Ken Edwards

My new novel The Grey Area will be published by Grand Iota in January 2020. This is what the cover will look like: You can read a few excerpts from it in earlier posts on this blog. Grand Iota is running a subscription scheme to enable it to publish this book alongside Fanny Howe's Bronte Wilde , an early novel of hers, now revised and set to be published in the UK for the first time. So if you'd like to sponsor publication of my book and Fanny's, please head over to the Grand Iota website .

Every day the future comes nearer; every single day that passes, and they pass much more quickly now, it approaches; but it gets no clearer, no more decipherable than at the beginning – the beginning? – what I mean to say is, at the time when I was closer to the beginning, when my senses were more rudimentary. And now as I bring myself to write this, in many ways it gets more difficult, because I am no longer relying on those long-ago set-down accounts of what happened, and when, and wherefore, etc etc; no longer building on those familiar narratives but on the thin air of now. You know, like the cartoon character running from some assailant towards the cliff edge and continuing to run beyond, without noticing for a short while thereafter that there is nothing to support his pattering little feet until he looks down and then of course the shock of awareness, of seeing for the first time the yawning space beneath him, provokes his belated downfall. It’s a familiar trope, perhaps rather ...

The bus stop at the Barbican Gate, five minutes’ walk from the Dead Level Business Park, and just past the fork in the road by the abandoned Barbican inn, was deserted. The glass of the panel on the stop sign where the timetable should have been affixed was missing – indecipherable, faded graffiti occupying that space – but undoubtedly the bus departing the Sanctuary Café, Deadmans Beach, at 16:35 – that is to say, two hours later than the service that might have been caught by Edith Watkins on that fateful March day a year and six weeks previously – was due any minute.       The time difference was intended to allow for the change in sunset time, including the introduction of daylight saving, since then. Sunset would have taken place around six o’clock then, and soon after eight now.       But the weather was overcast.       A small velvet bag containing two dice was extracted from a left-hand pocket. The dic...

Before I continue posting extracts, here's a bit about my book: The Grey Area is a novel of approximately 93,000 words, divided into thirteen chapters. Although in part it uses the tropes of detective fiction, and is subtitled “A Mystery”, it is not a conventional crime or mystery novel. The narrative is set in a fictional landscape, but one which will be familiar to those acquainted with coastal locations in Sussex and Kent. Most of the action takes place between the village of Deadhurst and the nearby settlement and fishing community of Deadmans Beach, with excursions into the marshlands beyond. The central characters are: •    Phidias Peralta, a private detective, who is living illegally in a unit within the Dead Level Business Park, and appears to be fleeing some private demons from his past. •    Lucy White, his assistant, a single mother living in Deadmans Beach with her seven-year-old son George. The story proceeds by way of three “modes”, ...

I've abandoned this blog for over a year, but ... My latest novel, The Grey Area , has been completed for a few months now. I'd hoped Unthank Books, the publishers of Country Life , would take it on, but it appears they are no longer commissioning new single-author books, although they have not said so publicly. Looks like the same story elsewhere in independent publishing. Very gloomy. Anyway, while I investigate other ways of publishing this book, which I'm very happy with, I'm going to post extracts here. This first one you can also find in the latest, terrific issue of Golden Handcuffs Review , which is my novel's first appearance of any sort in actual print on actual paper. But check out that issue also for the David Antin feature, for poems by Maurice Scully and Alice Notley, the latest instalment of Peter Quartermain's memoir, and, may I modestly add, my own appreciation of the late, great David Bromige. I am also honoured to be sharing page space wit...

Just finished the first draft today of the novel I have been working on, on and off for at least the past three years, and very actively for the past 12 months, The Grey Area . It's come out at just over 90,000 words. It's my take on the detective novel, but it doesn't follow the rules and does odd things. At the moment, it's an unwieldy beast, and there are some glaring inconsistencies. And infelicities. When I can bring myself to read it through, I will assess what needs to be done next. I hate reading my first drafts, but I enjoy revising better than writing. It's not so scary. I'm hoping a readable version will emerge by early next year. For now, I will put it aside, because on Sunday Elaine and I are off to Zambia. We're going on the safari holiday I've been promising myself since I was about eleven years old (and collecting the set of 50 African Wildlife cards, one of which was tucked into every packet of Brooke Bond tea my mum bought). The...

You can now obtain a book with no name from your favourite online or offline retailer. Publication date is officially October, but I am told it can be pre-ordered now. Very pleased with this one. Thanks, Shearsman Books and Tony Frazer for taking it on and making a great job of it. As the back blurb rightly states: It is not a book of poems. It is not a long poem. It is not a novel. Nor a volume of short stories. It is not a work of philosophy. It is not an object – like a stone. Yet it drops into the well of nothingness and is never heard of again. a book with no name fuses the optimism of Beckett with the hyperrealism of Stein.