inspiration

What Happened To Pip Collins?

~ ChanAtkins ~ 3 Comments

A short story

local graffiti – artist unknown – photo is mine

Hey everyone,

I hadn’t quite finished the post I had in mind for today so I’m going to share this short story with you instead. And yes, that does mean the writing is flowing again! More on that next week. I wrote this piece in response to a prompt on Medium, which instructed you to go outside and take a random photo then write a story inspired by it. This graffiti was added recently to one of the poles on the bridge down the lane from us. I thought it made a cool photo and a cool short story prompt so here we go. (This is only a second draft story and I do intend to polish it up a bit more in the future.)

What Happened To Pip Collins? (Working title)

The ghost hunt starts at the little stone bridge, just a ten minute walk down the lane. My older brother Ed photographs the graffiti and starts scribbling in his school notebook while I pluck catkins from the young ash trees and toss them into the shallows.

For a long time, this little note, this graffiti from another time, was the only clue in a missing person’s investigation but three weeks ago, another note was found on the wall of an abandoned mill. The mill is on the other side of the Stour, what we call the ‘big river’ and it was my brother who made the connection to this one. He immediately knew what he was going to do his local history project on: the disappearance of ten-year-old Philip Collins in 1978.

He had a hard time convincing his history teacher but he didn’t give up, arguing that everything that happened in the past is now history and if the boy vanished locally then that makes it local history. For the record, I think he is right about this. Plus, I really want to see a ghost.

Bored of tossing catkins, I indulge in a quick game of pooh sticks, snatching up twigs and throwing them over the mossy bridge, before darting to the opposite side. Ed rolls his eyes and I sense his impatience, but I see no urgency in the putting away of childish things. My first twig gets stuck on the large fallen tree that cuts the shallows in two. My second bobs up and over it, and the third never emerges from under the bridge.

Meanwhile, Ed consults his notes, reading from a newspaper clipping he found online, printed out and stuck into his project book:

‘Ten-year-old Philip Collins, known by his family as ‘Pip’ was last seen leaning over the railings of the small stone bridge on Hurn Court Lane, Hurn Village, Christchurch.’

I drift towards Ed and peer over his shoulder. He has the photograph of Pip in his project book too. We both stare at the black and white shot of a beaming, dark-haired boy who looks like the cheekiest kid who ever lived. His huge grin, his lips pressed together as if swallowing laughter, and his shining eyes all suggest a little rascal. He’s wearing dark coloured shorts and wellington boots, and a dark zip up cardigan which looks too small for him. He’s clutching one of those tiddler catchers, you know, a colourful net on a bamboo stick. Ed reads on:

‘A couple walking their dog across the bridge reported the sighting the following day after the alarm had been raised. Mr Weathers told the police that the boy was leaning over the railings and appeared to be alone. They said hello and walked on. They walked their dog in Ramsdown Forest on the opposite side of Christchurch Road, and when they later walked back the same way over the bridge on Hurn Court Lane, the boy was gone. He had however left a note on the railings of the bridge.’

Ed runs his finger over the next photo in his book, one taken back in 1978 of the graffiti left behind. He brings up his phone and compares pictures. It is amazing how the writing has been preserved over time. It’s even more amazing that a second note was hiding on the side of the mill all these years.

‘What next?’ I ask my brother. 

He scrambles to his feet, swipes his messy brown curls out of his eyes and gestures to the landscape around us. ‘I’ll take some more photos.’ He points to the muddy banks below and the barbed wire fence beyond. ‘Go up there a bit and explore, take more photos. He might have done that, don’t you think?’

I shrug. ‘My guess is he fell in at the weir, at Throop. Left this note, walked all that way, left the other note on the mill and decided he’d had enough and he’d go home.’

Ed nods, his brow knitted in serious thought. ‘I think so too. The bridge over the weir was wooden back then.’ He opens his book, shows me another photo, this time from the 80s. ‘See? Dangerous. They never found a body though.’

‘Isn’t his mother still alive?’

Ed nods again. ‘Yep, and most of his siblings.’

That’s right — Pip came from a large family who lived in Christchurch. He had two older brothers, one older sister, one younger sister and another baby brother. I bet his poor mother was run ragged. 

‘But this is a ghost investigation,’ I remind Ed. ‘Not a missing person’s investigation.’

