I'm welcoming Jeff Gardiner to the promotional spot today. Congratulations to Jeff as this is launch day for his YA novel
- Myopia - from Crooked Cat Publishing! What's it about? Read on to find out...
MYOPIA
“Oi! You four-eyed freak!”
Jerry is bullied for wearing glasses. When he realises his
short-sightedness is not a disability, but a different way of perceiving and
understanding the world around him, he begins to see things from a new, unique
perspective.
He even starts to believe he might have super-powers, but soon learns a great deal about himself
and about the boy who is making his life such a misery.
As he becomes alienated from his girlfriend and best mate,
both victims of racism, Jerry realises he needs to think hard and put his plan
into action.
Has Jerry discovered a new way of dealing with prejudice?
Myopia is a novel about bullying, friendship and
learning the hard way.
Excerpt:
‘Here comes four-eyes.’
‘What, that speccy git in our technology
group?’
‘Yeah. Oi! Goggles! Where’d you get the
space visors from? NASA?’ Cruel sniggering filled the corridor.
As Jerry looked up his glasses slipped
down his nose, so all he could see was a fuzzy mix of shapes and colours. He
wrinkled his nose to lift his glasses back into his sightline but then
remembered how it made him look haughty, so he prodded the central frame with
his forefinger to slide his glasses back up his nose. Now he made out a double
line of pupils, mostly from his year, making a tunnel leading to the outside
door to the field. It looked like the rows guests make when a newly married
couple leave their wedding reception, only Jerry didn’t think there would be as
much jollity – or kissing.
This gang, made up of boys and girls,
often stood here, threatening younger pupils who made the mistake of walking
past. He knew he should be worried.
‘Oi, you four-eyed freak.’
One of the boys grabbed his blazer. Jerry
let himself go limp. He’d been in this situation before.
‘I’m talking to you, dickhead.’
Jerry knew the speaker only too well:
Wayno. Their noses almost touched. Wayno’s breath reeked and Jerry guessed
brushing teeth was not a priority for him.
He wanted to walk away but Wayno held him
tightly. Where were the bloody teachers when you wanted them? Always there when
you don’t need them.
Wayno suddenly let go but Jerry felt
himself tugged backwards until he stumbled into the corner under the staircase,
surrounded by about half a dozen boys and a few girls. He was now being
manhandled by a different boy known as Rhino, Wayno’s bodyguard.
‘On the way to the library are you, you
boff?’
The library was actually in the opposite
direction but Jerry guessed this wasn’t the time to be pedantic.
‘Are you gonna answer or what?’ Rhino
snarled, spitting as he spoke. A fleck of saliva landed on Jerry’s cheek. His
eyes flicked quickly between the framed limits of his focal range. As he began
sweating he felt his glasses slip back down his nose. Too scared to push them
back, he maintained his silence, glad the marauding bullies stood before him in
a blur.
Before he knew it a hand appeared before
his face but not with the velocity he imagined. Instead the hand hovered at
Jerry’s eye-level, tilted with fingers pointed towards him. Then suddenly some
fingernails clicked against the lenses of Jerry’s glasses.
‘Pretty useful in a fight these visors,’
said Wayno. ‘I can’t poke your eyes out – so I’ll just have to rip your whole
head off.’
Many responses flashed through Jerry’s
mind but he sensibly kept his mouth shut. It meant his tormentors assumed him
stupid or easy prey but saying the words out loud would only earn him a visit
to intensive care.
Suddenly his whole world fuzzed into a
kaleidoscope of blurs as Wayno removed his glasses, leaving Jerry standing in a
lonely world of short-sightedness. He could no longer see the bullies at all;
not even sure any more of his location in school, having lost all visual
markers normally putting things into context.
The crowd around him became unidentifiable
blobs – weird creatures continually contorting, ebbing and flowing. It was
impossible to see where one of them began and another ended; they all just
merged into an insignificant mass of blobbiness. Jerry imagined them as one
giant monster made of snot, which made him smile.
Although he couldn’t focus on faces he
became aware of movements. Voices murmured, overlapped and buzzed but Jerry
chose not to listen, preferring his own thoughts as he blocked out the world
around him.
Where the hell were those stupid teachers?
Amazon link for the paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Myopia-Jeff-Gardiner/dp/1908910534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354978938&sr=1-1
Jeff Gardiner is a British writer
whose novel, Myopia, launches on the 14th Dec 2012, from Crooked Cat Publishing. His collection of short stories, A Glimpse of the Numinous, contains
horror, slipstream, romantic and humorous tales. His non-fiction work, The Age of Chaos: the Multiverse of Michael
Moorcock, has recently been revised, expanded and retitled in e-book form
as The Law of Chaos. Many of his
stories have been published in various anthologies and magazines in the UK and USA, and he’s also enjoyed some
success with articles, some of which have even been translated into German.
Find out more at www.jeffgardiner.com and http://jeffgardiner.wordpress.com/
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