Her Fame is Oblivion (New release from Brindle Books Ltd)

24th March 2024


Brindle Books Ltd are proud to announce our latest release. 'Her Fame is Oblivion', episode 6 in author Mark Bridgeman's ERASED series of eBooks, is available now.


ERASED 6: Her Fame is Oblivion

New York. 1910. The end of The Gilded Age. When the heiress daughter of a millionaire businessman vanishes without a trace from one of the busiest streets in the world, in broad daylight, the ensuing investigation only seems to raise more questions.

Where did she go? What happened in the House of Mystery? Why did she rent a private mailbox? And, what secret was she really keeping?
The author's comprehensive investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a socialite and heiress to a fortune, is the most detailed study ever written of, what the New York Police Department, called the 'greatest missing person mystery of the 20th century'.
'Her Fame is Oblivion' is the sixth in ERASED, the eBook series of real-life missing persons mysteries available on Amazon Kindle, from Mark Bridgeman, best-selling author of The Nearly Man, Perthshire's Pound of Flesh, and The Dark Side of the Dales.

You can order Erased 6: Her Fame is Oblivion by clicking HERE



Circus Freak Nation by Patrick J Sacchetti

 

27th January 2024


A chance to catch up with Patrick J Sacchetti, author of Circus Freak Nation.

Interview by

Richard Hinchliffe

Patrick J. Sacchetti, author

The release of Circus Freak Nation has given me the excuse and the opportunity to catch up with author Patrick J Sacchetti. Some of you may be aware that I interviewed Patrick way back in August 2022 for the release of his previous novel, Heaven’s Assassins. If you didn’t catch that interview, or simply want to read it again, you can click HERE

So, when I saw that Patrick had released another title, I couldn’t wait to get hold of a copy, and to get in touch with the author himself and ask him a little about it.

RH: Briefly, and without giving too much away, what is Circus Freak Nation about?

 

PS: Circus Freak Nation starts out as a murder mystery of a college girl murdered in the classic Chicago Holy Name Cathedral Catholic church.  The girl's family hires a private detective agency, Heavens Assassins Detectives, to find out what is going on with the investigation into her murder.  This drags the agency, and its detectives, into a spider's web of various dubious characters with a variety of evil acts simultaneously taking place.  The various characters and related insidious acts they are tangled up in seem unrelated at first.  Little by little, as they dig deeper and deeper, all the characters and all their dubious acts really are connected.  Everyone is manipulated, controlled, bought, and sold, by a handful of narcissistic power players in the United States.  All the book's characters end up being moved around a chess board in a game of toxic chess where there is only a chosen few making the moves, letting a majority of the American citizens take the losses, while the power players gain their riches. Really, everyone is complicit in this, and no one is innocent.  Except for the poor, dead college girl, of course.

 

RH: How does this book relate to, or tie in with your previous work, Heaven’s Assassins?

 

PS: Heavens Assassins was the group led by Luke Augustine, who is now the main detective in Heavens Assassins Detective Agency.  Whereas in the book Heavens Assassins, the core group got out of legal entanglements any way possible, in Circus Freak Nation the group has to depend on the law and support law and order and become certified private investigators in the process. Nicola Esposito is with the agency, as well as Luke's neighbourhood friend since childhood, Anthony Testicolli.  Stephanie Bennavutti is still Luke's main girlfriend and provides the support and guidance that the entire agency needs when things get difficult.

 

The main difference between the two books is that in Circus Freak Nation, this is more of a social and political satire, taking shots at the power players and their followers who obediently take all the orders delivered down from the top.  I take aim at those who manipulate the media, manipulate the political environment to fool people and are simultaneously total hypocrites in the process.  At times the social and political climate in America has taken on more of a Circus Freak show than that of a civilized powerhouse nation.

 

RH: How did you first get into writing books?

