Bookshelves

 

So, Christmas has been and gone, and you’re left with book tokens you don’t know what to buy with or, far, far worse, the dreaded One4All card that allows you to spend in hundreds of different stores but none of which seem to allow you to or have anything remotely worth buying.

This is where I come in.

Maybe.

You see, I’ve got books for sale. Not the ones in the photo above; technically they are mine, because I own them, but they’re not my books.

You can buy my books from any bookshop, online or physical, including Waterstones for whom the One4All card is acceptable. You may need to wait a week or so as they may not be in stock, but you can still buy them. 

But which to buy?

Well. 

‘The Broken Bottle’, ‘How Green Are Your Eyes’ and ‘This Is Not The End’ are a trilogy of books aimed at readers from 12 to adult. Indeed, most of the readers seem to be adults, so you’ll be in good company. They tell the story of Wilf, a teenager in Croalworth, near Manchester, as he goes to school, forms a band, falls in love, gets scammed, gets involved in gun and drug crime, goes to Ireland, searches for an awol alcoholic, stumbles across an arms dump, is befriended by a mysterious girl, meets the most drunk stop/go sign holder in the world, goes home, goes to university, makes some new friends, finds his flatmate is a bit weird and unhinged, finds his bag mistaken for an unattended package by the bomb squad, is the victim of mistaken identity and rings his sister to take him home. 

https://books2read.com/b/3nBzEP

https://books2read.com/b/bPGOPl

https://books2read.com/b/m00DAA

‘Capturing the Wry’ and ‘Welcome To The Underachievers’ are memoirs of my time in actual real bands writing and recording actual real music and playing actual real gigs. Across the two you can read the trails and tribulations of nearly being signed to record labels, the highs and lows of playing in youth clubs, restaurants and universities, and marvel at just how many venues I have played gigs in which have now closed down and become housing developments.

https://books2read.com/b/3LVWp1

https://books2read.com/b/b5JlqO

‘Seasonal Adjustments’ is a poetry anthology. I once wrote a poem that came in the top 0.17% of a national competition, and still didn’t win. But it shows the potential quality, even if it is up to you to decide the actuality of it. ‘Out of Tune’ meanwhile is the cleverly-titled collection of lyrics presented without their tune. Do you see what I did there?

https://books2read.com/b/49LEaw

https://books2read.com/b/b5W5wk

‘The View From Orlando Bridge’ is another memoir, this time about supporting Bolton Wanderers in the 1980s and 1990s. Yes, it’s that bleak.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/john-hartley/the-view-from-orlando-bridge/paperback/product-m5z964.html?srsltid=AfmBOopiLnNATy_RPJS1AEiE2eEbyl3Ghqjk84MvuYSWnweTsQmh8kgm&page=1&pageSize=4

You can get all of these anywhere, really, including Amazon. You can also get signed copies of most of the titles directly from me at www.brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch

So come on, don’t be shy. Spend those vouchers, or just your hard earned cash, and you too can have my books on your bookshelves (but not the ones in the photograph for reasons already established).

(The Making of) This Is Not The End

 

The ringing of an unanswered telephone. The clink of a dropped spanner. The muffle of footsteps, unidentified in the dark. The flapping of a letterbox. The unsolicited door knock, close to midnight. The wailing sirens closing in on the park. The thud of a back, thrust against a wall.

We started Wilf's journey with the awkward, spotty teenager from Lancashire falling in love for the first time, beginning to dream about pop superstardom and having his first real awakening to the harsh unfairness of the real world. That was 'The Broken Bottle'.

A year or so later he was enjoying his first taste of parent-free adulthood in the deep south of Eire. Admittedly, it was still under the watchful eye of his aunt but that didn't stop him from getting unwittingly mixed up in the messy complexities of other people's lives. That was 'How Green Are Your Eyes'.

Now we find Wilf in the North East of England, without any responsible adults to guide him along his way and, frankly, life doesn't ever get easier, does it? This is 'This Is Not The End'.
All three stories are very loosely based on some sort of reality. It's hard to write about things without having at least some semblance of fact upon which to base things.

Let's get this clear from the start though: I am not Wilf, nor is Wilf me. However I did grow up in Lancashire, spend a summer in Cork, and go to Polytechnic in Newcastle. That much is true. Indeed, some of the things that happen in 'This Is Not The End' are very much based on my experiences in the north east; others, meanwhile, are definitely forged in the mind. Which are which? I'll let you decide.

The cover is designed once again by Ruby Hartley, and captures many cameos from within the book - see how many you can find once you've read it. Various shots of the cover provide the visual content for the song 'Scotswood Terrace', the video for which is below. I wrote 'Scotswood Terrace' a few years after leaving the North East behind, with my late teens and early twenties very much in mind. It could be a great place to be when things were going well; when they weren't it was far from ideal.

