Nobody, Nowhere, USA.
by Gret Heffernan (Author and photographer)
A lyric essay, full of poetry and photography, exploring the reasoning behind fanatical and extremist politics and religion in Midwest America. Gret Heffernan was raised a Creationist and a Republican in rural, agricultural Iowa. After university, she moved to London, England, where she became an agnostic and liberal thinker. After a decade, she returns home to help her mother recover from Sepsis. She investigates her own family, past, communities, and ideas for a possible unfractured future with an unbiased honesty that’s raw and necessary for revolutionary compassion.
Available from Waterstones and Amazon and wholesale from Gardners UK. Able to offer on consignment in the UK
Publisher: Backlash Press
ISBN: 9781068697289, Poetry, Essay
Number of pages: 118
Dimensions: 216 x 140 x 11 mm
Language: English
The Sculptor:
He was a sculptor. He brought things to life with his hands. He could carve a woman’s body from a dead tree. He could carve a rosebud from a dead tree, a cathedral, a rabbit, a soldier, a wand, but he chose her. Inside each of us lurks the thing we did not choose, but what is chosen for us. One day a catalyst for it appears. One day, death. One day, love. Art. And then, you begin.
Twelve India Ink Illustrations by Robert Littleford
by Gret Heffernan (author)
Robert Littleford (illustrator)
Jacques Beaumont is a French Haitian artist of Voodoo ancestry with the ability to resurrect the dead through his sculptures. The tragic death of his parents takes him to Callisto, a rural town in Illinois, where he falls in love with Elora Winter, a singer and abused wife of Arlo Donnelley, the town’s sheriff and ring leader of the area’s white supremacy group. Elora becomes pregnant with Jacques child and her murdered body is found in the river.
Jacques resurrects Elora into a woman free of Arlo’s oppression, but the murder precipitates a series of events that force Jacques into exile, where he is presumed dead. Elora arises with an uncanny ability of her own. A power she develops through her own artwork and Birdie’s guidance into a focus for revenge and a new way of living. When she finds Jacques, will she love him or hate him for what he’s done to her? And, can she remedy the woman she’s become or the child she’s lost? The Sculptor is a noir romance about reawakening the truths we inhabit inside our bodies, our artwork, our communities, and our minds.
Available from Waterstones and Amazon and wholesale from Gardners UK. Able to stock for consignment in the UK.
Publisher: Backlash Press
Language: English
Print length: 298 pages
ISBN-10: 1916266622, Fiction, Illustration
ISBN-13: 978-1916266629
Item weight: 513 g
Dimensions: 13.97 x 2.06 x 21.59 cm
Review
“Like Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ or Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ (two novels of which I was immediately reminded when I began ‘The Sculptor’), Heffernan has a gorgeous way with words.
Similes, metaphors, personifications, and other memorable and at times wonderfully jarring imagery fill every page of the work. Heffernan’s style works effectively as she spins an original story of voodoo, mysticism, and real-world racial bigotry and hatred. The book is a satisfying and challenging read, a moody and somber novel-length poem about love, loss, abuse, and a belief in something far beyond what the human world can offer.”
– Josh Hancock, indie blogger and author of ‘The Girls of October’
Dark Ansley 01, 02
Can a mutant poet, a clairvoyant, and a shapeshifter battle the devil and save the world from disease?
In a futuristic yet recognizable Britain, the Transformation Age has begun. A time following the end of oil, where Mad Cow Disease ravages the land and divides the population into infected or uninfected camps.
Hidden inside a cave near the small coastal village of Rye is a pearl with the ability to seed a blank planet. Rye has one of England’s last uncontaminated fields and remains an edible food source. Jude, the microbiologist who initially predicted the BSE infection, has become Rye’s fanatical prophet. Jude protects his congregation of survivors and the field by enlisting mindless foot soldiers called Keepers. The Keepers believe they are the evolutionary torchbearers for a new and pure human race. However, Jude has a dark secret. He is a man possessed, and his body is a conduit for the serpent from the Garden of Eden, who longs to find the pearl. Jude is brainwashing the survivors to suck out their souls, extract their DNA and create a terrible world of his own.
Only a poet, a clairvoyant, and a shapeshifter can stop Jude’s murderous tirade. But will they exorcise their own demons in time, or will misplaced love and jealousy stand in the way of humanity?
Available from Waterstones and Amazon and wholesale from Gardners UK. Able to stock on consignment in the UK.
Publisher: Backlash Press
Language: English
Print Length: 268 pages
ISBN: 1068697202, 978-1068697203
Genre: Fantasy 13 +
Weight: 345 g
Dimensions: 13.97 x 1.55 x 21.59 cm
Dark Ansley 02 is also available.
Two years have passed, and everything has gone wrong.
Dark Ansley, presumed dead by the others, has been living in London, a city of contaminated outcasts, writing poetry with a dead actress.
The serpent Jude has stolen Emoli, the infant containing The Original Seed, and taken him to his lair under the ocean. Giant water-baring spiders look after Emoli while Jude works out a way to extract the seed, grow his DNA collection, and prepare his army of cherubs and Heli flies.
Marianne has received her instructions for The Scattering, harnessed her abilities as a moth, and, having entered the minds of survivors, located the remaining Growers: Oren, Valentine, and Marianne’s old friend Beatrice, all of whom carry within them the seeds to the new planet.
Dex has prepared the tree for the Initiation, and now all they need to destroy Jude is a vaccine from the Phosforest, but the Phosforest can smell humans a mile away and makes it a sport to eat them. Only Dark Ansley, devoid of all sweat glands, can enter undetected. A carrion beetle tells Marianne that Ansley is still alive.
Will they convince him to lay down his bitterness and join their fight against Jude?
Will Marianne’s reawakened love for Ansley destroy her relationship with Dex? And how will Marianne cope with the jealousy she feels watching Beatrice and Ansley develop feelings for one another? Putting their love triangle aside, they must join the Growers, battle fire sprites and stag demons, save Emoli, battle June, begin Initiation, and prepare for The Scattering. Can they do it? Or will emotions prevent them from realizing the new planet and catapulting the human species into its next stage of evolution?
And, if they do make it to The Scattering, will Ansley be allowed to join them, or will he simply explode for nothing?
Available from Waterstones, Amazon, and wholesale from Gardners UK. Able to stock on consignment in the UK.
Dark Ansley 01 is also available.
Publisher: Backlash Press
Print Length: 218 pages
ISBN: 1068697210, 978-1068697210
Genre: Fantasy 13+
Weight: 281 g
Dimensions: 13.97 x 1.27 x 21.59 cm