To celebrate the second anniversary of the release of my debut novel, ‘The Reputation of Booya Carthy’, I decided to do something a little different, something that I haven’t tried before. A short companion story is going to appear here over the next few days in serialised instalments. It is mostly unrelated, but might have a few little spoilers of the original.
It’s been a little strange to revisit the site of the novel, and quite a challenge: who to include from the original story, if anyone; where exactly to set it; the tone; the theme. A couple of years back, after readers began to finish reading the novel, I was asked a few times if I’d consider writing some kind of sequel. My answer was always no – emphatically. It was done. It had been an ambitious challenge. So it was never my intention to even consider taking myself – and readers – anywhere near it ever again. But when the thought of an anniversary short story began to cross my mind, with nothing like enough time left to create something, I thought back to one aspect of the story that had left questions for the reader – one that I was asked on occasion: Whatever did happen to Jacob Helland after the story had ended? I always thought that I knew the answer to that until I began to write this serial . . .
(In fact, truthfully I am still not entirely certain, as I have scrapped the ending, to be rewritten. While I do that, here’s a cover and synopsis to (hopefully) whet your appetite. As ever, if you’d like to sign up to my website then the chapters will arrive as soon as they are published, straight into your inbox. Coming very soon . . .)
Former sergeant Jacob Helland is on the run, evading justice for crimes committed against inmates at Parchman Farm Penitentiary. A mysterious Englishman has employed a bounty hunter to track him, determined that Helland be held accountable for his felonies against the constitution. As the bounty hunter closes in, he begins to realise that disappearing isn’t Helland’s motivation for elusion.
Phillip Drown 