Murkmyre

An abandoned orphan, Clifford James Hayes was grudgingly taken-in by merciless fairground travellers when he was but an infant. He endured a childhood of abject cruelty, humiliation and slavery, before being forcibly ejected for ‘looking at his foster parents in a funny way’. Remarkably, this rejection was turned into academic success - despite further abject cruelty, humiliation and slavery being administered on him by callous, disinterested tutors, who were ever-keen to administer the birch, whip and ‘Uncle Ezekiel’ - their dreaded earwax and toadjuice-powered torture device. Enticed by the alluring colours and shapes of London town, the author eventually found some meagre, slug-infested accomodation - before enduring a young adulthood of further abject cruelty, humiliation and slavery at the hands of loathsome taskmasters. To improve his lot, he eventually escaped - to labour night and day on the punishing chain-gangs in Alabama. A period of introspection followed, during which time he became a syphilis-ravaged fixture in the sordid opium dens of Victorian London’s East End. The resultant, inevitable financial ruin necessitated he resort to a life of prostitution. Now in the fading autumn of his life (his early forties), he spends his final, pain-wracked days hanging precariously from rocks as he tearfully gazes out toward the southern seas. Murkmyre is his first publication, Nocturnia his second; he has threatened to write more.