Since completing 'This Is Not The End' I have found myself, in idle moments, wondering what will become of Wilf when he becomes a fully-fledged adult. 'The Broken Bottle' was always supposed to be the first book in a trilogy. Now I'm not so sure ...

It's Easy To Be Wise About Other People's Lives

At secondary school I was never really comfortable in my own skin. That probably goes for most teenagers, but it wasn't helped by the fact that the school I attended was, by and large, fee-paying. I was on an assisted place, which meant that because my parents didn't earn enough money my place was part-funded. We didn't have a car, didn't have a telephone, and had a black and white television. My friends had televisions in their bedrooms.

It took me quite a while to feel proud of my background. The first few years at school I felt envy towards the ease of the lifestyles my friends had. Meanwhile, I was also painfully aware of the mocking I got from others in the year.

A few people took me for who I was, including some people for whom it would have been easier to stay with the crowd and take the mickey. These days I wish I had been able to tell them how much I appreciated that.

The theme of envy and financial disparity is one that crops up in 'How Green Are Your Eyes', the second of the three parts in the coming-of-age trilogy that began with 'The Broken Bottle'. It's not the only reason the eyes are green though ...

www.brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch for your paperback copies

https://books2read.com/u/bPGOPl for your ebooks

How Green Are Your Eyes

 

Growing into my teens I worried I might never not feel homesick. That was despite evidence to the contrary. Some evidence, anyway. The first time I was away from home was a couple of nights in Ambleside with my primary school. I survived, but missed home. A year later the lure of a week in the Isle of Man proved greater than the fear of missing my parents and sister. I had a whale of a time. I managed a couple of secondary school trips away which by and large passed without incident (though listening to Live Aid in a tent as lightning danced around the trees surrounding the school campsite in Saundersfoot is quite a memory). I even managed a French Exchange fortnight, but the yearning for home was much stronger that time. However, I baulked at cub and scout camps and could find any raft of excuses not to join them.

In the summer of 1990 I decided that, with the prospect of three years away at University looming increasingly large, I had better prove to myself that I could be away from home for a sustained time. I'd tried the year before, but tearing a ligament in my ankle half way down a mountain overlooking Grasmere sort of put paid to that particular plan.

So anyway, in summer 1990 I went to Ireland; County Cork to be relatively precise. I didn't know the family I was staying with, although I had been writing to one of the sisters for a couple of years. The plan was to work in the family pub/hotel/bed-and-breakfast/take-away/restaurant and enjoy a part of the world I had never previously visited. The alcoholic father nearly put paid to that, but when he went awol the family instated me in employment where I could be found working in the fish and chip servery at the height of a blistering heatwave.

'How Green Are Your Eyes' draws inspiration from some of the experiences I had and the people I met. It is, however, very much a work of fiction. Indeed, very much the lived experience I imagine Wilf might have had once he had left school in Croalworth, and is the follow-up to his adventures in 'The Broken Bottle'.

The novel can be ordered in ebook here: https://books2read.com/u/bPGOPl

It can also be ordered in paperback, signed by me, here: https://brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch

How Green Are Your Eyes

 

And there, as if by magic, the cover for 'How Green Are Your Eyes' was revealed to the world, one click at a time.

'How Green Are Your Eyes' is the sequel to 2023's 'The Broken Bottle' which, as I am sure you will remember, featured young Wilf from Croalworth as he joined his school friends in forming a band called the Sally Cinnamons. At the end of the story Wilf was ... well, I'm not going to tell you here am I? No spoilers; you might be reading about 'The Broken Bottle' for the first time. 

The cover was designed, once more, by the very talented RubyGoesBananas who can be found under that title on Instagram and TikTok. You can also see and buy her artwork at her Etsy shop   and on RedBubble. 

'How Green Are Your Eyes' will be published worldwide in early October in both paperback and ebook formats. You will be able to order it from any bookshop, online or bricks and mortar. Signed paperback copies will be exclusively available from the Broken Down Records online shop, where you can also get signed copies of 'The Broken Bottle' as well as other books and music. 

Details of how to order and pricing will come soon, very soon; there will probably be a bundle offer for copies of both books at a slightly discounted price too.

Until then, here's some Lego Minifigure images of the Sally Cinnamons, as featured on social media.

The Author’s Dulcet Tones

 I thought it might be interesting to play about with narrating a bit of The Broken Bottle. You never know, someone might listen to the flat northern vowels of the writer and think “That’s the book for me!”

It IS the book for them, just as it the book for you, by the way.

I know there’s professional ways of doing these things, but why change the habit of a lifetime? I chose instead to use some clips from Google Earth of the locations in my mind whilst I was writing the novel, and stuck them together using Microsoft’s photo editor, with added voice recordings for good measure.

And here we have it: click, listen, then buy my book.

