Beat On The Brat (And Other Stories) is the second collection to be released by prize winning author Nigel Bird, following the success of his debut, the critically acclaimed Dirty Old Town (And Other Stories).
Here are 9 more pieces from the shadows.
The lead story, Beat On The Brat, was the winner of the prestigious Watery Grave Invitational competition of 2010. It went on to be published in the highly-regarded Needle Magazine and was nominated for Spinetingler’s ‘Best Story Online’ earlier this year.
In 2010, his success in 2010’s Watery Grave Invitation was followed by a 5th place story entitled ‘Too Much Too Young’. The story appears here as ‘Back In Black’ as a dedication to the wonderful Amy Winehouse who died on the weekend before release.
‘Hoodwinked’ appeared at ‘All Due Respect’, ‘Mind Your Step’ at Microw, ‘Sugar and Spice’ at A Twist Of Noir’ and ‘Snow Angel’ at ‘Not From Here Are You’.
His work has appeared recently in the collections ‘The Mammoth Book of Best Of British Crime Stories’ and the debut release from Snubnose entitled ‘Speedloader’.
This follows appearances in Crimefactory; Dark Valentine; Beat to a Pulp; Pulp Metal; Crimespree; and a number of other wonderful homes.
Later this year Nigel is to put out the anthology ‘Pulp Ink’ with co-editor Chris Rhatigan. He is confident that the names involved and the quality of the work will make it one of the finest short fiction collections of the year
.
His blog ‘Sea Minor’ is currently running the ‘Dancing With Myself’ series of interviews. He hopes to complete his novel by the end of 2011.
Praise for the work of Nigel Bird:
‘A rare talent.’ Allan Guthrie
‘The incomparable Nigel Bird opens the collection with the gripping “You Dirty Rat”, a WWI-era tale of revenge that manages to be beautifully layered and thrilling at the same time. I’ve not seen Bird take a misstep yet.’ Heath Lowrance
‘Big money messing with people's heads. Cheating. Murder. Blackmail. Deception. Great stuff.
The narration sets a good mood, and the little bits of description tossed out by someone intimately familiar with his subject, but not working too hard to prove it provide that perfect amount of setting to draw you in without slowing the story.’
- Criminal Thoughts, R Thomas Brown
‘nigel bird is the bomb diggity’ Steve Weddle
‘In crime fiction shorts, I've rarely seen stories with multiple narrators. I would speculate that this is because it's tough to execute and, more often than not, confuses the reader. But Bird manages to pull it off in this piece with three different narrators. It took me a second to realize what was going on, but when I did it was worth it. Bird uses this technique to an interesting effect with all of the characters witnessing the same events from different perspectives. And each character has a distinctive voice--absolutely essential for this kind of piece.’
- Chris Rhatigan
‘Excellent. Sharp lines and a great ending!’ – David Barber
‘Nigel’s, Dirty Old Town, is superb.’ - AJ Hayes
‘So nice to read a story with this much heart in it.’ - Patti Abbott
‘Great Stuff.’ Charlie Stella ‘Brilliantly razor-sharp, jagged slice of life.’ - Paul D Brazill
‘I sought out everything I could from him. I dare you to read and not do the same.’ - Chris F Holm
‘Took my breath away...Powerful.’ - Kathleen A Ryan
'The stories have well written plots and all have unexpected endings which are not obvious when reading them. I found the stories to be well conceived and ideal to read in ebook format. I hope that Nigel is able to write a full size novel to further develop his writing skills. Some of the short stories here could easily have been the base for a much longer book.'
- Paul Blackburn
