Alex Keegan

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Biographical note:  Alex Keegan began writing seriously in 1992, publishing 5 mystery novels before switching to serious short fiction. He has been published widely in print and on the web and been awarded more than a dozen first prizes for his fiction as well as three Bridport Prizes. Born in Wales with an Irish mother, he now lives and writes in Newbury, England where he lives with his second wife and two teenage children. He runs a tough internet writing school, "Boot Camp Keegan"

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EAN13:  9781844714773
ISBN:  9781844714773
Author:  Alex Keegan
Title:  Ballistics
Series:  Salt Modern Fiction
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  FNB
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Dec-08
Extent:  160pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  12 mm
Weight:  240 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 8.99
Price:  USD 14.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  This collection of prize-winning stories represent major high-points from Alex Keegan’s early years as a short-story writer. These stories will stay with you, make you return and look behind the words, for what is quietly waiting.

A father knowing he has little time left, takes his children to Disney; a writer sits and drinks tea with a bastard relation; a family tries to recover from a daughter’s mutilation; a proud Welshman faces death to watch three grandsons at the game; a terrorist and his victim are trapped underground, talking in the dark; a too-beautiful young man tries to understand his life; an ageing teacher meets his protégé and aches for what was missed; a band of limbless soldiers run a marathon for charity; a hopelessly unlucky cuckold has one more try; a barwoman is romanced over ten years; all these stories and more, some uplifting, some painful, all delivered with often brilliant touches of language, will enchant and educate.

A superb resource for teaching creative writing, this collection illustrates exactly what is required to win writing competitions in the UK and overseas.

Table of contents:
Ballistics
Miguel Who Cuts Down Trees
The Smell of Almond Polish
Mother, Questions
Green Glass
L for Laura; L for Love
An Old Man Watching Football After Sunday Lunch
The Fucking Point Two
Obelisk
Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet & Watch
The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Philip Price
The Bastard William Williams
The Quarry
Postcards from Balloon Land
Tomatoes, Flamingos, Lemmings
Meredith Toop Evans and His Butty, Ernest Jones
Happy as Larry
Acknowledgements

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Excerpt from book:  

The Bastard William Williams

I am the bastard William Williams, late of The Universal Pit, Senghennydd, then Abertridwr, and latterly the cellars of The Commercial Hotel, as pot man. Now that the dust have slowed me I am easy to find. I am still lived next door to the English Congregational Church, Commercial Road, Senghennydd. I venture from my place only for the English Cong, and in summer, if I am lucky, a visit from a relation.

Until the coal dust on my chest confined me to my front room, I have been known as a hearty man. My years is matched exact to the century and for the most part it have been a good life, wholesome. I think though, with what have passed, I shall not like to be here when the clock strike two thousand.

I am fixed, I am settled; and I am Welsh! And I am proud of it, even if the English woman, Thatcher have all but killed this valley, taken away the good black-fingered work of the men; made drug addicts of our young, the men unemployed, drunkard, or gone from the valley. So easily they have forgot Rorke's Drift, forgot the five hundred and twenty men of 1901 and 1913, forgot the Great War, forgot the South Wales Borderers, never mind that they have forgot good King Henry and his Welsh boys and the hiding we did give the frogs for them at Agincourt.

We are nothing, see, statistics is it, and a long way from
London.

I am not one for writing, and never was much of a one for talking either. I would not tell you of this, I would just let it
go, but Lord forgive me, I am writing it down. I have a good
copperplate strapped into me at town school which has never left me; I have my retirement pen, my Quink, a pad to write this and enough hot in me to bore a new pitshaft. I must record the visit of the man Allen Jones. If I am not to get this out of me, I will surely be bursted, so better or worse, it shall go down.

Allen Jones, with long red hair like a woman, a liking for his own voice and him on a fired-up mission to discover his past. A writer, he said he was, and without a by-your-leave or a telephone message did he turn up here, all mouth and trousers and flashing teeth to ask of me questions, one hundred miles an hour, and then to tell me about Senghennydd, to tell me about the boys. And I tell you, no warning, just one day, knock-knock on my door.

'Mr Williams?'

He do smile at me, condescending, like an English Member of Parliament or some social worker have come to see I am washed.

'I am William Williams, yes. The Council, is it?'

He has the smile again. His teeth do remind me of Robert Jones, the Deacon of the English Cong who married my mother. His hand is out.

'My name is Allen Jones,’ says he. ‘I think we are slightly related.'

'Do you now?’ says I. I have not shook his hand for I feel him impolite.

'I was wondering,’ he says. ‘Could come in for a chat, please?'

A chat, is it? ‘I am expecting a friend for tea,’ says I.

'Why, even better!’ says this Allen Jones. ‘You see, I am researching my family tree and I've just found out that my great-grandfather and your mother were — ‘

'What is it?’ I have said too quickly.

'Married,’ says he now, but surprised. ‘After my great-grandmother died.'

'You have done a little reading,’ says I. I am turned and walking to my room and this Allen Jones, a relation is it, he have followed, but unsure of his self. I am slightly glad of this.

I have sat and Mister Allen Jones have sat and he have opened a fancy briefcase and took out a machine. I have asked Mr Jones, ‘What is this for?’ and he have smiled again and said to me this is a machine that it is to record all the things we say.

'What are the Commandments?’ ask I. ‘What is Magna Carta? What is American Declaration of Independence?'

Allen Jones begins to misunderstand me. He knows these things. Am I wanting him to say the Commandments?

