Not Coming To A Bookshop Near You

Okay, it’s easy to scoff, so let’s have a good laugh at this lot.

Publisher Mark Pilkington recommended this website which reveals a whole other world of literature hitherto hidden from public gaze. Here you’ll find tales of fat people, elves, black-velvet sword-and-something fantasies, illegible typefaces, partworks involving made-up names, more elves, and a book with a drawing of a cat, a crucifix and a balloon on a tripod on its cover.

These are only a handful of the wonderful examples of folk-art masquerading as novels on the site. I particularly like the desperate pun title ‘Carpe DiEmily’ and the complicated cover of ‘Aphrodisiac’ – who is Daphne, and why were the authors formerly someone else? This is where EL James would have been happily at home – and she sounds good-natured enough to admit it – had it not been for a publisher with an eye to a buck and a low opinion of its readership (which proved tragically  on target).

On another level, let’s laugh with, not at the authors, because at least they’re putting it out there rather than doing nothing. Although in some cases perhaps nothing would have been a viable alternative. Still, it makes me want to read a ‘Best Of’ compilation of their work. Somebody, call a publisher!