Pulp Idol Firsts 2014: Pulp Idol Firsts, #4

By Writing on the Wall

This 4th edition of Pulp Idol – Firsts continues the tradition of quality that we’ve come to expect from our winning writers.  Sharp, witty, intelligent, intriguing, compelling, chilling and utterly readable; here you will find writing that will challenge and excite, and most importantly, make you want to read more. The work published here are the first chapters from the ten finalists of our Pulp Idol novel writing competition held during the Writing on the Wall Festival in May 2013. Pulp Idol gives a platform to new, unpublished authors, bringing their work out into the light to share with readers, agents and publishers, in the belief that their writing is strong enough to herald the beginning of a new career for all those on display in this book. The Pulp Idol writers have risen to the challenge of finding their voice and finding readers for their work. You can help them find a wider audience, an agent and a publisher. They’d like to hear from you, and would be happy to send you some more of their work. You can contact Writing on the Wall or contact each writer though their individual emails. We’d like to say a huge thanks to our sponsors, The Granada Foundation, all of our comperes, our judges, our volunteers, our editors and our venues, all of the writers who took part in each stage of the competition, and most of all you, the reader. We are sure you will enjoy these superb opening chapters and will want to hear more from these brilliant new voices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writing on the Wall
• Release date: Dec 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497709270

Book preview

Firsts

2014

Chapters ii

Chapters ii

Contents

Pulp Idol Firsts ..........i

Introduction..............ii

Sarah Tarbit Snatcher

Nina McCallig The Redbrick

James Kenny The South Plain

Abigail Inglis Lee

Nicola Copeland Cormorano

Ashleigh Nugent Locks

Paul McGuire The Concert

Robert Batty The Boy Man

Clare Doran The Dictionary of Departures

Jimmy Stanton The Stargazer

Chapters ii

Chapters ii

Pulp Idol Firsts

This 4th edition of Pulp Idol – Firsts continues the tradition of quality that we’ve come to expect from our winning writers.  Sharp, witty, intelligent, intriguing, compelling, chilling and utterly readable; here you will find writing that will challenge and excite, and most importantly, make you want to read more. The work published here are the first chapters from the ten finalists of our Pulp Idol novel writing competition held during the Writing on the Wall Festival in May 2013. Pulp Idol gives a platform to new, unpublished authors, bringing their work out into the light to share with readers, agents and publishers, in the belief that their writing is strong enough to herald the beginning of a new career for all those on display in this book. The Pulp Idol writers have risen to the challenge of finding their voice and finding readers for their work. You can help them find a wider audience, an agent and a publisher. They’d like to hear from you, and would be happy to send you some more of their work. You can contact Writing on the Wall or contact each writer though their individual emails. We’d like to say a huge thanks to our sponsors, The Granada Foundation, all of our comperes, our judges, our volunteers, our editors and our venues, all of the writers who took part in each stage of the competition, and most of all you, the reader. We are sure you will enjoy these superb opening chapters and will want to hear more from these brilliant new voices.

Mike Morris  Editor

Chapters ii

Introduction

Sarah Tarbit’s Snatcher is a stark and unsentimental critique of aggressive, inadequate masculinity. The young narrator struggles to overcome his brutal background instigated by his father, a damaged man himself, trains his son to be emotionally and physically invincible after the death by suicide of his mother.

The Redbrick by Nina McCallig is a sharply observed story told in a richly comic vein about a Liverpool/Irish family preparing for Christmas, featuring a stolen Christmas tree and a neighbour’s competition for the best house decorations, as the family fights against the odds to maintain tradition.

The South Plain, where a young boy almost drowns while fishing for eels, is set in the grim 1930s, where the locals try to eke a living from muddy marshland. James Kenny vividly conjures this bleak landscape and the details of the hard daily grind of the characters.

In Abigail Inglis’s novel Lee is a hooker who plies her trade along the Interstate 175. Under pressure to find money for rent and food she hitches a ride in a truck that leads her to take her first step into becoming a serial killer. ‘Lee’ is a compelling exploration of the effect of abuse and the soul behind the serial killer.

Nicola Copeland’s Cormorano is a warmly humane historical novel set in Liverpool during the Second World War. For Joseph, a fatherless boy, part-English, part-Italian, the famous Liver birds become a symbol of the city’s brave resistance to the German bombs that pulverise the streets.

In Ashleigh Nugent’s Locks Aeon and Increase are two friends from Lancashire visiting Jamaica, looking for some answers to Aeon’s identity through his father’s family line. But it’s no easy ride, and in the taxi that meets them at the airport Aeon realises he’s got a lot to learn about himself and his father’s own country.

Doyle’s dilemma: save his friend Seamus, tied up in the backseat of the car he’s travelling in, or kill Feargal, the driver, the only genuine IRA man among them, and put an end to their undercover operation to get to the heart of the IRA. Paul McGuire’s tense opening chapter of The Concert will leave wanting to know much, much more.

Joyce, battered, her face black and blue, begs Anthony to help Billy, her boyfriend accused of murdering the man who put her in hospital. In Robert Batty’s starkly told The Man Boy, Anthony steps in, knowing that helping out an old lover will take him back into a world he has been trying to get away from.

The Dictionary of Departures by Clare Doran is brief, compelling and utterly chilling. Bound and unable to escape, a woman is in a car driven by a violent kidnapper, who is clearly known to her, although his motives are far from clear.

A group of young men in a graveyard ruminate on lost opportunities in Jim Stanton’s The Stargazer. The atmosphere of the setting, the pull of the stars and the narrator’s regrets are sensitively described, creating an elegiac mood piece.

Jenny Newman & Penny Feeney Editor

Chapters ii

Sarah Tarbit

Sarah Tarbit

[e-mail]

I was born in Ashington, Northumberland, but my heart belongs to Liverpool where I studied Creative Writing at LJMU. I writes prose and plays. I Hope that one day my words will pay the bills.

Snatcher

Snatcher is about men and masculinity, the duality of good and bad, hard and soft, love and hate, and how the mines closing in the late 1980’s still affect the people living in small towns today.

Snatcher

Everyone wants to know that their dad loves them. I asked him once if he did. He was lying in his piss on the kitchen floor. Big, like a drugged-up tiger that couldn’t move but still growled, threatened in his sleep. I sat at his head, whispered the words, half hoped he wouldn’t hear. 

He had ‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ tattooed on his knuckles; he drank with LOVE, hit with HATE. His rules were simple. Disrespected? Fight. Someone looks at you the wrong way? Fight. Fight for your friends, family, those who can’t fight for themselves. Love your woman. Prove your worth. Don’t lose.

I was six when Mam died. Dad bought me a ‘good blood’ rooster from Maurice at the allotment. Frankie had burning red feathers, was jittery, unpredictable.

Dad handed me him to me, said, ‘My dad gave me one when I was a boy.