Ed ignores me, stuffs his book in his backpack and goes down to the water. In order to keep his project classed as local history, his teacher suggested interviewing people about the ghost sightings over the years. My guess is the teacher didn’t want Ed harassing the family or the police about the cold case of the missing Pip Collins. Better to let him scratch around after ghosts, then they can all have a laugh in the staff room after.

I walk across the fallen log in my sandals, wincing when the cold water laps over my toes, holding my arms out to either side for balance. Electric blue damselflies hover above the water in pairs, and every now and then the drone of a huge dragonfly makes me squeal and duck. I don’t fall off though and when I get back to the bank, Ed is climbing back over the barbed wire with only one scratch on his ankle to show for it.

‘What now?’ I ask, following him back up to the bridge.

‘Interviews,’ he says, flicking through the photos on his phone. ‘I’ll have everything in place then. Original newspaper reports, interviews with his family at the time, the photos, the timeline, oh, and the route he took to the mill which no one knew about until recently.’

‘Think they’ll open up the case again?’ I ask him.

He shrugs. ‘They should. No one ever saw him at the mill or on the way there or back. They should at least put it in the news, see if they can jog any memories.’

Our mission for today is the two people locally who have claimed to see a ghost that resembles poor Pip Collins. 

The first is Mr Coleman; a retired gamekeeper who lives in one of the cottages on Hurn Court Lane. He’s a bit stern, always used to scare the shit out of us when we were little kids, stomping about with all his camo gear on, well trained Labradors at his heels. He’d ask if we’d seen any suspicious characters about, his dark eyes narrowed on ours. 

We find him in his back garden, smoking a cigarette while he waters his runner beans. A grey-faced black Lab lies in the sun behind him. He’s still wearing his camo gear.

‘I never saw the lad,’ he relays to us once Ed has his phone recorder running. ‘Not when he was alive, anyway. They didn’t come up this way, the family. This was all unfamiliar territory to the lad, see.’

‘His mum said he ran away to teach her a lesson,’ Ed pipes up.

‘That’s what I heard too,’ nods Mr Coleman. ‘Was feeling left out when his latest sibling arrived, something like that. Decided to teach them all a lesson and ran away.’ He chuckles a little at the thought then gives us a pained look. ‘Kids were always doing things like that back then. They ran free and had fun without adult supervision. Not like you lot glued to your screens inside your houses.’

We don’t take the bait. Ed smiles politely. ‘He had run away before,’ he says and Mr Coleman nods. ‘But he had never come up to Hurn from Christchurch.’

‘So, he didn’t know the area,’ Mr Coleman goes on. ‘Expect he walked up from Fairmile Road, kept going straight across Blackwater. Traffic was lighter back then, of course. And it wasn’t unusual to see kids out on their own at that age.’ He throws us another dirty look. ‘No doubt he spotted the lane all shady and curious, and decided to cross over and wander down to the bridge. Lovely place to play. Private. Sheltered by all those trees. Kids were always playing out alone back then. Plenty of tiddlers to catch.’

‘He didn’t take his net that day,’ Ed points out. ‘Nothing was found at all. Not sweet wrappers, or even footprints.’

Mr Coleman looks sad. ‘That’s right, I remember. No sign. No trace. Apart from that note on the railings but who can be sure it was him that did it?’

‘His mother said it was his handwriting,’ I shrug.

He shrugs back. ‘No one knows for sure, but I can see why everyone thought so. Cheeky little sod thought running away was funny.’

‘What do you make of the second note that’s been found on the mill?’ asks Ed.

The old man scratches his nose. ‘I’m not sure it’s connected. The writing looks different to me. They’re having it analysed or something, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, so we might know more soon, but that would make sense wouldn’t it? That he carried on down the lane, turned left at Pig Shoot and followed the river to the weir bridge?’ Ed brings out the old photo. ‘It was dangerous back then. He could have fallen in there after writing on the mill.’

‘What did the second note say again?’

Ed shows him and reads it out at the same time. ‘It says, no one can see me.’

‘Little sod,’ sighs the old man. ‘I don’t know. S’pose we’ll have to wait to see what the experts say, but that’s not where I saw the ghost, so I’m sceptical myself.’

‘Tell us about the ghost, Mr Coleman.’

He nods and settles back on the wicker garden chair. ‘It was just the once,’ he relays, his voice low and soft. ‘Early morning. I was taking the dogs over the forest and I came up towards the bridge. There was mist on the water, I remember that, and the sun was shining through the trees. Spring time, it was. Everything in bloom.

