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Brilliant new book set at Liverfpool Uni

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I thought I'd let you all know about a brilliant book set at Liverpool Uni that was written by a kid from my halls. I got an email about it the other week from a friend of mine (and have pasted the email below). I bought it and it is a brilliant insight in to University life and has a cracking plot. There is a bit of seriousness to it too, but it is pretty light hearted and at times hillarious. There is a free sample from it at the bottom of this post anmd the blurb. Have a read. You'll ove the book trust me. Let me know what you all think about it.

ME AND MY SHADOW - STEPHEN MORRIS
memo THE FASTEST EVER SELLING NOVEL BY A YOUNG WRITER!

"Anybody who has ever been to Liverpool Uni must buy this book. No, anybody who has been to any Uni must buy this book. No, that's not right either; everybody must buy this book. It's brilliant. An incredibly fresh voice." (Freddie Harper)

Me and My Shadow by twenty four year old Stephen Morris was released in the UK this week and the pre-orders and early sales have been nothing short of incredible.

The media zeitgeist is all about the first time, up and coming, hard-working, young writers and artists connecting directly with their readers and listeners and offering something fresh and different, and in doing it bucking the trends of the big boys. We, and Stephen in particular, thought that the best way to get out there and get 'Me And My Shadow' known to the general public was with guerilla marketing and taking the extraordinary step of releasing various parts of the novel totally free to the public. Excerpts of the novel have popped up all over the place allowing the novel to develop an audience before it was even released (and a free sample of the novel is attached to this email). It was a case of if you can't beat the big boys, do something completely different to them anyway!

The release of free samples of the novel and huge interest and orders prior to publication have led to Stephen being dubbed the Arctic Monkeys of the publishing industry. Surely there is no bigger compliment in 2006!

Also, attached for you is the front cover including blurb (which is also below this email), and About the Author giving you more information on the freshest voice in the publishing industry.

Me and My Shadow is now available from all good bookshops and online outlets, including Amazon and Play (links below):

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1425908071/qid%3D1141952920/203-5446207-7779164

Play: http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=BOOK&title=915019&p=91&g=148&pa=sr

We want everybody to hear about this fantastic first novel so please forward this email on to your friends, or anybody at all you think may be interested. They, and you, will not be disappointed.

Happy reading!

Brett

Brett Della Bonna
Account Handler

BLURB

Democracy has been read its last rites and the political machine has run wildly and dangerously off course. Not that anybody raises an eyebrow on the sun, beer and condom drenched beaches of Magaluf - nobody aside from the mysterious, older than your average holiday rep, Sam, who has chosen the island as the base to kick off his terrifying, apocalyptic plot. As the action moves from the island better titled Little England than Majorca to the campus of the University of Liverpool in England proper, only two students can stop him. But how? It's hard enough to save the world as it is, without being over your overdraft and armed with only a Young Person's Railcard that's three weeks past its expiry date.

Me and My Shadow - a novel about democracy, debt, depression, and the devastation and destruction of the United Kingdom.

PROLOGUE

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” declared the priest to the biggest television audience in British history.

The funeral of Sir John-Joseph Moriarty was held inside St Luke’s, Goodison Road, Liverpool. It was a supposed private affair. Only one hundred close friends and family were allowed in to the church to mourn the death of the greatest Prime Minister in British history.

Sir John had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on three separate occasions. His achievements were unprecedented: five consecutive terms in office, brokering peace in the Middle-East and completely transforming Africa. According to every opinion poll in every State around the world: John-Joseph was the most popular world leader of all time.

Outside the church, stretching miles into the distance, mourners lined the streets. Although the police operation had been one of the biggest ever seen, there were never going to be any disturbances. Quite literally, John-Joseph had no enemies.

A gargantuan television screen set up in neighbouring Stanley Park (the playground of his childhood) beamed a biography of the great man’s life.

“As a teenager, John-Joseph was offered professional forms by Everton F.C. Of course, he would never accept the offer, as he was an avid Liverpudlian.”

Mourners attempted weak smiles. Anything to fight back the tears.

