East of England by Eamonn Griffin | @eamonngriffin @Unbound_Digital | #RandomThingsTours #guestpost

It’s a pleasure to welcome you all to my stop on the blog tour for East of England by Eamonn Griffin. My thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the invitation to join. Author Eamonn Griffin visits the blog today and shares ten things you didn’t know about him, but first here is what East of England is all about.

| ABOUT THE BOOK |

Dan Matlock is out of jail. He’s got a choice. Stay or leave. Go back to where it all went wrong, or simply get out of the county. Disappear. Start again as someone else.

But it’s not as simple as that.

There’s the matter of the man he killed. It wasn’t murder, but even so. You tell that to the family. Especially when that family is the Mintons, who own half that’s profitable and two-thirds of what’s crooked between the Wolds and the coast. And who could have got to Matlock as easy as you like in prison, but who haven’t touched him. Not yet.

And like Matlock found out in prison, there’s no getting away from yourself, so what would the point be in not facing up to other people?

It’s time to go home.

East of England blends a rural take on the noir thriller with a fascination with the British industrialised countryside that lies east of the Wolds, between the Humber and the Wash. Unlit byways rather than the neon-bright and rain-slicked city. A world of caravan parks, slot machines, and low-rise battery farms.

The flatlands of the east coast; decaying market towns and run-down resorts, and the distant throb of offshore windfarms. Where the smell you’re trying to get out of your clothes is the cigarette taint of old phone boxes and bus shelters, and where redemption, like life, is either hard-earned or fought for, one way or another. 

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| GUEST POST |

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Me

1. I’m left-handed; we’ve evolved from the right-handers, you know.

2. I used to be in a church choir when I was a kid. There are incriminating photos of a cute nature held in the family archives in case I step too far out of line.

3. I’m a big fan of part time study. Love the Open University.

4. I once had a pee standing next to Antonio Banderas.

5. I don’t drive. I lack the gene necessary to pass driving tests.

6. I’m hard on laptops. I seem to be able to break them with unpractised ease.

7. I was a film extra once. In 1990’s Memphis Belle. I’ve looked, but I haven’t seen myself in the movie, though.

8. My favourite book? Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. It never fails to astonish and amuse me in equal measure.

9. One day I’ll do a photography book about buildings that used to be cinemas. Love former cinemas, both the derelict ones and the refurbished.

10. If I’m caught and sent to the electric chair for my crimes, then my last meal would be sushi. The good stuff.

| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |

Eamonn Griffin was born and raised in Lincolnshire, though these days he lives in north-east Wales.

He’s worked as a stonemason, a strawberry picker, in plastics factories (everything from packing those little bags for loose change you get from banks to production planning via transport manager via fork-lift driving), in agricultural and industrial laboratories, in a computer games shop, and latterly in further and higher education.

He’s taught and lectured in subjects as diverse as leisure and tourism, uniformed public services, English Studies, creative writing, film studies, TV and film production, and media theory. He doesn’t do any of that anymore. Instead he writes fulltime, either as a freelancer, or else on fiction.

Eamonn has a PhD in creative writing with the University of Lancaster, specialising in historical fiction, having previously completed both an MA in popular film and a BSc in sociology and politics via the Open University. He really likes biltong, and has recently returned to learning to play piano, something he abandoned when he was about seven and has regretted since.