A Disclosure

The long autobiographical essay, "Madness" is the first-hand, darkly comical account of the development and subsequent management of the author’s paranoid schizophrenia. The story, "Next of Kin" is about a local government officer, Ellie Roberts who organises public health funerals (or what used to be called paupers’ funerals). On visiting the flat of a deceased woman, Nnedi Alabi, she discovers in her ramshackle belongings a novel manuscript that she reads and enjoys. The text resonates with her because she is also in an interracial marriage. Moved by the story, she and her husband decide to send the manuscript of The Day the Ship Sailed to a publisher. The story, "A Transformation" features the winner’s speech of a transgender woman, Janet Frost, who has just been awarded a woman’s prize for fiction in 2022 sponsored by a vodka company. Janet uses the opportunity to assert her transgender personality: “I was a proud man and now I’m a proud woman.” Janet also recalls the ways in which she wanted to be a woman when she was a boy and the antics she resorted to during her boyhood and beyond. The story, "An Apology" is a brief duologue between a writer and the fellow writer who enslaved his Muse and thus stole his once mighty stock of inspiration. Can he forgive the robber? The story, "The Life of Riley" features a seventeen year old student, Marcus experiencing his first love while the saving of the world from the protestant work ethic. His mother and granddad feel the need to give him some much needed advice. The novella, "The Word Thief" is about a crusty old Irish novelist, Billy Carson, whose writer’s block and literary slothfulness prompt him to become a creative writing lecturer at an adult education college in Manchester. Billy’s life becomes complicated when he decides to covertly plagiarize the novel of an apparently ailing and slightly strange student of his own. The story, "A World of My Own" is a piece of miscellaneous stuff that is also an abandoned abortive attempt at a diary by the author. It’s a bit of a literary duck-billed platypus. The novella, and title story, "A Disclosure" features a computer hacker turned gaming industry billionaire called Ben West who seeks to destroy a VIP paedophile ring. He must also battle his own inner demons relating to child sex abuse. Can he persuade his old and new lovers that he is trustworthy? The story, "The Big Secret" features a narrator who believes that bits of his future life have been seen by everybody else on the planet except him. He explores the implications of such a situation such as the apparent loss of internal privacy. The novella, "Up To No Good" features, Edith and Dan, two people in their late fifties who meet up at a Manchester bowls club. Edith is a sprightly widow while Dan is a handsome, charismatic man from Kent. They fall in love but neither of them senses the ulterior financial motives of the other. Blinded by their late flowering passion, they explore themselves sexually following their initiation into online pornography. But who is fooling who? The novella, "Two Good Lads" features Tom and Rob who are seventeen year old students from Fleetwood. Rob’s sister, Lauren gets sick of them falling in love with TV presenters and weather-women so she challenges them to have a contest whereby they compete for the attention of a ‘real’ older woman, her best friend’s sister, Alison. Instead of a date they have a rowdy game of ‘battle of the sexes’ pitch and putt featuring Lauren as well. Alison decides to call the contest an honorable draw so the two lads try again when they have afternoon tea with Alison. But are the two callow lads’ dubious social skills up to it?