Free Downloads

The opening chapters of one road trip and three novels are free to download in the hope of getting feedback to shape their First Editions. I’d love to hear what doesn’t work for you, what’s missing, what’s downright confusing, where you gave up, what’s wrong and where the plot-holes are.

The Honeyeaters’ Tree (travel and birds)

A quest for this quintessentially antipodean family of birds uncovers the withering tree of life and the vanishing landscapes of Australia & New Zealand.

From the UK and a Singapore stopover the traveller journeys to a week around Perth. Then two months in a campervan from Adelaide to Cairns, Queensland. He learns how the tree of life connects the whole globe and how vulnerable it is to our human onslaught.

As if the natural world were fighting back, the route also skirts floods and cyclones. A fortnight in Tasmania and Victoria, with its fatal fires, concludes this far from straightforward quest for the 73 honeyeaters. Finally, New Zealand offers a coda with its own branch of the family.

It’s not just birds that fill out the story: it’s a last chance to witness other survivors from the Triassic before they succumb to this human-caused mass extinction. Cities, culture shock and vanilla tourist attractions also play cameo roles.

These are the opening chapters.

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Let the Time Come (apocalyptic or visionary fiction)

After centuries of abuse birds become mankind’s nemesis. It would be poetic justice, if they’d meant it. But nature isn’t like that: it just happens. Three singular people must survive bird flu pandemics while on a quest for meaning, identity and love. But time reveals one further snag for all of humanity.

These are the opening chapters. From YouWriteOn: “…an original voice…” “Three good characters on which to base a strong story.” “…lucid and intelligent…”

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Clearing the Brushes (autobiographical fiction)

Timothy and Samuel grow up in the 1960s and 1970s of disappearing railways, First Division football, pop and rock music, television and the Counter Culture. And girls (birds).

These will hinder the boys’ attempt at seeing all 512 of the Brush Type 4 diesel locos. “Clearing” them. Can they fit it all in?

Forty years later Timothy casts a Proustian eye over the past and tries to cope with work and, still, birds – women and feathered ones.

These are the opening chapters. From YouWriteOn: “…intriguing… highly polished… it reads beautifully.” “…a waltz down memory lane.” “Novel, quirky and fun. I enjoyed this a lot.” “…many a chortle.”

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Flight of the Ark (high tech science fiction)

It’s 2169 and a new Ice Age threatens civilisation. Ex-commodore Bonar Hall will provide the computer power for a twelve-year emigration to 18 Scorpii. Not everyone wants him to go: he has an expensive past. But Flight Pilot Heather Barnard is going. So too among the colonists is former model Aurora Nova. Bonar owes Heather; he doesn’t know Aurora, yet. All this may not matter if the emigration fleet doesn’t make it, and history is not on their side.

These are the opening chapters.