Embers of Bridges out now!

There’s great excitement in the Makovesky household as y latest book has just gone live on Kindle (and KU). ‘Embers of Bridges’ is a comedy noir set in Birmingham featuring a hapless gang of petty criminals, robberies, loyalty, jewellery, football, a hint of gay lurve, betrayal, and a bizarre getaway on a canal boat.

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Van driver Mickey’s been following best mate Gaz from one scrape to another since primary school. He’s been deluding himself about the reasons for almost as long: Gaz is fun; Gaz brings excitement to his otherwise dull life; Gaz’s sister Trudy is hot enough for any kid to die for.

Now the Live Hard, Die Young gang’s all grown up and the scrapes have turned into robberies, but the excuses stay the same. Mickey’s loyalty is about to be tested, though, as Gaz is acting weird and the robberies keep going tits-up. As their latest job in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter leads to a bizarre getaway on a canal boat, he can think of only one thing. Not him. Not Gaz. This can’t be lurve. Can it?

But Mickey isn’t the only one with a secret. And when he finds out what Gaz is hiding, he has to decide which of his bridges to burn…

“Embers of Bridges has it all: dark wit, a distinctive Birmingham setting, and a grifter you can’t help liking…” ~Margot Kinberg, author of the Joel Williams mysteries and the Patricia Stanley mysteries

“This author is fabulous at building an atmosphere… Beautifully written and quietly compelling, this is a gem of a story.” ~Ellie Thomas, author of London in the Rain and the Twelve Letters series

Embers of Bridges coming soon!

It’s official! After weeks (months!) of writing, editing, proofreading, rewriting, re-editing, designing a cover and sweating a few buckets, Embers of Bridges is all set to hit the virtual shelves and will hopefully be available by this time next week.

This noirish comedy of errors in set in Birmingham (the suburbs, the canals and above all, the world famous Jewellery Quarter) and features Mickey, Gaz and the rest of the Live Hard, Die Young gang as well as friendship, loyalty, disillusionment, a few Pink Floyd references and even the occasional elephant.

Here’s the blurb:

“Four friends. One robbery. What price loyalty?

Van driver Mickey’s been following best mate Gaz from one scrape to another since primary school. He’s been deluding himself about the reasons for almost as long: Gaz is fun; Gaz brings excitement to his otherwise dull life; Gaz’s sister Trudy is hot enough for any kid to die for.

Now the Live Hard, Die Young gang’s all grown up and the scrapes have turned into robberies, but the excuses stay the same. Mickey’s loyalty is about to be tested, though, as Gaz is acting weird and the robberies keep going tits-up. As their latest job in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter leads to a bizarre getaway on a canal boat, he can think of only one thing. Not him. Not Gaz. This can’t be lurve. Can it?

But Mickey isn’t the only one with a secret. And when he finds out what Gaz is hiding, he has to decide which of his bridges to burn…”

And here’s the rather spiffing cover, which I designed myself using images from ilya on Pexels and Tim Mossholder on Unsplash. The colours, the bridge and the helicopter are all strangely relevant…

I’ll post again the minute the book’s available, but in the meantime, here are a couple of quotes from readers who’ve devoured the ARC and seem to have enjoyed it…

‛Fiona Glass is fabulous at building an atmosphere and that is one of the gripping elements of this beautifully written and quietly compelling contemporary gay noir story.’ —Ellie Thomas, author of ‘London in the Rain’ and the Twelve Letters series

‘What do you do when life’s going pear-shaped, and the mates you thought you could trust let you down? Embers of Bridges has it all: dark wit, a distinctive Birmingham setting, and a grifter you can’t help liking. Mickey Delaney is just trying to make a life for himself, but with friends like his, that’s not going to be as easy as he’d like! Come along for the ride as Mickey dodges bad traffic, bad weather, bad luck, and dodgy friends!’  —Margot Kinberg, author of the Joel Williams mysteries and the Patricia Stanley mysteries

Gravy Train walking tour #2

And here’s the next in the series of walking (or cycling) tours taking in the locations I used in ‘Gravy Train’. This one is longer and you might well need to bike it rather than walking the whole thing, especially as you’d have to come back again!

Walk #2: Hockley to Edgbaston

Distance: approx 5 miles each way. I say approx because Google Maps had a major conniption when I tried to change the preferred route, which was for cars and didn’t take in half the places I needed it to. The wonders of technology…

Route:

1. Start at the Hockley flyover/Great Hampton Street. The area to the left as you walk towards the city centre is where I had in mind when I described Sandra and Mike’s public house, and there are examples of the type of pub (though nowhere near as rundown as theirs!) in the surrounding streets.