'They were writ,’ says I, ‘without machines. Put your fangle away.'

Mr Allen looks, but I look sterner, and he puts his recorder back.

Allen Jones then have shrugged his weak shoulders and have sat forward. ‘My father was Thomas Allen Jones,’ he have said, ‘son of Allen Thomas Jones and Caroline, the daughter of Robert Jones, and Bessie, born Milton.'

'You have the teeth of the deacon,’ says myself, ‘but your face is long and thin and the jaw is Bessie's. Caroline took the name Kitty. She was fair and fine, long of the face, and she sang like an angel.'

'She did?’ Mr Jones is excited and he scribbles something.

'Will you like tea?’ says I. I am getting up.

'Yes, yes,’ Mr Jones says. He is light in the voice, sing-song like the mother of his father. He has the air of a man never
married, as Oscar Wilde perhaps. I am thinking that his eyes are his finest feature, quite a blue, and his fingers are long and
delicate. He lisps faintly.

'Then I will mash a pot,’ says I.

He writes down ‘mash'. His script is sharp and large, Catholic school italic, but fast and gestured as if his mark come out, as if he display himself as he scratches. But he is bold, I guess.

I take the caddy down and take out some Glengettie, and as the kettle come to popple, I warm the pot on the gas. I hear Allen Jones enter. He is softly spoken.

'My father did that,’ says he, ‘and his father.'

I am thinking maybe this is not impolite, that Allen Thomas has just little in the way of rules. The hand he writes in is him perhaps. It is an eagerness not a rudeness in him, but seen often the wrong way.

'Twice a half of two-and-a-half,’ I fire quickly at him.

Allen Jones laughs. ‘Two and a half!'

'Quick in school?’ ask I.

'And always one eye through the window,’ he says.

And Kitty too, I am thinking. She have needed room for her voice and her little poems. Tables and alphabet cluttered her. My mother was not like that.

Allen do not take sugar in his tea and only a little milk please. He have said to me he have not tasted tea like this for
a long time and I have said this is just ordinary valley tea mashed proper and served in decent china. He have nodded and I see his eyes are like a butterfly around my room. He have seen the picture rail, the dado, the sepia pictures of outings, strong men with fine moustaches, their caps straight for the visit of the photographer. One picture is of Ernest Jones, a relation, boy sudden made a man in 1913, old by 1920. I have worked out that Ernest is great uncle to Allen Jones, uncle to his father. He sees the picture and have stood, too excitable. A little tea is spilled into his saucer.

'I have seen this picture somewhere,’ he have told me.

'Seven men,’ say I. ‘Well, four men and three boys. You know what it is?'

Allen does not know so I stand up.

'This boy is George Moore, here is his brother Evan James Moore, here is George Moore the father, and this is Ben David. This is Archibald Dean, here is Wilf Vizard, and here . . .'

'Ernest Jones?'

'It is,’ says I. ‘Seven men from the eighteen saved. Underground four hundred and thirty-seven more, dead all. On top, John Moggridge, his head blowed away, dead faster than a wink.'

'How?'

'The lift cage, three tons, she do come out like a cannonball on the second explosion and John Moggridge still looking in at the noise of the first.'

'At least it was quick.'

'Quicker than for the four hundred trapped,’ I have said.

'Brave men,’ says Allen Jones.

'Rats,’ says I, ‘trapped and put to sleep, those not burned or skinned.'

Allen Jones is not hearing me. He says, ‘They are dressed smarter than I imagined, and cleaner.'

'Scratch!’ says I. ‘This is boys and men in their Whit Sunday best. This have been weeks later after they do start to convalesce at the Porthcawl Miner's Rest and made some recovery. But see, the eyes are dead, men and boys, they are empty.'

Unpublished endorsement:  Alex Keegan is absolutely the best short-story writer I've read! His stories are wonderful; wrenching, hilarious, sexy—with a depth of emotion and beauty of language that make them unique.

Diana Gabaldon, New York Times Top Ten Author

Unpublished endorsement:  My favorite Alex Keegan stories are some of my favorite stories, period. They get right to it, don't fool around while they're about it, and end not a second later than they should. Along the way, they somehow capture all the bewildering and distinctly masculine sorrow of characters whose greatest loves and triumphs are expressed firmly in the past tense.

Tom Dooley, Editor, Electrica

Unpublished endorsement:  Whether he’s exploring the attractions and aversions of interpersonal magnetism or capturing small life-changing moments with precision and gentleness, Alex Keegan’s work is emotionally true, sharply intelligent and often beautiful. These stories will touch a nerve and resonate long after the book is put down.

Vanessa Gebbie

Review quote:  (on ‘The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Price) A story of a life contained in just two and a quarter thousand beautifully-chosen words, a perfectly balanced vignette which should not only grace the programme for every forthcoming Welsh international but should earn its place in any proper anthology of short stories.

Charlotte Bingham
Bridport Prize

Review quote:  ‘The Smell of Almond Polish’ is a story which is incredibly understated, yet which carries with it a vast understory. The writing is clear and uncluttered, starting with a journey, and following the fortunes of Bridie Collins who simply gets jobs, does rather well, then returns home again. The author never tells us why she leaves her family, or what is actually going on in her life, yet the story is tender and painful.

I know there will be sighs of frustration that Alex Keegan is on the list again and has taken first prize again but judge on the quality of writing and the underlying power.

Zoe King
Buzzwords Prize

Review quote:  Keegan writes with wit and energy

London Evening Standard

Review quote:  Lots of energy… deserving of applause

Literary Review