From a Distance

by Helen Slavin

".....Clem's anger was like a lion on a piece of string lately. The stupidity of people was not just an annoyance to him or even an amusing aside to life, it was becoming a public danger......"Security is more than a job to Clem Kennedy, it is a calling, he is therefore disturbed when his security firm begin losing contracts to their less diligent rivals. When an abandoned carrier bag at the local shopping mall becomes a full scale terrorist bomb alert Clem thinks he is the only man in town with his eye fixed on reality. Surrounded by a small team of employees he knows he can trust Clem wages his own small war on petty crime, determined to be the one good man who did something.Praise for Helen Slavin..." A clever, concise and original debut about life, loss and love. " Kirkus Review"....Ultimately, Slavin has something more subversive up her sleeve than mere in conjuring a world of ghosts... she wickedly skewers a society whose obsession with the afterlife shortchanges life itself."—The New York Times

313 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 15, 2012

About the author

Helen Slavin was born in Heywood in Lancashire in 1966. She was raised by eccentric parents on a diet of Laurel and Hardy, William Shakespeare and the Blackpool Illuminations. Educated at her local comp her favourite subjects at school were English and Going Home.

After The University of Warwick she worked in many jobs including, plant and access hire, a local government Education department typing pool, and a vasectomy clinic. A job as a television scriptwriter gave her the opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, living in a made-up fantasy world and getting paid for it (sometimes).

Helen has been a professional writer for fifteen years. Her first novel The Extra Large Medium was chosen as the winner in the Long Barn Books competition run by Susan Hill.

A paragliding Welsh husband and two children distract her and give her ample opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, nagging about homework and washing pants for England. In the wee small hours she still keeps a bijou flat in that fantasy world of writing.When not working with animals and striving for world peace, Helen enjoys the music of Elbow and baking bread. Her favourite colour is purple and if she had to be stranded on a desert island with someone it would be Ray Mears ( alright, George Clooney is very good looking but can he make fire with a stick? No. See?)

She now lives, with her family, in Trowbridge, Wiltshire where, when she’s not writing, she’s asleep. Or in Tescos.