2. Continue along Livery Street, then turn right into Great Charles Street Queensway and follow this to Paradise Circus. This area is currently undergoing major roadworks to install a tram line and road and footpath closures seem to change on a daily basis, so find the approved route to take you across the island to Broad Street.

3. Once on Broad Street walk a short distance until you come to Gas Street, and turn left down here. There are some nice old buildings, now mostly cafes and bars, which back onto the canal basin. Find a cast-iron archway with a path that leads to the canalside towpath and have a good wander round. The area of the Gas Street Basin is fascinating and well worth exploring. I used the arch, the bridge and the towpath in the final showdown between crime boss Vernon Ball and Sandra’s “uncle” George, over the bag of money that Ball’s underling Lenny had stolen.

4. Retrace your steps to Broad Street and continue to Five Ways Island, a vast gyratory traffic system enclosing a green open space, with subways to various roads, offices and shopping centres. This island is central to the action in ‘Gravy Train’; it’s here that Sandra and Mike visit the betting shop to collect their winnings and get mugged by Lenny; and it’s on one of the roads leading to the island that Justine’s car breaks down and she nicks Lenny’s van to get herself home. Here’s a couple of pics of what might have been the betting shop, and the subway where Lenny froze his nuts off.

5. You can end your tour here, but if you’re feeling particularly energetic, take the subway up and onto Hagley Road and carry on walking for about a mile, until you come to the junction with Norfolk Road. There are a handful of clubs and casinos in this area which helped to inspire the Roller Club which Justine breaks into.

6. Retrace your steps, or catch one of the many buses that head along Hagley Road back into the city centre.

And that’s it. Once again I hope it gives you some new areas to discover and a bit of fun poking about. But again, don’t forget that Covid regulations mean we’re all expected to exercise within our local areas, so if you’re not already in Birmingham please don’t make a special trip yet.

And again, if you like the sound of the book then feel free to grab a copy here, and thank you!

A funny thing happened on the way to the canal…

I just had to dash in and share this hilarious news item from (where else?) Birmingham. Looks like even the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police could have lifted his evening’s work straight from the pages of ‘Gravy Train’.

I swear this is a genuine incident and not something I’ve made up. Although given that it involves fishing bags out of canals, I might well have… Just shows those canals really are handy receptacles for all manner of junk!

Birmingham Roundhouse refurbished

A few years ago now Other Half and I walked along a part of Birmingham’s canal network we’d never explored before. The area was, roughly speaking, at the back of the National Indoor Arena and was full of canal history and a jumble of fascinating old buildings and gleaming office blocks. One of the former, which we only saw the back of, was really intriguing, because it seemed to be circular. There was no indication what it was, so I took a photo (above), made a mental note to look it up, and then forgot about it.

Last week our new National Trust magazine turned up, and there on one of the news pages was a snippet about the Birmingham Roundhouse, which the Trust and the Canal & River Trust are jointly refurbishing. It was built in 1874 and apparently used as stables and a store for the city’s lamplighters and ‘public works department’, presumably in the days when all lamps were gas, and when horses and carts would have been needed for workmen to get around.

The plan is to turn it into a hub for the canal network, including a café, offices and community space. It sounds terrific and we’re looking forward to visiting once the work is complete. There’s more details on the National Trust webpage; they’re calling for volunteers to help with the work, so if you’re in the Birmingham area and interested in heritage, why not get in touch?

Reflection on graffiti

I’ve been using this as a kind of brand image for some time now.  I liked it for a number of reasons. First, it’s urban street art, which always seems to sum up the gritty feel of my writing. Second, it’s in Birmingham, which is where most of my stuff is set. And third, it looks like a Pink Floyd album cover, and we all know how I feel about them!

I first stumbled across the picture in the wilds of the internet, while searching for something else (as you do). It was being used as a header by the Birmingham Updates account on Twitter, and a bit of judicious digging showed that the photo was taken by Harrison Cantel. Other than that, I knew virtually nothing about it. Until this morning.

Searching for the original picture again in order to set it as wallpaper on my phone, I came across a slightly different version, on Pinterest, with a bit more information. It seems the original artwork is by Lucy McLauchlan, a contemporary artist specialising in large-scale, mostly-monochrome murals. I’ve seen her work before and loved it – these rather amazing birds on the sides of the old Birmingham library before it (and the art) was bulldozed.

If you head to Lucy’s website and click on ‘selected works’ and then ‘murals’, you’ll see the canal artwork along with many similar pieces on the walls of houses and factories across Birmingham, the UK and even Europe.

