Orpheus Rising

About ten years ago I had an idea for a story about a man who returns to his home town ten years after his wife has died violently there, and after getting uproariously drunk falls and cracks his head, after which he starts seeing ghosts.

I had the idea, but never quite work out how to write it. I even spoke to a friend of mine, Paul Carson, who’s a doctor about the specifics of a head or brain injury. But it’s funny how a certain time comes when everything just falls into place, and suddenly last year I knew how to write it.

It’s called Orpheus Rising, and to a certain extent it’s based on the Orpheus myth - broken hearted man goes to the underworld to demand the return of his dead love – but I didn’t actually realise that until I was half way through it. Probably it was in my brain all along. There’s a lot of clutter in there. In some ways this is my most serious book – i.e. there’s not a lot of knock about farce, and the jokes are a bit quieter, but I hope you’ll still recognise it as very much a ‘Bateman’ book. It will be interesting to get your feedback on this one, provided it’s positive, obviously.