Barnacle Brat:

by Adrian Baldwin

WINNER of INDIE NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2016 (Readers' Choice) at Underground Book Reviews. A modern-day Billy Liar meets Donnie Darko (quirky, surreal and darkly funny) Losing your grip on reality is a real bummer. Just ask Leon Blank. Not that he'd know. Seems those losing their marbles are always the last to find out. Until recently, Leon would have argued that a tendency to become easily sidetracked on a regular basis wasn't that odd. And what's so unusual about hearing a voice inside your head? Doesn't everyone? Isn't that just thinking? But his recent visions aren't so freely dismissed; especially the angry-looking clown who's following him around with a baseball bat. Time to act, Leon perhaps keeping a log will shed light on the mystery. Then again, could 'seeing-things' just be sexual frustration? It's been a while! If only he had a girlfriend to take his mind off stuff. Prepare to enter the normally hidden world of delusions, paranoia, and ... ahem ... 'unusual interests': Voyeurism; Feederism; Shoes - that kind of thing.

364 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 5, 2018

About the author

Adrian Baldwin is a Mancunian now living and working in Wales. Back in the Nineties, he wrote for various TV shows/personalities: Smith & Jones, Clive Anderson, Brian Conley, Paul McKenna, Hale & Pace, Rory Bremner (and a few others). Wooo, get him.

Since then, he has written three screenplays, one of which received generous financial backing from the Film Agency for Wales. Then along came the global recession to kick the UK Film industry in the nuts. What a bummer!

Not to be outdone, he turned to novel writing - which had always been his real dream - and, in particular, a genre he feels is often overlooked; a genre he has always been a fan of: Dark Comedy (sometimes referred to as Horror's weird cousin).

BARNACLE BRAT (a dark comedy for grown-ups), his first novel. won INDIE NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2016 (Readers' Choice) at Underground Book Reviews. His second novel STANLEY McCLOUD MUST DIE! (more dark comedy for grown-ups) published in 2016, and he's currently writing his third book: THE SNOWMAN AND THE SCARECROW (another dark comedy for grown-ups).

An as yet untitled novel (about Sex and Crime) is earmarked as his fourth. It will, apparently, be an orgy of filth, depravity and wrongdoings, filled with weird and wonderful characters (criminals and perverts, most likely!) smothered in copious amounts of distasteful black humour. If that's the kind of thing that appeals to you, you sicko, you're probably just the type of reader he's looking for.

For more information on the award-winning author, check out: adrianbaldwin.info (*There you can read several early chapters of both Barnacle Brat and Stanley McCloud Must Die!)