“He decided instead, to take up a degree course at Liverpool University, to read Law. Graduating with a first class honours degree, Sir John moved into local politics. During his reign as the Mayor of Liverpool, he restored the sleeping giant of Liverpool to greatness and made it, once again, the finest city in Europe. Moving into national politics was an inevitable step. Once in Number Ten, his achievements are too extensive to list. Establishing Britain as the strongest economy in the world, making unemployment a word of the past, restoring British public services to greatness, the list is endless. This was all before he moved onto International affairs…”

At this point, Katherine Moriarty finally broke down, and wept. She had been trying to remain strong, but there was no point. The King was dead, and there was no King to live on in his place. Britain would never be the same again.

Unfortunately, this scene would never come to pass and his subsequent achievements never realised. John-Joseph was to be deprived of his destiny by two events coming six years apart. One of which, might seem quite minor, but in fact, was a major shaping force on British history. The other quite obviously is major: John Joseph’s murder at age eighteen.

ASPIRATIONS DASHED

The event that put paid to John-Joseph’s aspirations for greatness, occurred in a Year 8 classroom.

John-Joseph had always been a delight to his schoolteachers. He regularly returned home to his excited parents with exceptional school reports, leading his parents to garner high hopes that their son would be the first of their clan to reach university. Alas, it was not to be for a reason, which in truth looks insignificant. The single, most defining moment in world history, unfolded as follows:

“Okay class, settle down. Who would like to read their monologue to the class?” Ms Simmons asked an uninspired audience.

“Miss, I will,” John-Joseph stated with his hand raised aloft.

“He would. Wouldn’t he? The geek!” mocked the angelic looking blonde girl, sat at the desk behind John-Joseph.

And that was it. Now to the unknowing person this might seem rather minor. However, to any male who has experienced the five years of senior schooling demanded by British Local Education Authorities, they would recognise that the effect would be shattering. On hearing this rebuke, John-Joseph shrunk in his seat, and did not rise until the day he was permitted to leave school. Four years further down the line, he only managed to achieve average G.C.S.E. results and now answered to the cooler name of John-Jo. Of course, it wasn’t all bad news. John-Jo’s character transformation meant he was now far more eligible to the girls, than the bookworm he had been previously. As a result, at age sixteen he had on his arm the prettiest girl in school - Deborah. Of course, her beauty was based on the accepted idea of female beauty at his school: a tan that looked like it had been administered by the annual electrical output of the national grid.

This may seem an unlikely series of events to affect British politics in such a colossal way. In fact, if one is to attempt to understand parallel universes, and the infinite amount of possibilities they throw up, it is unlikely that this exchange, between two twelve year olds of the opposite sex, would be pointed to (even by Nostradamus, having the prediction day of his life) as anything other than harmless, childish goading. Unfortunately, John-Joseph was just one in a long line of adolescents to realise that excelling in education, and gaining the admiration of teenage members of the opposite sex, just don’t go hand in hand.

Of course, had this exchange not taken place, Britain would have been no better off, as an even bigger fence was to be placed in John-Joseph’s political way; one which Tony McCoy would find impossible to clear, mounted on Red-Rum, with a rocket pack strapped to his back. After all, who is going to elect a corpse?

SEX, BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Sam knew he had a problem. Unfortunately, that was his problem. He was trapped in an impossible Catch 22. Were he blissfully unaware of his problem, there would be no problem at all. Now at four-forty in the morning, in a single bed on the island of Majorca, his familiar foe was about to strike again. It was an impossible paradox, whereby being aware of oncoming danger only strengthens the cause of one’s adversary. He was consigned to the fact that he would be locked in this bitter struggle for the rest of his life.

Sam had no illusions; his nemesis was not going away. How could it, when his nemesis was his own subconscious? He had two options: fight the good fight, or blow his head off with the nearest sawn off shotgun, taking his tireless demons with it. But given that he had grown quite attached to his head over the years, he was well aware that the demons would be present for some time to come.

“Oh, f&ck. Come on, Sam. I need you inside me,” the girl called out in ecstasy, oblivious to the family sleeping in the room next door.