The Broken Bottle Soundtrack (addendum)

Not all of the soundtrack for 'The Broken Bottle' can be included on a Spotify Playlist. That's because the songs written and recorded by the band during the course of the novel are not widely in the public domain.

Indeed, some of them don't exist at all, other than in your imagination. 'Titch's Song' and 'Jackson's Five' go exactly as you would expect them to, and the lyrics are so clear you can sing them to yourself now. Go on, have a go.

On the other hand, three tracks were kept for posterity from the demo tape the boys record in the music room after school. They are available to listen on Bandcamp. For those of you unfamiliar with Bandcamp, it is a site that allows independent artists to share and sell, or give away as they see fit, their musical creations. Bandcamp take only a 10% share of all revenues on digital sales, and 15% on physical sales. On the first Friday of every month they waive their share completely. This a great model for small scale musical artists.

So the good news is you can listen to three songs from Wilf's band The Sally Cinnamons: 'Half The Magic', 'Hold On' and 'The Bridge'.

Even better, you can download the songs AND the ebook version of the Broken Bottle for a mere £5.00, which seems like good value to me, but then I might be biased. You can also, should you choose, get a physical copy of the book plus the downloaded songs, if everything works how it should do.

The demo tape within the novel is partly inspired by a cassette my own band at school badly recorded in Bolton on a cassette player. The song I contributed to proceedings was a jaunty little affair entitled 'The Puppet'. It has never seen light of day since and, due to its unintentional melodic resemblance to a line from the theme tune to the children's TV show 'The Wombles', is unlikely to any time soon. Never mind ...

The Broken Bottle soundtrack

Stand down, relax; it’s not a whole load of jangly stuff I have concocted in my head purely for the purposes of self-promotion.

No, it’s a whole load of jangly stuff I have collated from professional musicians for the purposes of self-promotion.

Music is, of course, a hugely important theme throughout ‘The Broken Bottle’. As well as the songs written by the band there are songs the friends reference, songs they cover, and songs that crop up naturally during the course of the story.

One afternoon I idly contemplated what a soundtrack album might be, if the novel were ever to be made into a film. The results are the Spotify Playlist linked at the end of this post.

Not all the songs have obvious links to the narrative… take ‘Berth 24’ which opens proceedings for example. It’s an instrumental version of the early Sea Power single ‘Childhood Memories’. I can picture this soundtracking the opening shots of the film, starting with an overhead view of the UK, zooming in towards the north west and the west Pennine moors, before the drone footage sweeps through the moors, over the reservoirs and the cemetery before closing in on the red sandstone school in which the group of friends are gathered one lunchtime. 

‘Childhood Memories’ features the line “God help us if the radiation leaks/God help us if nobody knows for weeks”. My mam used to fret about us living downwind from Sellafield; not in a particularly neurotic manner, just in the way she would fret about about many things, like whether she switched the iron off before we went on holiday. I think Wilf’s mam might be able to relate to that too…

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/34BLxJomE3zp2Dv4ZtW8V1?si=lyweKaAITTatd5Gg06WzrA&pi=e-HdOafGYPRl68

Copies of The Broken Bottle are available here, £10 for signed copies… https://brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/paperback-the-broken-bottle-signed

And if you prefer your reading on an electronic device, the ebook can be found in several stores. Take your pick: https://books2read.com/u/3nBzEP

Welcome to Croalworth

 Welcome to Croalworth.

Nestling in the West Pennine Moors in Lancashire, north west England, Croalworth’s history is dominated by industry. Weaving and coal feature heavily in the local museum, both industries now far less relevant in the modern world than they had been, leaving the once-proud town now resting its reputation upon fading glory. 

Much the same can be said about the town’s football team, winners of some of football’s most prestigious prizes in the early parts of the last century, now resigned to kicking balls aimlessly around a crumbling stadium in front of supporters whose humour is blacker than the coals upon which the town once relied.

The town takes its name from the river that runs through it. Its source is one of the many deep springs that pepper the hilly terrain and it eventually joins Manchester’s famous River Irwell. At one time the river, whose name is derived from old English meaning ‘winding stream’, was used to power the local industry. These days it mainly transports discarded plastics and other non-recyclables, although a family of rogue terrapins is reputed to live on its banks close to the town centre.

Modern day Croalworth has been hampered by the growth of out-of-town shopping centres, leaving the pedestrianised town hall squad much quieter than it would have been thirty years ago. However, a shift in town planning policy has seen an increase of former commercial premises returning to the family accommodation that could have been found a hundred years ago, and a number of fiercely proud and independent local businesses are beginning for take control of the retail sector. This is drawing in many more visitors from neighbouring towns, and the historic indoor market is becoming a cultural focal point.

Croalworth’s most recent claim to fame is it being the home of Wilfred Hughes, a fictional character in the novel ‘The Broken Bottle’ by John Hartley.