‘And that’s when I saw this little figure standing on the bridge. He looked real to me. So real, the dogs barked and I called out to him. The railings were old and they needed replacing. I thought he might fall in. Mind you, it’s so shallow there, he’d have been all right, but still… He looked back at me, you know. I saw his little face. Pale, but he was smiling. Laughing, I think.’

Ed and I sit frozen on either side of Mr Coleman. We know the bridge and the shallows so well, we can see it perfectly inside our own heads. Though I don’t believe a word of it. Everyone knows Mr Coleman is fond of the drink.

Mr Coleman goes on to describe how he approached the boy and the boy vanished into thin air. He snaps his fingers at us. ‘Poof! Like that!’ 

That’s when me and Ed swap a look. I can feel the giggles rumbling to life in my guts and I know we have to get out of there soon.

‘And you have never seen the ghost again?’ Ed checks.

Mr Coleman shakes his head sadly. ‘Nope, never. But I know what I saw and I know it was a long time ago but it’s always stayed with me. The way he laughed and grinned then just vanished.’ His eyes cloud with memory as me and Ed swap another look. ‘I’ll never forget it.’

We leave him to his memories and seek out our second interviewee, Mrs Doreen Goldsmith, who lives in a retirement flat in Christchurch. It’s a long hot walk into town for Ed and me, but my brother looks ever more determined, and walks silently, refusing to be drawn into my childish musings and games.

‘I know what I saw,’ the old lady asserts as soon as we are seated beside her. She’s been wheeled outside to enjoy the sunshine, but has a knitted blanket tucked over her frail knees. She’s smiling at us, her old eyes twinkling. ‘And it wasn’t just the once. It was all the time, usually at dusk, when I was heading home. I worked in town you see, biked there and back every day. It was usually nearly dark by the time I cycled down that hill and over the bridge.’

‘That’s where you would see him?’ Ed checks.

‘Oh yes, always on the bridge, where he left the note. Always holding onto the railings and leaning over. And he would always look up when I drew near, and he would always smile and laugh.’

‘Did he ever speak to you?’

‘No.’ She looks momentarily sad about this. ‘He would only laugh. It frightened me at first, of course. I was just a girl myself. But I recognised him from the newspapers and I tried to tell the police. Everyone thought I was crazy, of course.’

‘Other people claim to have seen a ghost there too,’ I remind her.

She smiles graciously. ‘Have you seen him?’ We both shake our heads. She leans a little closer. ‘You have to be there at the right time. It was always dusk for me, when the light was fading. The low sun would be reflecting off the water and he’d appear there in the beams, you see.’

Her story is strikingly similar to Mr Coleman’s, apart from the time of the day, but after we leave Ed makes a note in his book:

Coleman — a drinker

Goldsmith — has dementia

My brother seems sad and deflated when he leave the retirement home. We are exhausted but he says he can’t go home yet, not until he has followed Pip’s route to the mill and back.

So, that’s what we do, crossing over the old mossy bridge once again, then following the lane down to Pig Shoot, across the forde, and on towards the weir and the mill. We find the new note guarded by metal railings and police tape. With his phone zoomed in to maximum, Ed snaps a picture and we stare at the words side by side, comparing it to the one at our bridge.

No one can see me.

‘Coleman might be right about one thing,’ my brother murmurs, his expression troubled. ‘There are no random capitals in this one. Other than that it looks the same though, right?’

‘Right.’ I’m tired and I want to call it quits, but a sort of fire takes over Ed’s eyes and he sets off suddenly, muttering to himself. ‘What is it?’ 

I struggle to keep up but Ed hurries over the weir and heads back to the forde, where another old stone bridge takes us over the water. He’s possessed, I think, watching as he clambers over the railings and drops himself into the water. It’s shallow, but cold, and he gasps as his hands curl around the railings, and his eyes skim up and down as if searching for something.

Then, my brother starts shouting. He looks insane. Stood in the water, his lower half soaked through, pointing and shouting and laughing and crying all at once.

He helps me over to see what all the fuss is about and there it is. The source of Ed’s explosive reaction. Another note.

A man is following me with a gun.

I tremble, what does this mean? Ed takes a photo, then climbs out, dragging me with him. He starts comparing the three notes while I shiver on the bridge beside him.

‘How did you know?’

‘I saw it years ago! Remember when you were about four and you had that rainbow coloured bouncy ball? And it went in the water right here?’

