Alas, no – I cannot offer you Albert, but look within the book and you will find him: a vital presence – and with a motley crew alongside him.

Killing Hapless Ally will be with you on March the third! This novel will be published with Patrician Press and you can order it through any bookshop or buy online at Amazon, GB Books, Waterstones and so on. I will be talking about the book and doing signed copies at its launch at Mr B’s Bookshop on March the third. Meanwhile, I have been in ‘At Home’ magazine talking about friendship and its ebbs and flows(viz a viz Killing Hapless Ally),  I am looking forward to my first poetry publication with The Emma Press next year, I am completing a pamphlet and working on The Next One.

As you see below, the award-winning mental health journalist, Martha Roberts, has written in praise of Killing Hapless Ally and  I hope that when the book comes out, readers will enjoy its rattling tale as well as find comfort in its pages. It is a work of fiction, but, as I write in the foreword, very much based on experiences in my own life. There is still so much stigma surrounding mental health and mental illness – neither of the terms is ideal – but I have tried to tackle it head on in the book as I saw it and as I experienced it.

So here’s the back cover of the book.

Killing Hapless Ally is a tale of an individual grappling for sanity and identity; a black comedy in which we discover how Alison, its curious protagonist, conceived in childhood an alter ego called ‘Hapless Ally’ in order to present a different, more palatable version of herself to her family and to the world beyond. Ominously, the alter ego began to develop autonomy. You learn how Alison had to deal with that: she had a lot of help from a varied catalogue of imaginary friends! The book is about serious matters: fear, confusion, dark days of depression and breakdowns. It carries with it a timely message to anyone poleaxed by depression and associated problems – or any reader interested in the windings of such things. You can, like Alison, survive and prevail. Ah, but how would you do it? If you had to – to survive – would you kill for it? Now that is an interesting question.

‘Anna’s story of Killing Hapless Ally is a heart-rending book that covers the subject of depression in a brilliantly funny way – no mean feat. With every chapter I found myself willing Alison to thrive and prosper as the feisty and incisive survivor that she is. Go, Alison!’
Martha Roberts, author, columnist for Psychologies magazine and award-winning mental health journalist.

Cover illustration: © Charlie JohnsonkillinghaplessallycoverISBN 978-0-9932388-4-0]