Red House is a novel set in the famously long and hot summer of 1976. In two south coast towns and a nearby university, their originals easily guessed.

The story follows the fortunes of two couples: Snyder and Mothy, Matthew and Jinty. Snyder, a renegade academic, is close to losing his job. He embarks on a research investigation - something like Walter Benjamin’s Arcades project - that disintegrates in parallel with his mental state and his relationship.

Matthew and Jinty’s relationship stews more quietly in the heat, but with a buildup of tensions that breaks into catharsis. An uncertain reconciliation follows.

The story might be seen as wall-to-wall pathetic fallacy. Drug-enhanced freak-summer motifs – overheat, a forcing of nature, progressive exhaustion – run their course. When a storm finally breaks its turmoil is mirrored in three of the four characters - for instance in Snyder’s descent into amphetamine psychosis …click here.

I hoped to find a publisher, but gave up after somewhere between 50 and 70 rejections - I’d stopped keeping a record. I then shelved the novel for ten years or so, but after self-publishing Peterkin and the First Dog I decided to do the same with Red House. It will be released, and available to order in all major bookshops, on 1 May 2026.

A couple of samples meanwhile. Much of the writing is pretty experimental – my influences included Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Lawrence, Cormac McCarthy, no doubt upping the one-glance rejection rate. Here are two passages from a chapter I’m quite pleased with: Matthew and Snyder, with some interleaved commentary from their partners, are visiting a church as part of Snyder’s project - see here.

(The church is more or less exactly St Mary de Haura in Shoreham-by-Sea. The dedication on the bench is still there, though since I took notes - it must be thirty years ago, more even - the elements have completed their task of rubbing out the names on the Juniper gravestone.)

There are five and a half sex scenes. The half - here.- comes after Matthew and girlfriend Jinty have had a near-violent row.