I shake my head. ‘No. I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Mum and dad were on their bikes further back. I was nine. I climbed and got the ball back for you and that’s when I saw the note. Pip must have been in the water when he wrote it! I only saw it because I’d climbed in too. Mum and dad were furious with me, said it was dangerous.’

I stare at him and it slowly sinks in. ‘Bloody hell, Ed!’

‘I know, I know! It’s been bugging me since the note on the mill was found. I knew I knew something, you know? You know when there is a memory or a thought or a feeling and you just can’t grab onto it?’

‘We need to tell the police,’ I say, my arms folded over my damp clothes. 

‘Man with a gun,’ Ed muses, putting his phone away. ‘Man with a gun.’

We have the same thought at the same time and turn towards each other suddenly.

Around here, the gamekeeper would have been the only person with a gun.

Giving Myself Permission to Draw Reminds Me Of When I Gave Myself Permission To Write

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

Reclaiming my love of drawing

When I was a child I’d lose hours alone with a notebook, writing stories about lost and neglected animals and illustrating them myself. If you’d asked me back then I would have told you I longed to be an author and I’d also have told you how much I loved drawing. I did go on to study GCSE Art but that was where my attempts to draw came to an end. I stuck with writing for longer – though it fizzled out when I became a mother and I lost an entire decade where I did not write at all.

As a teenager, I used to sketch the characters in the stories I was working on, including The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, but post aged sixteen, I barely drew again. That’s as far as I allowed my skills to develop.

It’s sad when we grow up and lose our creativity and it happens all the time and to most people. Children are naturally creative in everything they do. They are curious about materials, they like to dance, move around, play make believe, sing, make noise, scribble and paint and make up stories. They don’t worry about being ‘good’ at it and they certainly don’t entertain the idea of making a ‘career’ out of it.

Yet as adults it is those two concerns that inevitably lead to us distancing ourselves from the creative pursuits we used to enjoy.

I remember going through a phase as a teenager where I would write little poems onto notepaper then illustrate the edges and paint over with water colours. I remember being thrilled with the results! Years later, when I finally got back into writing, I told myself it was just novel writing and that poetry was not my thing. Even when reclaiming writing, I was still putting up barriers to my creativity.

My journey with writing will never be over and I’m happy to say that as the years passed I naturally found myself progressing to embrace all forms of writing. Novels, short stories, flash fiction, essays, articles and yes, poetry! I love them all and practice them all every week.

What stopped me writing for a decade was not thinking I was good enough and not believing I could earn money from it. I’m so relieved that the urge continued to persist inside of me and that eventually it grew too big to ignore. I finally gave in and the dam burst in spectacular fashion. I recently published my twenty-third book, and earn monthly from writing in various forms on Medium. I’ve also had essays and articles published by various magazines over the years.

I have confidence in my writing now, but I still embrace progression and experimentation with it.

Back to drawing. Recently I started to get a very strong urge to draw. It reminded me very much of those urges to write I eventually gave into. It’s like a little bit of the old you poking relentlessly at your brain demanding to be let in, remembered and nurtured.

I started feeling like I wanted to create a graphic novel version of Black Hare Valley for crying out loud, that’s how strong the urge was. I gave in, to some extent. I didn’t plan to. But I was buying some supplies for my kids writing clubs in The Range and spotted some nice sketchbooks and before I knew it I had tucked one under my arm. It felt like giving myself a treat. Giving myself permission.

I’ve started playing around with ideas of sketches for Black Hare Valley. I’ve had fun with a few art tutorials and workbooks and had some helpful tips from my son who is studying A-Level Art. I’ve been pleased with my efforts but do you know what instantly occurred to me when I examined them?

one of the hares I’ve drawn for Black Hare Valley – just practicing!

They are the same level as the character drawings I did as a teenager. I haven’t gotten any better or matured my skills because I did not keep it up. Imagine how much better I would be at drawing now if I had not pushed that side of me away for so long!

Now every time I feel a bit embarrassed about my artistic efforts, and every time I feel like I am wasting my time or shouldn’t be doing it, I remind myself of how and why writing came back to me. It came back to me by itself. It hammered at my mind until I let it back in and once it had me in its grip again it refused to ever let go.

the bookshop in Black Hare Valley – a major location!

And because I stuck with it and practiced it, and tried new things, and studied it, and learnt from others, and got feedback, and kept going…. I got better!

