Seaford author publishes first book
A SEAFORD author has had his first novel published.
Chris Morton, 34, penned the book English Slacker, which follows 18-year-old student Chambers who fresh from his final college exams is enjoying a summer of parties and drinking with his friends.
But what seems an innocent and routine set of social events soon turns into a nightmare, as Chambers experiences suppressed memories, which could be related to the recent disappearance of his best friend Colin. Chris said: “The novel is based on a novella I wrote when I was 22. The idea for that novella came from a song by a Scottish band named Arab Strap called The First Big Weekend.
“This was a spoken word song in which the vocalist tells the informal story of what he did during the first weekend of his summer holiday.
“The conversational style of the piece was uniquely addictive and I thought that it’d be great to write a book in the same style and about the same subject matter basically concerning going out and getting wasted with all your friends, bumming around, being a teenager and not doing a hell of a lot.
“Also, when I was in my late teens to early twenties and getting into reading adult fiction for the first time I remember finding it quite difficult to find a book that spoke to me about the life I was living and the feelings I was going through.
“I felt there was plenty of music to relate to but with books there was Catcher in the Rye and that was about it.
“I was not as excited as you might think about getting published. Of course it was always a dream to write a real book, hold it in my hand, see it on the shelf at Waterstones or Borders which is now impossible unfortunately etc, and if I was twenty-something I’d be as exited as hell but unfortunately I’m almost 35 and due to living quite a colourful life so far I’m actually only qualified to teach English as a foreign language and not much else.
“Consequently for the last few years I’ve taken my writing rather seriously. I want to do it as a job. Be a writer. So rather that breaking out the champagne I see getting published as nothing more than the first step; the bottom rung of the ladder so to speak.”
Chris studied both biology and creative writing at Sussex University before opting for the exotic lifestyle of teaching English in Asia.
He said he has already started work on his next set of stories.
English Slacker was published as a paperback original on June 1 priced £7.99 while the ebook is priced £2.49 on Amazon Kindle and the iPad iBookstore.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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