 

PS: Growing up as a kid I was fortunate to have a great local library stocked with provoking books.  The idea that there are people in the US that want to ban books because a selected few individuals object to the contents is beyond crazy.  It's the Thought Police and fascism is what it is.  Growing up with books allowed me to expand my mind, laugh and learn, and travel in my mind, leaving my small-minded Chicago blue collar suburb behind without leaving the library reading room.  Who could ask for more than that?  Rock music and local blues was big in my neighbourhood, and I loved writing reviews of rock and blues albums while in high school and then while at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale IL.  I'm not a professionally trained author and will never be compared to Cormac McCarthy or one of the other greats. I've always had a lot going on in my mind and have a touch for taking the stock of situations and satirizing them.  Having people interested in what I write, laughing and being scared at the same time, is the ultimate reward.

  

RH:   What are your favourite books and authors, and why?

 

PS:  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami is in my opinion, one of the top five modern novels because of its dream-like quality and ability to make the reader think, laugh and be afraid all in the same chapter.  The journey that Murakami sends the book's protagonist on takes the reader along for the ride.  You feel all the thrills, chills and excitement and it feels like you're right there along with the main character.  And few books can do that.  Another modern classic, must read and favourite of mine is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien that chronicles his adventures in the Vietnam war while in the 23rd Infantry Division.  The short stories are a collection of incidents, some real and some made up, that enlighten the reader on what really went on in the Vietnam war.  And to realize that everything is not what it appears to be. Tim O'Brien has stated his daughter asked him which stories were true and which short stories were made up.  He refused to tell her.  He only said the stories that seem too wild to be true are true stories, while the more normal stories are the made-up affairs. The book came about because of what Tim O'Brien felt was the public's opinions of the Vietnam war that were only based on ignorance instead of reality. I feel the same applies to Circus Freak Nation, that there are too many people in this country who wallow around in ignorance like pigs stuck in mud instead of finding out what is really going on. 

 

RH:  Which part of the writing/publishing process do you enjoy most?

 

PS:  The part of the writing/publishing process I really enjoy is brainstorming and letting the words fly, hitting the page as hard and harmful as they want to.  One of my friends told me to just let it loose when writing Circus Freak Nation.  Meaning to let whatever I felt or was thinking at the time to get it down and not be afraid of the appearance of perceptions it may cause.  Let my honest opinions and thoughts just decimate the pages.  Then fortunately for myself, I found a great local Chicago editor by the name of David Aretha, to help me compile everything into an interesting, messy but fun ride of a novel.  That plus I get to correspond with interesting, book loving nerds like me across the pond in the UK, like yourself, Richard. 

 

RH: Who is most likely to read and enjoy your book?

 

PS: The people most likely to read my book are the more intelligent, liberal, open-minded people.  People who love books and love idea's and want to read something that enlightens them, frightens them and makes them laugh, all within the front and back covers. Also, those who have been wondering what the hell is going on in America will like this book tremendously.  

 

RH:    What do you like to do when you’re not writing, and does it inspire you, or is it an escape from writing?

 

PS: While not writing I really enjoy music and used to play guitar.  Played a lot of classic rock and roll and Chicago style blues.  My collection and knowledge of music is pretty large, and I still have an appetite for what new music is being created out there.  You know, what are the kids listening to?  I like to consider my writing to be street savvy, rock and roll-based type, storytelling.  So, music has had an influence not only on my life but also on my writing.  

 

RH:  Do you have any promotional events planned, or are you considering any marketing ideas for your book?

 

PS: As far as promotional events or marketing events, I'm going to reach out to Good Reads and put a description of Circus Freak Nation out there.  I'm going to ask some Marketing minded college graduates for some of their marketing ideas. Google will be a resource used for a while until I get a better feel for this part of the process.

 

RH: What are your plans, especially in terms of other books or projects?

PS: I've already been thinking of the next book and have been kicking around an idea where people who are shot and killed in the Chicago area are brought back to life through a DNA database.  Their DNA is taken from this database, and they are brought back to life in a factory that specializes in bringing the shot and killed back.  An expensive cost that only the Country Club set can afford.   However, I'm not sure if that is going to be the main topic or a secondary topic in the book.  All I know is that my good friends from the Heavens Assassins Detective Agency will be involved somehow in some way.  


Circus Freak Nation

Circus Freak Nation is available now.

You can purchase it from Amazon in the United States by clicking HERE

 

Or from Amazon UK by clicking HERE