I need to remind myself that the same thing applies to art.

the white hare – a character in Black Hare Valley – needs work!

My challenge is this: I want to illustrate the entire Black Hare Valley series myself. To do this I need to discover, embrace and improve my own style, much like writers do with their voice. I feel excited. I feel motivated. Whatever happens, it is good to have a challenge and a new hobby!

the ruins in Black Hare Valley – a major location
The raven in Black Hare Valley – another character – just pencil so far, will be going over with pen.

This Week I Had Five WIPS Vying For Attention In My Head

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

I Need More Me’s!

Image by TyliJura from Pixabay

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you’ll probably know that I find it impossible to work on just one writing project at a time. Ideally, I would love to. One story idea, one plot, one set of characters, one job to do! I envy writers whose minds work like that. It must feel very in control.

It’s never that way with me. There is always the book ready to be published that needs quotes posting, cover sorting, final edits and so on. There is always the current priority work-in-progress and sometimes that’s a series, not a standalone. And there are always the future books, the ideas, all in various stages!

It’s been like that this week, and then some.

First, I am trying to draw attention to The Mess Of Us which came out on Valentines Day. That means promoting it as best I can and creating graphics of quotes from the book and reviews as they come in.

Second, I am preparing my next book for release at the end of the year. I need to sort out the cover, finalise the blurb and send it to my editor. Recently I read it through on my kindle to pick up any lingering typos or plot holes and found it to be a very clean read. But it still needs that professional edit and proofread. I hope to release The Dark Finds You towards the end of the year.

Third, I’ve been adding stories and poems to my next anthology Dirty Feet. I’ve no idea when I will release this, but every now and then I add new bits and pieces to it, so it’s always on the go.

Next, I’ve been working on my official work-in-progress, Black Hare Valley. It was never meant to be a series but book one inspired two more books and then I had the idea of a diary style companion book. That’s what I am writing at the moment, and once that is finished, I will be going through each book in the series with a fine toothed comb, ensuring there are no plot holes and a clear timeline that makes sense!

But as well as all this I started getting the urge to create a graphic novel style version of Black Hare Valley. Don’t ask me why. I can’t even draw very well! I haven’t done anything about this. But the urge is there and it’s very strong!

Plus, I’ve been thinking a lot about which book I will work on once Black Hare Valley is complete and decided it will be The Seventh Child, a family mystery thriller. This idea has been building for a while, and I already had the whole plot, the location and the character bios in a notebook. A while back I wrote the first chapter, because, why not? This week, this book has been screaming at me to get on with it! Please, someone tell it it has to wait!

On top of that another book idea keeps growing and swelling and this week I figured out exactly how I will tell it. Anya and Cody Start The Apocalypse is an idea that came to me in bits and pieces with the characters showing up first. I eventually started a notebook to keep track of things and soon had character bios and locations and a loose plot. That plot has since tightened up but I was still unsure of how to tell the story. Then I figured it out. Epistolary style! The book will be written by another narrator who is writing a dissertation project on Anya and Cody after their story is over. It will be told by the narrator compiling diaries, letters, news reports and social media posts in order to explain what happened. I’ve written diary style books before, (The Mess Of Me and The Mess Of Us, plus the companion diary for Black Hare Valley) but I’ve never tried anything like this so I am really, really excited! And I want to do it now!

But it has to wait! I will carry on adding bits to the notebook of course. But that doesn’t mean it will shut up.

My head is full of all these stories all the time. I wish I could create some extra me’s or some extra hands to get it all done. I think I will feel better once I finish the Black Hare Valley diary book. I can then fully concentrate on getting the whole series ready for publication in 2026. I would love to have the first book ready to go in January 2026, for example. The rest of the books will follow one by one throughout that year, and in that time I will be busy writing The Seventh Child.

Then it will be Anya and Cody’s turn…

What is wrong with me?

The Story Behind My Next Book

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Last week I shared the news that my 22nd book will be released next month!

If you’d like to check it out, here is the preorder link! https://amzn.eu/d/0gSeWqen

At Night We Played In The Road was four years in the making and today I want to tell you the story and inspiration behind the novel.

Four years ago I was in the process of rewriting and revamping The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. I still think having the power and control to change and revamp independently published books is one of the best things about being an indie author.

