WORDCARVING
A platform for independent authors and poets
ABOUT
Storyteller at Heart
After five years of carving wood, I have now begun to carve some words. I realised that creating a written piece is not so different to chipping off flakes of wood as you sculpt an image. My first novel, Jack and Mo, has just been released. You can see more about it below. For independent authors finding a literary agent is difficult: it's competitive and a lottery at the same time. Understandably agents are looking at the bottom line, and if you are not a celebrity or have a massive social media following they are not likely to see you as an attractive, money-making prospect in the publishing world. Against this background I have created my own imprint, wordcarving.org. Feel free to get in touch if you want some advice on publishing, or would like to carve out some words yourself.
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JACK AND MO
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Two young men.
Two journeys.
Two shipwrecks.
August 2022
Wordcarving is extremely proud and excited to share their latest work Jack and Mo. Two years in the writing, and another six months editing and it is finally here!
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'A haunting and richly textured novel that shows how the past informs the present. What has been lived may live with us still.'
Alan Judd, award-winning author of A Fine Madness.
When the discovery of a Saxon sword hilt on an island off Helsinki is announced on the internet, Stuart Richardson, an unfulfilled museum curator recognises it could be a relic of the Battle of Hastings. But why so far away? If true it would change his life.
The story unfolds of Jack, a 15th century country boy who joins a ship and carries the sword hilt to the Baltic, and his 21st century counterpart Mo, an asylum seeker who discovers it on a beach cleaning project in Finland.
Stuart's integrity is challenged as he has to justify the authenticity of the find when it is over a thousand miles from where it should be. His mental health is affected. Or are his symptoms due to a spell cast upon him?
The novel has themes of migration, PTSD, the repatriation of museum objects and witchcraft.
"Writing is the geometry of the soul"
Plato
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