As for the canal art location, this is also in Birmingham. Specifically, under a bridge on the Digbeth Branch Canal, a short stretch linking two other canals on the eastern side of the city centre. Completed in 1799, it has six locks and a banana warehouse (!) and lies within the Warwick Bar conservation area which includes a variety of listed canal buildings. I’ve never visited this particular spot before but it looks fascinating and I’m adding it to the list for the next time I go to Birmingham. Who knows, I might even get my own photo of the image I’ve been using for so long!

And thanks to Bethany R on Pinterest for pointing me in the right direction.

Shiny new website

Dashing in to let everyone know that I’ve just updated my website with a new design which will hopefully be clearer and easier to use.

I’ve also fixed a few broken links, taken down details of one short story that had mysteriously disappeared, and added another that I’d somehow forgotten to list. I seem to have more short stories available to read than I’d ever realised!

Do pop along and have a look: tessmakovesky.com.

The artwork is, of course, still the same image I had on the old site. It’s a picture (taken by Harrison Cantel) of some amazing street art on one of Birmingham’s many canals. I liked it because it reminded me of a Pink Floyd album cover!

 

 

Embers of Bridges inches closer

I’m feeling oddly chuffed with myself this morning, because I’ve just typed those two important words on my latest work-in-progress: The End.

This is quite a milestone because the book in question is ‘Embers of Bridges’, which I first started writing a good six years ago. At the time it was quite a short novella, and over the years I’ve had many attempts at rewriting it into something longer, none of which seemed to work. Finally, late last year, I decided to have One. Last. Go. and called the file embersofbridges500 because it felt like the 500th time I’d rewritten the thing.

Like my two previous books, ‘Raise the Blade’ and ‘Gravy Train’, it’s set in Birmingham, this time around the canal network and the famous Jewellery Quarter, and involves a gang of petty criminals and the idea of honour amongst thieves. Or lack of it.

I’ve taken it back to something closer to the original, but speeded up, with more action right from the start and less of the characters sitting round in pubs chatting to each other. I’ve also tried to add more backstory for the main characters. And it’s worked. Well, sort of. There’s still a ton of work involved in polishing, editing, rewriting, making sure it all actually makes sense, and more rewriting. But that’s for the days ahead. Right now I’m sipping a celebratory cup of tea and basking in a warm fuzzy glow of achievement. Long may it last…

Where the heck Wednesday: Tess Makovesky

Great news everyone, the semi-regular Wednesday feature is back, with some fascinating guests planned over the next few months. And I’m kick-starting it with a quick look at myself, because I realised I never took that opportunity last time round. So, without further ado, let’s stoke the engines, release the brakes, and let the ‘Gravy Train’ steam into town…

Book Title: Gravy Train

Setting: Birmingham (UK)

Author: Tess Makovesky

http://www.tessmakovesky.com / Facebook / Twitter

So, why pick Birmingham as a location, I hear you ask? After all, it’s the dullest place on earth – nothing but Spaghetti Junction, motorways, factories, and endless 1960s concrete.

Well, no, actually. Birmingham is the UK’s second city – and quite probably the one with the least-deserved reputation. There is concrete (show me a British city without the stuff), but there’s also so much more. The tightly-packed city centre is a wonderful assortment of old and new, with everything from the gleamingly modern Grand Central station/shopping mall to the Town Hall, designed by the same bloke who came up with the Hansom cab.

Beyond that there are swathes of Victorian and Edwardian suburbs, scattered with gems from earlier times: churches, medieval manor houses, a mill that made it into The Lord of the Rings, even an ancient pub or two. And then – pure joy for crime writers like myself – there are the maze-like back streets, the vast parks, and best of all the canals. Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice; they stitch the industrial towns of the Black Country together and form their own pasta-like sprawl across the landscape. There are canal-feeder reservoirs, bridges, tunnels; there are places where one whole canal system goes over or under another; there are entire sections in the city centre that are almost lost, and only reappear as ghostly imprints in the canyons between office blocks every now and again.

When I lived in Birmingham I found it hard to write about the city. There was a sense of it being a comfortable place to call home, rather like an old pair of slippers, and it was hard to see past that to view the place objectively. However, once I moved away the over-familiarity wore off and I began to set more of my stories and books there. ‘Wheel Man’ in the Drag Noir anthology from Fox Spirit Books uses the suburb of Acocks Green. My novella ‘Raise the Blade’ is set in various locations including the well-hidden Edgbaston Reservoir and Highgate park. ‘Gravy Train’ starts and terminates in the inner city district of Hockley (home of the world famous Jewellery Quarter) but stops off at Cannon Hill Park, the leafy suburb of Moseley, and Broad Street’s “entertainment quarter” along the way.

