Geoff Le Pard is visiting my Blog.

Today it is

To welcome author extraordinare Geoff Le Pard. I am really excited to have Geoff here on my blog so we can discuss book two in the life of Harry Spittle.

We first met Harry in Dead Flies and Sherry Trifle.

Now Geoff I have read and loved this book but why don’t you give everyone the blurb.

It’s summer 1976 and hotter than Hades. Harry Spittle, nineteen, is home from university, aiming to earn some money to go on holiday and maybe get laid. He expects he will be bored rigid, but the appearance of an old family friend, Charlie Jepson, his psychopathic son, Claude, and predatory wife Monica changes that. As his parents’ marriage implodes, Harry’s problems mount; before he knows it he’s in debt up to his ears and dealing in drugs. Things go from bad to worse when he is stabbed. He needs money fast, but now his job is at risk, his sister is in trouble and he has discovered a family secret that could destroy all he holds dear. Will Harry have to join forces with the local criminal mastermind to survive the summer and save his family? Can he regain some credibility and self-respect? Most importantly will he finally get laid?

Dead Flies will be free from 30th October 2019 to 3rd November 2019

Pre order here

For our American friends here

You know Geoff I really enjoyed that book, it had me laughing out loud one minute and wandering just how anyone was going to survive , the next.

Now tell us Geoff what is the blurb on this second book

When Harry Spittle, nearly qualified as a solicitor, is approached to write a Will for old acquaintance Sven Andersen, he is somewhat surprised but rather pleased. That pleasure sours after he finds that the Will Sven actually signs is very different to the one he has drawn up, with Harry as the executor. Disappointment turns to horror when he discovers that Sven has been winding up his late father’s criminal empire and a number of not very nice people are interested in the Will’s contents.

If he is to remain in one piece, able to continue his career in the law and save his on-off relationship with his girlfriend Penny, who is unfortunately under suspicion of murder, he needs to find out what’s happened to the money and distribute it according to Sven’s wishes. The trouble is Sven has not only hidden the assets but also the identities of those who benefit. Harry will have to solve a fiendish puzzle Sven has left behind with the help of his sister Dina before his world comes crashing down. With so many people depending on him, Harry knows it’s time for him to grow up – it’s just that he really, really doesn’t want to.

Set in 1981 to the backdrop of punk, Thatcherite politics and an upcoming Royal wedding, this is a book for those who like their nostalgia served with a side of humour and a dash of optimism all wrapped up in a compelling mystery.

pre order here.

For our American friends here.

Right now we have wetted everyone’s appitetite for these first two books can I offer you some coffee and a

Okay Question Time.

1 Tell us Geoff what gave you the idea for the two books so far.

The first book Dead Flies had its genesis on a writing course where I needed to provide some 10,000 words for the start of a book. I decided I wanted to write a comic story and took as my inspiration my first summer holiday home from university. It was 1976 and I’d had a year at Bristol studying law. But actually I’d had a bloody good time. My formative years had been spent in a New Forest cottage in the middle of nowhere. When we moved there in 1969 it seemed quite idyllic. By the time I discovered girls and hormones it was bloody intolerable. My parents were lovely, kind and absurd but my lack of transport was a major inhibition to a happy life. So living in a vibrant city, albeit a terminally wet one was a joy. Image coming home for three and a half months ‘holiday’. Broke, trapped and undersexed… I still shudder. I found a job in a local hotel and… boy, was that like entering a parallel universe? And that was it. I had the setting – the New Forest. The year – 1976. And a hapless broke undersexed student desperate to spend time away from a stifling home life.

For book two I took my hero – Harry Spittle – and moved him forward like me. In 1981 I had finished my degree and was living in a flat in London just about to qualify as a solicitor. Once again I was broke, and working in a surreal hierarchical structure of the law firm in the West End of London. I had the year and the setting and the employment situation. All I needed was to take forward the characters and mess with their lives. Such fun!

Really how lucky were you to have your settings so firmly fixed in your mind

2 How much were the stories based on personal experience.

Partly as I said above. None of the characters are exact copies of the people I remember though, in this latest book, it is true there were three partners in the firm I worked in – a white male senior partner who never seemed entirely with it; an amazing woman partner who juggled her family with being one of the best general practice lawyers I’ve known and a young man who was quickly promoted and growing into the role rather painfully. But there the accuracies of their characters leaves us for the fantasy of the author’s imagination.

3 How much was garnered from your years as a solicitor.

In a lot of ways the way things were done in the law (maybe still) goes unquestioned – rather like some of the nonsense we see in Parliament right now: it’s all custom and practice which no one wants to change. But step away and ask yourself if this is how you’d design it if starting again and, well, if you suggested men in wigs and tights hitting gavels you’d be certified to spend time in the dribble tank, spit spot! In one scene we see Harry having to appear before a Master in the High Courts of Justice. If the courts you see on TV are the epitome of English (and let’s not forget Welsh) justice then the Masters’ rooms are the splenetic dustbins of the court system. I accept you need somewhere to deal with the minutiae of the litigation process but why give so much power to disillusioned sociopaths? The Masters were the puffer fish of the judiciary, poisonous and one of the redundant parts of the evolution of the Common Law system, like the appendix and just as unpleasant if they ever burst. Harry is terrified of the treatment to be handed out to him; I was as well. It is no exaggeration that it was like one of those Japanese games shows we used to see in the 1980s. Designed for no purpose that to humiliate and to engender a sort of institutionalised schadenfreude in all parties. But for my experiences there, I might have become a litigator. Fortunately sense prevailed. It is nearly 40 years since I was last in front of a Master and I still break out with a sort of emotional psoriasis at the memory. Maybe they’re better now; they bloody well should be.