But Sam wasn’t enjoying himself nearly as much as the girl. How can one enjoy an activity that strikes fear to one’s very core? Sam concentrated hard. He was fighting so hard to keep the thoughts that would start the downfall, from creeping into his mind. The mountain had started to shake and small balls of snow began to congregate. The avalanche, in Sam’s crotch, grew stronger by the second. Unfortunately, the more he tried not to think about it, the more he could not forget it.

“Come on, Sam. What are you waiting for? I’m ready for you.”

He felt he’d done okay, so far. In fact, Sam passed the early stages with flying colours. That no doubt added to the girl’s desperation for him to complete the task. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this was an unusual scene for Sam. In fact, this snapshot was Sam’s sex life, in a nutshell. With one minor omission (and that is minor with a capital M). The main event had never lasted longer than half a minute in the entirety of Sam’s sexual career. He suffered from premature ejaculation. Of course, he wouldn’t admit to it, even to himself. Sam tried everything he read about in medical textbooks, on the Internet, or heard about on impossibly expensive phone lines, listed in the back of Sunday newspapers. It was all to no avail.

Before one date, with a lady who had made it clear in no uncertain terms that it was to be his lucky night (if you can call an hour of abject misery, luck), he tried the trick of excessive masturbation. He was assured by a friend that it would definitely keep the wolf from the door. In the six hours preceding the date, Sam ejaculated six times. Surely, this would mean that even Cleopatra, complete with Lindsey Dawn McKenzie’s bosom, could not bring him to orgasm. Unfortunately, when it came to entering, he found to his horror, it was a feeling akin to inserting his phallus, slowly, inch by inch, into the sharpest cheese grater ever concocted in the flaming bowels of Hades.

On this unusually thunderous Majorcan evening, he avoided any consumption of alcohol, as that tactic was exhausted some five years earlier. On that occasion, armed with the knowledge that alcohol reduces the chance of early ejaculation, he had spent the full day in the pub consuming amounts of alcohol, the like of which, Oliver Reed couldn’t even dream of. Unfortunately, when push came to shove, his penis wouldn’t have stayed erect, even if tied tightly to Nelson’s column.

“Now, Sam. I need you,” whispered the girl, in a voice that she no doubt presumed was sexy. However, given that she had a broad, Boycott-esque, Yorkshire accent, it came out more Queen’s speech sexy, than Marilyn Monroe wishing happy birthday to JFK sexy. If this girl’s masculine tones could not assist Sam in his lifetime pursuit of the national average seven-minute sh@g, nothing would.

Sam gripped his pulsing member (so called by romance novelists when attempting to eroticise, what is in fact, a particularly grotesque construction) firmly. It’s unlikely that God consulted the pre-creation equivalent of Di Vinci or Michelangelo before sending the penis off for production. Sam clasped his penis tightly, and aimed it at its target. The war analogies can continue, since Sam could feel that his weapon was certainly locked and loaded. Literally millimetres from Nirvana, Sam could feel an eruption forming in his penis. Instinctively (well, it is instinct when it has happened to a person as often as to Sam), he went for the tip of his penis to squeeze it to safety, as the medical pamphlets suggest.

It was all in vain though. It was as useless as trying to stop the River Nile from overflowing, by using a single, garden fence.

“Nooooo.” Sam groaned, as his recurring nightmare struck again. The girl was showered a little earlier than she might have hoped. If you’re struggling to appreciate Sam’s partner’s anti-climax, imagine Schumacher being showered in Magnums of Verve Clique, whilst still sat on the starting grid.

THE TIDE TURNS

“As predicted, the turnout in tonight’s local elections has indeed been alarming,” reported the BBC News correspondent.

The press had been reporting all week on their predictions of an all time low percentage of the population bothering to turn out to vote. But not even the most cynical Fleet Street hack could have predicted that night’s results.

The result should have sent shock waves through the British political machine, but Westminster barely batted an eyelid. The times, they were indeed a changing. If only someone would have bothered to notice. One thing is certain, it went unnoticed among the throngs and thongs of holidaymakers, staggering about the island of Majorca