Licensed Premises

'Nobody believes what they see on TV, so they want to look for something else, an alternate reality, or a conspiracy theory, and it's interesting to explore it, Twitter is fucking full of it, especially now. It's no wonder people round here are into it, but you don't have to read all that shit, just have some mushrooms and wander round Lidl off your tits.' In these fourteen northern tales, Campbell takes us from the edgelands of Manchester to the cloistered villages of The Peak District, Northumberland and Scotland, and illuminates the lives of outsiders, misfits, loners and malcontents with an eye for the darkly comic. A wild-eyed man disturbs the banter in a genial bookshop. A fraught woman seeks to flee a collapsing reservoir. A failed academic finds solace in a crime writer's favourite pub. A transit van killer stalks a railway footpath. A poet accused of plagiarism finds his life falling apart.

Neil Campbell is a short story writer, novelist and poet. From Manchester, England, he has appeared three times in the annual anthology of Best British Short Stories (2012/2015/2016). He has published four collections of short fiction, two novels, two poetry chapbooks and one poetry collection, as well as appearing in numerous magazines and anthologies.