Maybe Geoff as Honore De Balzac says

“Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.”

4 So Geoff where do you do most your writing.

A mix. A fair bit on the kitchen table or on my memory desk – one I inherited from my dad on which he wrote his poetry. This is when I’m writing in the early morning and late evening (I tend to write into the wee hours). If I write during the day (the afternoon, like now as I write this) I’m in one of three cafes in the South London area where I live. Earbuds in, the world going on around me I can bash out many words, edit in detail or just pick up ideas. Oh and eat cake…

5. So to my final question Geoff are there anymore Harry Spittle books in the pipeline

Indeed there are. The next adventure for Harry, Penny and others is called Booms and Busts and is set in 1987. Harry has moved to a city of London firm and is up for a partnership (still following my career and life path). He lives in South London (as I did). He cycles to work. I think this will be the best book so far. It’s jam packed with madcap characters (Dina, his sister now works for MI5 for instance! And his mother is a successful operator in the hospitality sector.) We have the Thatcherite boom, the AIDs crisis, the crash and storms of October that year. Oh and is Natalie dying? That will be on the shelves early next year.

After that we move on to 1997, a book set in the period from March 16th when John Major prorogued Parliament for a general election (sound familiar?) up to the Blair victory that May (so much for proroguing being a short period, huh!). Harry is working in a smart new building in the City of London for a major law firm, he is now up for management, he’s married with a family, trying to get to grip with his mobile phone and desktop computer and the difficulties of being a grown up, something he never thought would happen to him. Provisionally called ‘Things Never Change’ I will write the first words of this one on 1st November as part of Nano. If all goes according to plan this one will be published in the second half of next year.

After that…. Well there’s the millennium, the crash of 2008 or maybe he should go and work for the Olympics, or just retire… we’ll see.

Plenty of scope there then Geoff.

Now it’s time to fill in your author info Geoff.
Geoff Le Pard started writing to entertain in 2006. He hasn’t left his keyboard since. When he’s not churning out novels he writes some maudlin self-indulgent poetry, short fiction and blogs at geofflepard.com. He walks the dog for mutual inspiration and most of his best ideas come out of these strolls. He also cooks with passion if not precision.

Geoff Le Pard’s Amazon Author Page

My Father and Other Liars is a thriller set in the near future and takes its heroes, Maurice and Lori-Ann on a helter-skelter chase across continents.
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Dead Flies and Sherry Trifle is a coming of age story. Set in 1976 the hero Harry Spittle is home from university for the holidays. He has three goals: to keep away from his family, earn money and hopefully have sex. Inevitably his summer turns out to be very different to that anticipated.
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Life in a Grain of Sand is a 30 story anthology covering many genres: fantasy, romance, humour, thriller, espionage, conspiracy theories, MG and indeed something for everyone. All the stories were written during Nano 2015
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Salisbury Square is a dark thriller set in present day London where a homeless woman and a Polish man, escaping the police at home, form an unlikely alliance to save themselves.
This is available here
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Buster & Moo is about about two couples and the dog whose ownership passes from one to the other. When the couples meet, via the dog, the previously hidden cracks in their relationships surface and events begin to spiral out of control. If the relationships are to survive there is room for only one hero but who will that be?
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Life in a Flash is a set of super short fiction, flash and micro fiction that should keep you engaged and amused for ages
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Apprenticed To My Mother describes the period after my father died when I thought I was to play the role of dutiful son, while Mum wanted a new, improved version of her husband – a sort of Desmond 2.0. We both had a lot to learn in those five years, with a lot of laughs and a few tears as we went.
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Life in a Conversation is an anthology of short and super short fiction that explores connections through humour, speech and everything besides. If you enjoy the funny, the weird and the heart-rending then you’ll be sure to find something here.
Amazon.co.uk
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In this the second part of the Harry Spittle sagas, Harry in now working in London, as a nearly qualified solicitor when an old acquaintance, Sven Andersen asks him to make his Will. If that wasn’t surprising enough finding out that Sven had not only died but also left Harry to sort out the mess of Sven’s affairs (including unwidning the residue of Sven’s father’s criminal empire) are problems Harry could well do without. Set in 1981 amongst the tensions of Thatcherite politics, the peak of punk and an upcoming Royal Wedding the Last Will of Sven Andersen will intrigue and delight as well as make you wince and wonder.
Amazon.co.uk
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Another cup of tea Geoff, more cake? So all that is left for me to say is

I am so happy you visited today. Well everyone else what are you waiting for get ordering you will not be sorry.