“Rasputin and Raspberry Jam” — OUT NOW!
New Book for a New Year?
New Year, New Book, and my twelfth self-published literary darling to date is now live (from 8th January 2025) in all formats on Amazon, free to read on Kindle should you have an “Unlimited” membership but looks far, far better and a pip and a dandy in both paperback and hardback and reasonably priced too. Go on, treat yourself! If you’re financially able, you’ll be supporting an indie writer in the process with another book I’ve had the pleasure of putting together.
In a nutshell: “Rasputin and Raspberry Jam” is my fourth book on the grand old game of cricket, the third in a continuing series of watching and reporting on the England team “through the night” and here I cover their October — December 2024 overseas tours to Pakistan and New Zealand and as an added extra, I also cover the 5 Test Match series between Australia and India which finished two days ago. Whilst it’s centrally about the sporting shenanigans under a blazing sun from the other side of the world as I warm myself beneath a mound of duvets at 4am with a hot water bottle for company (and lashings of raspberry jam on toast), it’s more a running diary of rambling musings and brain droppings from a mad dog Englishman existing on next to zero sleep and covered in biscuit crumbs and raspberry jam.
Anyway, here’s the fuller cover (rather than the cropped version for the headline of this article), a link to the paperback version of the book and the blurb you’ll find on the reverse cover, all of which can be seen in all its glory if you follow the link and hit the “read sample” tab below the cover on the Amazon page:
"Rasputin and Raspberry Jam" - link to Amazon
“When not losing at cards to my son or visiting the majesty that is Ironbridge on the River Severn, I can often be found eating far too much raspberry jam on toast and watching Test Match cricket and dreaming the dreams of dreamers. This is my fourth book on the grand old game of cricket”
“As Storm Darragh continues to lash Shakespeare’s Sceptred Isle with untold damage and even the postponement of today’s Merseyside Derby between Everton and Liverpool (and no doubt many more sporting postponements to follow in its wintry wake of destruction), a very different storm was bubbling to the surface a world away under the floodlights of the Adelaide Oval as a wounded Australia wreak revenge on their Indian visitors in the 2nd Test Match.
Across the Tasman Sea we find a rather more sedate picture of sporting contest unless that is, you’re a New Zealand Kiwi.
From the haunting darkness and rainstorms of Wellington in central England, the Basin Reserve of Wellington, New Zealand was a picture of sunshine serenity and a full and expectant crowd everywhere you looked on the grassy banks surrounding this magnificent cricket ground and one forever in my cricketing dreams.
There wasn’t a storm to be seen, nor the threat of a raindrop let alone a gale force squall and the floodlights illuminating the brouhaha developing between their noisy neighbours Australia and their visitors from India were only needed in the cosmopolitan capital of South Australia. But after yet another remarkable day of Test Match cricket either side of the Tasman Sea, Australia are thirsty for revenge and England have batted their near neighbours into an impossible mission far beyond the reach of even Tom Cruise”.
“Welcome to Rasputin and Raspberry Jam, my third in a series of books watching the England cricket team “through the night” and here on their 2024 overseas tours of Pakistan and New Zealand as well as the added extra of the Christmas and New Years Tests between Australia and India”.
So there we have it, my twelfth all time self-published book and another, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, I’m incredibly proud of.
New Book for a New Year?
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.