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The Minister of Chance Review

To celebrate next month’s paperback release of The Tally, for the next few weeks the e-book edition will be available to buy for less than half its usual retail price. You can buy a copy for just £0.77 / $1.22 by clicking here (if you live in the UK) or here (if you live in the USA).

Furthermore, in a few weeks’ time the annotated publisher’s proof - proudly being shown off by my gorgeous assistant, Charley, above - will be listed for auction on eBay, with all the proceeds being donated directly to the mental health charity MIND.

For those who’ve missed my reviews, of late I’ve been keeping busy reviewing Charley’s picture book library on Amazon. Click here to take a peek. When she’s old enough for Doctor Who, I might even have to bring this old site out of mothballs...

For any readers with young children, I would particularly recommend The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew it Was None of His Business by Werner Holzwarth - it’s a twisted tale of farmyard revenge that will amuse readers of any age, and that makes The Tally’s humour look high-brow by contrast.

Having spent years trying to sell my “bloke lit” novel (the opposite of “chick lit”) to literary agents, I’ve finally published it as an e-book. My hope is that it will sell a sufficient number of electronic copies to justify a modest print run in the future (and enable me to buy one of the Ultimate Collectors’ Edition Lego Super Star Destroyers).

The book can be read on a Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7 and indeed any PC, Mac or laptop with the appropriate software installed (visit the Kindle Store to download the appropriate free app for your device). You can buy a copy for just £1.71 / $2.75 by clicking here (if you live in the UK) or here (if you live in the USA).

The Tally is about a group of young men who are sharing a student house in East Yorkshire at a time when a number of students are unaccountably disappearing. Part comedy and part horror, the first half of the narrative is framed as a warped whodunit; the latter half as a horrid examination of identity and culpability. As well as showcasing the squalor and surreal slapstick of student life, the tale focuses on the thin lines that apparently exist between evil and madness, as well as perception and reality. Whilst I’m confident that most open-minded readers would enjoy the novel, above all else it has been written with the British “Student Loan Generation” in mind. It is not at all suitable for readers until 18 years of age and / or those easily offended. Younger readers of this site should not try to purchase a copy - it is not like Doctor Who.

As an independent author, I have very few means of promoting the book beyond electronic word of mouth, and so I would be very grateful if you could let people who you think might be interested in it know about the book and, if you can, post links to it. If you’ve enjoyed it yourself, please also consider writing a review or clicking the ‘like’ button. Reviews especially would be appreciated.

Perhaps more up the street of Who fans though will be Echo McCool: Outlaw through Time, by fellow local author Roger K Driscoll. It’s an agreeable halfway house between classic children's literature and the vibrant, much more fantastic adventures that generally see print or go before the movie cameras today - an absolute must for less than a quid. Click here to pick up a copy. Again reviews and ‘likes’ would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your support.

“...driven by an angry verve that takes us from realism and comedy,

through weirdness and philosophy, into the realms of horror...

Wolverson can switch from graphic descriptions of snakebite-flavoured vomit to

solipsist reflections on the nature of the mind, granting each a colourful turn of phrase.”

- Daniel Tessier, Immaterial

“...just when we begin to chuckle with, and at, the “meat puppet” characters, we are hit with

truly good writing that makes us stop in our tracks. When I die don’t let them take my eyes...

a writer who can take the common game of “Snake” and force me to consider

the nature of my existence is certainly a writer I would like to see more from.”

- Amazon Customer Review

“...an inevitable and effective contemporary tragedy but ridiculous too. You can have the main

characters bearing their souls to each other, talking about loved ones’ deaths and awful things

like that while Wolverson focuses on one of them really needing the toilet. It's the kind of

stuff that happens but no one admits to and so it makes the madness feel more real.”

- Amazon Customer Review

“...the Tally is more than just a university comedy / drama - it’ s got a really dark and

heavy philosophical side to it. A lot of horror comes from the terrible events that happen,

and the really brutal way how the writer describes them, but what’s really disturbing is the psychological horror and how the writer plays on your mind. I can’ t think of anything scarier than losing all sense of who you are and becoming the plaything of something evil,

whether that evil’ s a manipulative girl, a buried part of you that you don’ t recognise,

or something supernatural, or losing all sense of reality altogether.”

- Amazon Customer Review

The 8 lb 2½ oz that brought about History’s end. Worth it.

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