BOOKS

Self-published art books and writings, and contributions to other publishers.

PUBLISHED BY WILD LOVE (my own imprint):

DADDY WITCH

Who’s the greatest band you’ve never heard of?

In the early 1980’s, the exhausted backwash of punk swept through the post-industrial wasteland towns of northern Britain. Young men with no future and no hope channeled their anger and their passion into music and art that compressed all their ideas and influences into a primal shriek of defiance.

One of those bands was Daddy Witch, and this is their story.

This is my first published novel, fully designed by yours truly. This book is an x-ray of my soul in terms of the art and music that has inspired me, and some of the events that shaped me, all woven into a fiction that seemed to write itself.

Originally published by Exile In The Margins I have now made a revised edition with a new cover available as a print-on-demand book published by my Wild Love imprint. The companion title Laughing At The Funeral: the art of Daddy Witch, also published by Wild Love, is also available. See below for details.

140 pages. Pocket paperback.

£5.00 & shipping. Order HERE.

LAUGHING AT THE FUNERAL: THE ART OF DADDY WITCH

A companion title to the novel Daddy Witch (see above), this book collects all the art, design & ephemera I made and collected in order to define the aesthetic of the band. Includes many images you will not see anywhere else, including all the original postcard paintings I made, one of each given away with each of the initial orders for the novel when first published by Exile In The Margins in 2021. This book has been fully and lovingly designed by yours truly, and for 2023 I have revamped it with a new cover, revised content and increased the quality of the print stock, resulting in a better book that justifies the increased price.

Published by Wild Love as a Print-on-Demand book. 44 pages. Full colour.

£9.00 & shipping. Order HERE.

GRAVEYARD IN THE SKY

Alongside Laughing At The Funeral, this is another companion title to the novel Daddy Witch. Lee Mirren is one of the main characters in the novel, and this book is a selection of texts and images from his voluminous collection of notebooks, containing songs lyrics, fragments of poetry, found photography collages and designs.

Published by Wild Love, 2024. Not commercially available.
A limited print run, with one copy gifted to a selection of the novel’s readers.
A5 format. 60 pages. B&W interior. Colour cover.

Published by Chroma Editions:

VIGILANTIA: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ARTIST AND WRITERS PAY ATTENTION TO MOGWAI

Now available to order from Chroma Editions – Vigilantia: what happens when artists and writers pay attention to Mogwai – is an anthology of texts and mixed-media works – essays, poems, paintings, drawings and graphics – made in response to the music of the band Mogwai. The book project was originally initiated by yours truly (see here for more details), but circumstances determined that the reins be handed over to Chroma Editions, who have done an outstanding job. My contribution is the short story ‘I Chose Horses’, and there are thirty two other artists and writers, all inspired by the music of one of my all-time favourite bands.

Published in September 2023 in a limited edition of 250 copies, any profits will be donated to the Glasgow charity Refuweegee.

A4. 76 pages. Full colour. £16.50 & shipping. Order a copy HERE.

Titles published by Exile In The Margins (where I provided art & design & some content):

DESIRE PATH: A BOOK OF SHORTCUTS

Now available to order from Exile In The Margins – Desire Path: a Book of Shortcuts. Five writers & artists detail individual journeys through physical and psychic space, ranging from the back alleys of Soho to the woods of Scotland. Each contributor – Derek Gray, Julian Hyde, Neil Jackson, Martin Jones and yours truly – provides text and images that provide a detour into the mysteries that wait just beyond the quotidian familiar.

Desire Path: a Book of Shortcuts. A5 chapbook. 40 pages. 100 numbered copies. Order HERE.

BLACK WATER

You’ve heard of ‘nature writing’? This is against nature writing. Ten years plus in the making, this is a descent into the dark depths of psychosexual obsession and edgelands existentialism. Written by Martin Jones and fully illustrated and designed by me, each page festers and pulses with the madness that went into its making. Published by Exile In The Margins.

Limited to 100 copies. A random selection of ten copies will come with a CD-R soundtrack and original art postcard by yours truly.

£10 & shipping. Order HERE.

ON A DARK, RAGING SEA: stories inspired by the band LOW

Published by Exile In The Margins in January 2022, this was a unique collection of stories inspired by a song from the back catalogue of Low, edited by Martin Jones and fully illustrated and designed by myself. Both Martin and I also wrote stories for the collection, and the book was limited to 100 copies, all of which long since sold out, so this is now something of a rarity as it will never be republished.

THE BRIEF LIFE AND ETERNAL DEATH OF PLASTIC DRACULA

A prose ‘working’ in the Crowleyean sense, an evocation of the spirits – both benign and malevolent – that haunt the arcades and promenades of Britain’s seaside towns. Scrying in the Fun House mirror. Decoding angel language from bingo cards. Ectoplasmic candy floss snagged under the pier. Brylcreem, gasoline and Vaseline. Sticky fingers and bloody knuckles. Hot blood and cold chips. Wish you weren’t here.

24 pages. A5 chapbook. Full colour cover. Text by Martin Jones. Design by Rik Rawling.

Published by Exile In The Margins

£3 & shipping. Order HERE.

WORZEL GUMMIDGE, MY FATHER: THE ART OF OLIVER TOMLINSON

The first publication devoted to the Midland’s most enigmatic artist. Born from bedsits, black metal and Special Brew, Tomlinson’s art follows a fine lineage of English absurdity: a drunken Hyde sketched rapidly by a fearful Jekyll.

A5 booklet. 16 pages. Full colour. 100 numbered copies. Edited by Martin Jones. Design by Rik Rawling.

Published by Exile In The Margins

£3.00 & shipping. Order HERE.

NOTHING SPECTRAL JUST OFFSHORE

Fourteen illustrated poems, born of the strange ozone the author Martin Jones drowned his senses in as he travelled along the coast of England, from the South West to the North East. Imagine Philip Larkin sat under the pier gnawing disconsolately at a bag of chips, while in the amusement arcade above him the jukebox plays The Cramp’s cover of ‘Fever’. Meanwhile, Nick Cave walks by, watching for mermaids rising from the waves but instead finds a hen party wearing teabag-sized dresses, dancing shoeless in the surf. Vampire succubi stare at the moon from shabby B&B bedroom windows while a long black tentacle slides through the shingle, raking through the washed up bottles of Frosty Jack and forgotten beach toys, inching towards a dosser passed out behind the bandstand.

Written by Martin Jones, with cover art and startling Neo-Romantic internal illustrations by Derek Gray. Design by Rik Rawling.

Fits-in-your-pocket paperback. 40 pages. 100 numbered copies. £4.00 & shipping. Order HERE