At the time, I was changing what was two books (The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and its sequel, This Is The Day) into a five book series. The original book was huge, and when I got the idea for new material and events that could be sandwiched between that story and the sequel, I knew I had to turn it all into a series. The original book was split into two, a third book with new events was written and made into book three, the sequel became book four, and just doing all of that gave me ideas for material for book five.

It felt like a crazy and risky thing to do at the time, especially considering I had lots of other books lined up to work on, but it felt like the right thing to do. And it was. I am hugely proud of that gritty 5-book series. I feel like it is a whole universe you can really dig deep into. The series, of course, links to other books I’ve written, where characters are mentioned or the same locations are used. This led to me creating a universe of inter-linked books and At Night We Played In The Road is one of them.

But back to where the idea came from…

At the time I had ideas for book 5 in The Boy… series, and one day I was watching the TV show Supernatural with my eldest child in her bedroom. She had been badgering me for years to watch it and when I finally gave in, I loved it. I’ve rewatched the entire thing many times since then! And one of the things that really hooked me about the show was the relationship between the brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester.

Some might argue it is an unhealthy and co-dependent relationship, and they might be right, but essentially it is a loving and protective one, with each brother prepared to kill and die for the other. The older brother, Dean, has brought Sam up and throughout the show, is also a father to him. This really interested me and their unusual relationship was one of my favourite things about Supernatural.

During that period I was also rewatching Breaking Bad. That is another show I have watched multiple times! With these two shows playing on my mind, I started to get ideas for two characters. Two brothers.

Inspired by the relationship in Supernatural, I created Alfie, four years older than Tom. When Tom was born, their mother died in childbirth and their father, Fred, has never forgiven Tom for it. Unable to bond with the baby that caused the death of his beloved wife, Fred all but abandons Tom. In fact, Fred is unable to even look at his younger son. Instead, he throws his attention and his dreams into Alfie.

Inspired somewhat by Breaking Bad, I decided that Fred would be in the drugs business, something he has taken over from his own father and hopes to pass down to Alfie. A family business growing and selling cannabis.

I then wrote these brothers into book five of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and they became part of Danny’s story-line as he attempts to finally free himself from his criminal past. I had no intention of giving them their own book, but I fell so in love with them I started to get ideas about their back story.

As I wrote them into that series, the characters of Tom and Alfie just exploded to life in my head.

That’s the way it works and it feels like magic.

Suddenly, they had a back story, their own individual mannerisms and personality traits and their own dreams for the future. I still find creating characters one of the best aspects of writing! I absolutely love it.

I wanted Alfie to be the more serious of the brothers, the one with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He does not like what his father’s criminality has done to their family. His father seems oblivious to the harm he has caused his sons. ( He abandons the boys every time his own mental health declines.) A mixture of simply not being able to cope and occasionally being incarcerated, leads to the boys going in and out of foster care as children.

I gave Tom Tourette’s Syndrome as it was something I was researching a lot at the time. My youngest child was displaying a lot of verbal and physical tics and I spoke to a doctor about the possibility of it being TS, but eventually they calmed down, and though he still likes to make his noises, I don’t think an official diagnosis is needed. However, the research was not wasted when I gave these attributes to Tom.

Compared to Alfie, Tom is more sociable, friendly and reckless. He will do anything to get his father’s attention – including getting himself dragged into crime.

Alfie constantly feels like Tom is in danger and that he must protect him. He cannot let go of that feeling so he is unable to live or even develop independently as his own person. For this reason, he sometimes suffocates and stifles Tom, who eventually begins to rebel.

Tom adores his older brother though, and as he grows older, he realises that Alfie has given up everything for him.

The plot sees them eventually estranged as they take very different paths in life, and it alternates between the past so we can see how that led them to where they are now. And where they are now is a very dangerous place.

Alfie has not seen his brother in years but one day he is brought to his door with a gun to his head. Alfie must save his brother’s life one more time. And to do that, they must face the past they escaped from.

Here is the blurb!

When Tom Lane was born, he accidentally killed his mother and in the process, his father’s love.

Determined to protect Tom from their father’s criminal business, older brother Alfie must become Tom’s father, mother and protector. It’s the two of them against the world until the day Tom chooses a life of crime over Alfie’s dream of a normal life.
Ten years later the estranged brothers are reunited when a violent gang bring Tom to Alfie’s door with a gun to his head.

Tom’s partners in crime have turned on him and he needs his brother to save him one more time…


Thanks for reading!

See you next week!