And, oh, those canals. The Worcester & Birmingham branch has a body fished out of it in ‘Raise the Blade’. And ‘Gravy Train’ makes equally good use of them, for all sorts of nefarious purposes. The old Gas Street basin, originally used for turning narrowboats around, gains a new function as a handy dumping ground for incriminating evidence. And when crime bosses George Leary and Vernon Ball set up a meeting to hand over some stolen cash, it’s the basin they choose, with all sorts of unexpected consequences.

I had a lot of fun writing about the various locations, and more fun re-visiting them recently to take lots of photographs. I’ll be posting those on my blog over the next few weeks and months, but in the meantime if you’d like to find out more about Birmingham, then take the train. Just please make sure it’s the ‘Gravy Train’!

Canal tour of Birmingham

These days I don’t get back to Birmingham all that often. However, we were in the area over the Christmas break so I took the opportunity to visit the city centre. The weather was freezing (there was still snow lying on the ground in the suburbs) but the sun was shining and the light was perfect for photography, and I wanted to try out my new camera on some of the sights. Most of all, I wanted shots of the area around Gas Street Basin, which is where large chunks of my new novel ‘Gravy Train’ are based.

And I wasn’t disappointed. I wandered all over the city centre, snapping away, and ended up at the back of the International Convention Centre, where Brindley Place meets Broad Street and where the canal network suddenly blossoms into the vast and picturesque Gas Street Basin.

It’s an amazing sight at the best of times, and very unexpected for the centre of a city that sadly, doesn’t have the best reputation for heritage, architecture, or anything much else. It’s not a reputation it deserves, as you can see from some of these photos. The area around Gas Street has recently been tidied up and the wonderful juxtaposition of old and new buildings, bridges, wharves, hoists, tower blocks and walkways gives it an atmosphere that’s hard to find anywhere else.

And if you believe the events in ‘Gravy Train’, it’s perfect for hiding the odd body or two as well!

Here’s a taster of the scenery:

Gas Street Basin through the Broad Street bridge. The main thoroughfare of Broad Street, complete with Victorian buildings, runs straight across the top of this bridge; if you’re walking along the street you’d hardly know this was there.

Picturesque canal-side buildings – many turned into bars and restaurants – line the towpath, which as I mention in ‘Gravy Train’ is edged in places by no more than a line of different coloured bricks.

A view across the barges to the old Canal House (complete with hoisting gear) and some of the city’s swankier office blocks.

I took a whole heap of photos of other parts of the city and will hopefully share those over the next few weeks.

Digging up the dirt

Yet another amusing little snippet from the West Midlands, where the Canal and Rivers Trust are about to start work on dredging some of the vast network of old canals. You might remember some of my previous posts about Birmingham having more miles of canal than Venice, so obviously they’ve got their work cut out. And I’m sure it will all be much pleasanter and better for the environment and the local wildlife as a result.

The crime writer in me can’t help thinking, though, that there are scores of criminals across the region having serious panic attacks at the thought of what those dredgers might bring up out of the depths. Drugs stashes, stolen money, loot, dead bodies… The results could help with half the unsolved crimes in the Midlands!

A Bridge Too Far

I’m putting the last few flourishes to a brand new novella, A Bridge Too Far, which is an unconventional noir escapade set around the back streets and canals of Birmingham.  (Hence the sudden appearance of the new header image, which I thought was rather appropriate.)

It’s an area I know quite well, having lived in the city for several years.  In the old days, it was strictly a no-go area of dark back alleys, litter-infested canals, strange people and sudden, violent encounters.  Muggings, drunkenness and begging were rife; the streets were smeared with a disgusting mixture of vomit and stale beer; and all in all you really didn’t want to hang around.

Then, in the 1990s, vast acres of old streets were cleared and the whole area refurbished, rebuilt, and generally spruced up.  Thanks to the proximity of the entertainment quarter along Broad Street there’s still the occasional drunken fight, but with the opening of the Symphony Hall, National Indoor Arena, Sealife Centre, and various posh shops and restaurants, the whole area is pretty much unrecognisable.

Even better, the developers left many of the more interesting old buildings in place, so there’s an eclectic mix of old and new which adds to the atmosphere.  After dark on a summer night, the canals and basins ring to the sound of laughter, pounding music and the chink of glassware.  But go at a quieter time and you can still find surprising tranquillity amongst the lock gates and boats.