Sloppy Seconds!

The man wipes the condensation off the cracked mirror with the threadbare sleeve of his sanitarium-issue sweatshirt. It’s a bitterly cold day and he tries to massage some feeling into his hideous, rubbery face. A face that only a motherfucker could love. A visage that was clumsily stapled back together after it was disfigured with a meat axe in an abandoned factory three years ago.

Free for Kindle readers all weekend, my 2020 book: SLOP SHOP! It has been refreshed with a brand new cover to complement my new book, THE DAMAGE MANUAL.

(Note: if you bought it first time round the cover should update automatically on your device!)

UK Link

US Link

While you are browsing on Amazon, why not check out The Damage Manual and the Hunger anthology from Urban Pigs Press. Here’s what the books look like in real life:

The Damage Manual

Hunger

2020 In Review

Well, that was a weird fucking year, wasn’t it?!

Writing provided a welcome distraction from the pandemic last year, so I wanted to compile a self-indulgent list of my 2020 publications.

Two short story collections, one novelette, four short stories and three pieces of flash fiction, as well as chapters in two separate Exquisite Corpse projects.

As always, there are a handful of unfinished projects still gathering dust, but I’m pretty happy with my output.

The books:

The Good Book: Fairy Tales For Hard Men (All Due Respect, January 2020)

Ten Pints of Blood: The Paignton Noir Case Files (Close To The Bone, June 2020)

Slop Shop: A Paignton Noir Mystery (self-published, August 2020)

The stories:

49,000 Ways To Die (All Due Respect, February 2020)

Demonology (Shotgun Honey, June 2020)

Recalibration (Pulp Modern Flash, August 2020)

The Heart’s Filthy Desire (Liars’ League, October 2020)

The Proper Disposal of Body Parts (Bristol Noir, October 2020)

Bone Train (Punk Noir Magazine, October 2020)

Ignorance & Want: A Paignton Noir Christmas Fable (Bristol Noir, December 2020)

The corpses:

The Exquisite Corpse: Volume 1

The Exquisite Corpse: Volume 2

Looking ahead to 2021, I’ve got stories upcoming in a couple of cool anthologies, there will be at least one new Paignton Noir novelette and I have got a new book lined up with one of my favourite crime publishers. I’m working on some really exciting material at the moment, so I may even be able to squeeze in an extra book at some point. Watch this space for more information!  

P.S. Early on – before the scale of COVID-related devastation was apparent – I started work on a new pandemic-themed mystery, in which I posed the question: what would Joe Rey be doing during a national lockdown? It was called Sick City. Ultimately, releasing it felt inappropriate, so I kicked it into the long grass. When we have finally turned a corner, the e-book might see the light of day, but for now it will remain a lost gem – the story that never was! (In the meantime, here’s the artwork, so you can ponder what could have been…)  

Author Spotlight @ 8 Million Books To Read

“It’s very likely the Joe Rey books are an acquired taste, but beneath the squalor of these down and dirty noirs is a protagonist with a rotted, but golden heart and prose that is always likely to elicit a chuckle, if not a hearty laugh.”

Many thanks to crime fiction enthusiast Scott Cumming for taking the time to put together this excellent blog which scrutinises my books. It is really interesting to hear his thoughts about the unfolding Paignton Noir series, as he wasn’t a fan of the earlier e-books, but enjoyed my short stories enough to persevere with the longer stuff. I’m glad he did!

Meat Bubbles & Other Stories, Ten Pints of Blood, Dirty Bullion, Slop Shop and Slug Bait all go under the microscope, as does my wrestling collection The Good Book: Fairy Tales For Hard Men. Check it out!

Slop Shop: Out Now

“The man wipes the condensation off the cracked mirror with the threadbare sleeve of his sanitarium-issue sweatshirt. It’s a bitterly cold day and he tries to massage some feeling into his hideous, rubbery face. A face that only a motherfucker could love. A visage that was clumsily stapled back together after it was disfigured with a meat axe in an abandoned factory three years ago. The staples got infected in an effluence-splattered holding cell and now form a rusted diagonal seam that bisects his warped face. He was never a good-looking man beforehand – his slack jaw and bottle-thick National Health Service glasses only serving to highlight his otherness. Now he looks fucking repulsive.”

From the Slop Shop prologue, ‘Hometown Scars’

New e-book time! First: a confession. I never intended to write Slop Shop. It definitely wasn’t on my hit-list of planned projects. I was flicking through Repetition Kills You to make a few continuity notes ahead of a separate project, and a few RKY supporting characters snagged in my consciousness. A lot of people die in that book, but these ones didn’t, and it got me wondering what they would be up to – three years on.

As for Rey, this book finds him in muscle-for-hire mode, no longer doing investigative work. An opportunity to find a meat tycoon’s daughter changes all that, and his demons come out to play. I love writing the PI stories and I love writing what I call the ‘rampage’ stories. This story combines both elements, but definitely feels more like a rampage story.

In terms of style and content (and the disjointed writing process), it resembles Skull Meat more than any other story of mine. See what you think!

Synopsis:

A wrongfully discharged mental patient with an axe to grind.

An elderly mob matriarch with a scorched earth revenge policy.

An ageing meat tycoon with a trophy wife and a missing daughter.

And a disgraced private investigator with blood on his hands.

Everyone’s a victimiser and everyone’s a victim. Dead meat is the best they can aspire to. Welcome to the SLOP SHOP.

SLOP SHOP is the nerve-shredding new thriller from the author of SKULL MEAT, SNUFF RACKET, SPINE FARM, SIN CLINIC and SLUG BAIT.

Buy on Amazon UK

Buy on Amazon US