Johnny Gaunt
Released April 2027
Offcumden
Off-cum-den
(old Yorkshire dialect)
Off-comer; outsider;
One who doesn't belong
South Yorkshire, 1984From his garden shed, thirteen-year-old Chrissy-boy Foster is watching his world fall apart. His dad’s in prison for a picket-line fight. His mum is on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Sadie — Chrissy-boy’s sister — is kept locked in her room. ‘She’s poorly’ is all he’s ever told. But despite his sheltered upbringing, Chrissy-boy knows there’s much more to her frightening condition.When his dog runs away, Chrissy-boy teams up with two other school outsiders: Aasha, a Kashmiri girl newly moved onto the council estate; and Mickey, from the old traveller family that runs the local scrapyard. Their search pulls them into Black Carr, the sprawling primal forest that edges the council estates of Rother Valley. Beneath those woods, something is waking — something ancient and evil, something that connects their families and their secrets, their guilt.As the three friends journey deeper into the heart of the valley, they begin to uncover the horror that their parents and grandparents had tried to bury . . . but that the land itself refuses to forget.
Limited Advanced Review Copies available for request through NetGalley and Penguin Random House
About
Born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, my early life was peppered with a number of high profile jobs: scrapyard worker; roofer; night-shift garage attendant; door-to-door salesman; call-centre operative; and, for two weeks (and this brevity is another story), member of a railway gang.Sometime during this dizzying period, I managed to pick up an English Literature and Philosophy degree from the University of Sheffield, moving to London in 2003 to find fame and fortune. Instead, I ended up training as a radiographer. In the early 2010s, the north called but straying off course I found myself in Aberystwyth where, in 2019, I was lucky enough to gain a distance-learning grant from the Welsh Government. I got my Masters in Creative Writing from Manchester Met in 2022, and soon after sent an early first chapter draft of Offcumden to The Literary Consultancy PEN Factor Writing Competition. Somehow, managing to win.After a year in Guernsey (yet another story), the north called again, only this time, overshooting, I landed way out in Western Scotland where I now live with my wonderful and very courageous wife and two beautiful daughters. In between taking x-rays at the local hospital, I can be found in my cabin working on my second novel, tapping away on my laptop and convincing myself there's something wrong with the word count tool.