Kate Harrad - All Lies and Jest.
A dark, sexy subculture romp, All Lies and Jest is a novel about belief, delusion, and the dangers of being so open-minded that your brain falls out.
When the USA becomes a fundamentalist theocracy, one of its first actions is to round up all the queers, atheists, deviants, geeks, goths and other undesirables it can find, and throw them out. The United Kingdom welcomes more than its fair share. But Britain is no haven; the Christian United States wants the Old Country to follow in its footsteps, and the fundamentalist tides are rising.
Elinor Rosewood is a habitual non-conformist. As British as tea and spanking, she flees her small-minded home town for the dubious joys of London. It’s only after she arrives that she discovers that the greatest isolation can come from being in the middle of a crowd of strangers. Refusing to be defeated by a mere ten million people, she resolves to track down some interesting weirdoes whilst they’re still around to be uncovered.
Her first discovery is a lettuce-eating vampire named Stefan. He’s far too pretty (and silly) for his own good, but he’s a stellar introduction to the Jesus’ Blood Church, and to the sprawling morass of subcultures lurking in London’s cheaper pubs. Elinor plunges into the chaos, little suspecting that her quest to avoid boredom — and maybe save the world a little — will bring her into contact with crazed cultists, devout flat-Earthers, were-mosquitoes, psychopaths, Otherkin, elves, vile plots, and more corpses than you’d normally expect to encounter on a pleasant evening out.
When the USA becomes a fundamentalist theocracy, one of its first actions is to round up all the queers, atheists, deviants, geeks, goths and other undesirables it can find, and throw them out. The United Kingdom welcomes more than its fair share. But Britain is no haven; the Christian United States wants the Old Country to follow in its footsteps, and the fundamentalist tides are rising.
Elinor Rosewood is a habitual non-conformist. As British as tea and spanking, she flees her small-minded home town for the dubious joys of London. It’s only after she arrives that she discovers that the greatest isolation can come from being in the middle of a crowd of strangers. Refusing to be defeated by a mere ten million people, she resolves to track down some interesting weirdoes whilst they’re still around to be uncovered.
Her first discovery is a lettuce-eating vampire named Stefan. He’s far too pretty (and silly) for his own good, but he’s a stellar introduction to the Jesus’ Blood Church, and to the sprawling morass of subcultures lurking in London’s cheaper pubs. Elinor plunges into the chaos, little suspecting that her quest to avoid boredom — and maybe save the world a little — will bring her into contact with crazed cultists, devout flat-Earthers, were-mosquitoes, psychopaths, Otherkin, elves, vile plots, and more corpses than you’d normally expect to encounter on a pleasant evening out.
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A taste of the content.Read some sample chapters in PDF.
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A note from Katy.Hello! I’m Katy, and All Lies and Jest is my first novel. I started writing it in 2002, but it’s taken till now to fully come to life.
In 2002, the idea of a fundamentalist theocratic United States that was trying to impose theocracy on the UK was definitely in the realm of speculative fiction. Now, while I hope it’s still unlikely, it’s a lot closer to the real world than it used to be. So through no fault of my own, this novel has become a little more realistic than I intended. But I still think of it as a story about alternative culture set in an alternate universe, even if it’s only a very slightly alternate universe now. All Lies and Jest springs from two main sources: my teenage past as an evangelical Christian, and my fascination with the weird and interesting people you can find on the internet. So while the plot and characters in my book are made up out of my head, some aspects are real in the sense that there are people out there who believe them. Specifically, the conspiracy theory is a real conspiracy theory, and there are certainly people who believe they’re vampires. I can also confirm that goths do exist and that some of them can be a bit pretentious, although not the ones I’m friends with. I should probably also mention that the Christian group in the book is in no way based on the youth group I was a member of, which was full of lovely people who would never hurt anyone. (As you can tell, I’m slightly worried that I’m going to be hunted down and lynched by a variety of groups of people. In case anyone is getting together a posse armed with crosses, stakes, or pointy things of any kind, I would like to say: please don’t hurt me! I didn’t mean it! The dog ate my homework!) Anyway. Enough wibbling. I hope you enjoy the book. If you have any questions about it — or me — or just want to say hello, you can email me here. If you do enjoy my novel, please do consider telling other people about it via review sites, book selling sites, social media of choice, or word of mouth if you’re sufficiently old-school to still be using your mouth. Love, Katy |
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