Free digital download available at: www.feedbooks.com/userbook/23483/godman

Someone take these dreams away.
That point me to another day.
A duel of personalities.
That stretch all true realities.

Joy Division
Dead Souls







Friday 16 December 2011

A novel has many things influencing it. From the personality and experiences of the author, through to the books he’s read, the films he’s seen and the music he listens to. To give you a greater idea of what Godman is all about, here are various lists of what I consider to be my main influences.

FILMS
Films that have had an influence on Godman:


Clean, shaven (Lodge Kerrigan)
I Stand Alone (Gaspar Noe)
One Hour Photo (Mark Romanek)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
Schramm (Jorg Buttgereit)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)

BOOKS
Authors who have influenced both me and Godman to varying degrees:


Paul Auster
Charles Bukowski
Albert Camus
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Michel Houellbecq
Chuck Palahniuk
Paul Schrader
Irvine Welsh

MUSIC
I always listen to music when I’m writing. This is the music I was listening to whilst writing Godman:


13 (Blur)
Kid A (Radiohead)
Mezzanine (Massive Attack)
OK Computer (Radiohead)
Songs in the Key of X (Various)
Taxi Driver OST (Bernard Herrmann)

Tuesday 13 December 2011

GOD’S WRATH MADE FLESH.
Godman is the dark tale of forty-five year old ex-con and born again Christian Clive Walker following his release from prison after serving a twenty-five years sentence for rape. When his delusions and paranoia make a return to society problematic, Clive convinces himself his last chance of salvation lies in helping a young drug addict and prostitute, Mary. Can Clive help Mary get off drugs and redeem them both, or will he yield to temptation and condemn them both to hell? With influences as diverse as Taxi Driver and Notes From the Underground, Godman is a story of loneliness, isolation and contemporary urban angst.
 
It’s been a long and arduous journey getting Godman ready for publication. In another life I was an independent film maker and Godman began life about ten years ago as an unrealised screenplay. Now if you know anything about film making you’ll know that getting funding is the hardest part. After wasting over two years of my life trying to get another project off the ground I became so disillusioned with all the bullshit that I quit film making for good, and thought that was that as far as Godman was concerned.

However, I’m a creative being by nature and still needed an outlet for my creativitity. With this in mind I decided to try my hand at writing a novel instead, something I’d hankered after for years. Not knowing how to go about achieving this aim I started thinking about Godman again. I wrongly believed that since Godman was a finished screenplay it would be a relatively easy task to adapt it into a novel, and my initial wholly unrealistic estimate was that it would take me only three months to complete the task. How wrong can you be? Two years and a lot of effort later, Godman is finally ready for publication.

Now the hard work begins. I knew that Godman was a niche project and will never appeal to a mass audience. I also knew that nobody knows me from Adam, so the chances of anybody actually wanting to buy my book were slim. So with this in mind the obvious answer appeared to be to make the book available as a free e-book and try to build a name for myself. I have to give credit to Cory Doctorow for this, who points out that the worst thing for a new author is obscurity.

Godman is now available in various e-book formats absolutely free from feedbooks. Just click on the link at the top of the page.
 I hope you enjoy my blood sweat and tears.