The book, Meet Me Later
My New Book Meet Me Later. Chapter 1 Saturday Evening The Italian restaurant has the longest name I have ever encountered: ‘The Portobello Garden Arcade Italian Restaurant’. It had been […]
Seveny Seven by Michael Fitzalan A Punk Era Memoir
Seventy-Seven Synopsis By Michael Fitzalan – A friend’s brother made up a song: I’m So Perfect, I wake up in the morning, what do I see? I see true love and he’s staring back at me, Because I’m perfect, I know it’s true, Oh I’m so wonderful oh why aren’t you? Then he would point at us!
We were imperfect and we were trying to make sense of our world, just like teenagers today. It was fun and funny being young, then and after punk and the long hot summer of ’76, the faux-anger and the real hardship for working people, Seventy Seven came as a relief. My terms of reference are positive and uplifting, shallow and simplistic. I make no apology for providing a snapshot of a confused and ever hopeful teenager desperately trying to grow up. Maybe some of the stories will resonate with other teenagers or spark a wonderful memory in older readers.
Innocent Itinerant – by Michael Fitzalan – The truth about Guy Fawkes by Michael Fitzalan
This is the story of November the Fifth, still celebrated today. This is the story of an innocent itinerant who was framed for a crime never considered. This is the story of government subterfuge and chicanery, mendacity and manipulation. Robert Cecil needed to get rid of the Catholic hierarchy in order to wrestle back power. Having destroyed the influence of the Puritans at The Hampton Court Conference, he then used King James’s fears of assassination to concoct a plot that was so implausible it would be accepted as truth from that day to this. You might not want to hear the truth but here it is. Catesby the Catholic zealot had converted his children to The Church of England; 36 barrels of gunpowder smuggled into parliament past Cecil’s sophisticated spy network and the Westminster Palace guards, really? Gunpowder was a government monopoly. An excuse to search the cellars yet another time had to be manufactured, some obscure item belong to the king. Finally, the plot would have blown up the people that it was purported the plotters were going to use to replace the regime. non of it makes much sense and all of it has Robert Cecil’s fingerprints on it.
Book Number 10 – Ghost Storey by Michael Fitzalan
The ghosts in Ghost Storey are real and they haunted Michael Fitzalan’s life.
If you have never been to the west coast of Ireland, perhaps, you may not be able to appreciate the glorious green of the perfect pastures. From the verdant verges to the gently rolling undulations of the hills, the country looks like it was blanketed in the colour that gives the republic its name, the Emerald Isle. Around the place, there are the dry-stone walls, feats of amazing engineering, rocks of tremendous size piled high one upon another in such a skilful pattern that they stay upright, a boulder barrier between fields.
Every silver lining has a cloud and Ireland’s gloomy, grey skies put off many settlers. Then, there’s the rain, the rain, the rain; you need an awful lot of water to get green as vivid as the colour of the landscape and does it pour; it pours, drumming on the roof; it pours, sluicing along the gutters; it pours, gurgling down the drainpipe. You do not visit Ireland for the weather.
Opportunities lie in the successful cities: Dublin, Cork, and Galway to name a few. New offices for tech and services have replaced the old timber and linen mills, ghosts from the past.
So, what does Ireland have in spades? Its history and its beauty. Is it enough, though in a country bled of its population, in the famine and, by subsequent emigration to busier places? They say that Ireland is a great place to visit, and the education is very good indeed but to live there takes a certain fortitude and a love of water: streams, lakes, rivers, and rainwater, running down your neck, soaking your cuffs and leaking into your boots.
Our story is not about the place, as such, but a building within that setting. There are cutesy cottages and fine rambling mansions like the Guinness’s old place, Ashford Castle, though those are few and far between. On the west coast of Ireland, where our story takes place, many have been preserved, others rot as the ground around them claims the brick back to its birthplace, deep within the clay soil.
Our story concerns one such glebe. The only glebe with a ghost.
A ghost that lives in the room on the half landing, a mirror image of the room on the other side but through generations its presence has made itself known. If you feel that ghosts do not exist, read on. If you have ever suffered some of the exceptional experiences that fill my story, you will know, now, that you are not alone.
Ghosts exists.
They are not just in your head.
My ghosts stack up like the storeys of a building, one floor after another. Some of them I have inherited from my mother, the ghost in the bedroom, her survival, my grandfather’s ghosts, the ghosts of friends who helped me when they lived, the ghosts who helped from beyond the grave. Moreover, however, haunting feelings that my life should have been better or that I could have given back more swirl in my mind.
All these storeys have a moral, which you can easily discover. Do you tell stories to teach your young and learn from your old? What ghost stories stack up in your life and are there more storeys than you can count in the haunted house that is your mind?
Here I share mine.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghost-Storey-Hauntings-Life-My/dp/B0B72MXGDH/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TSBSUPJG5NRP&keywords=Ghost+storey&qid=1679999433&s=books&sprefix=ghost+story%2Cstripbooks%2C120&sr=1-1
Fall by Michael Fitzalan a scientist knows too much – she must fall.
As she is abducted and taken across the border, a scientist reflects on how she ended up in such a precarious position. Working at one of the world’s leading biological research institutes seemed like a dream job. Her mentor, Professor Akshay Gupta has discovered a secret that in the wrong hands could result in millions of deaths. Someone wants the secret and he has to be protected. When those going after him realise that she knows the secret, too, her life is turned upside down and she has to use all her wit and intelligence to keep one step ahead of the others. Andy, Hardeep and Linda help her to prevent the secret falling into the wrong hands. Interest becomes a flood of unwanted attention and she has to use every ounce of initiative to escape and preserve humankind.
Book No 8 – 2029 by Michael Fitzalan – A thriller
Overview: Aubrey East is a young and naïve salesman who is tasked with selling silver ingots to a smuggler. The night before the deal he causes trouble at the local pub. The next day, Aubrey visits Terry Lawless, the most powerful smuggler in England, who has annexed part of Cornwall to make it his personal fiefdom. After sealing the deal, he is invited to go swimming with Adele. He agrees, but finds out too late, that Freddie, Terry’s son, will join them, and that Freddie is Adele’s fiancé.
When Freddie drowns and bystanders blame Aubrey, and accuse him of murder, he has to escape to clear his name before Terry catches up with him. Rescued by the RNLI, he meets Thomasina Mutesa, who works for the government and he is sent back to collect Freddie’s body. Succeeding in that task he is asked to do more and more, culminating in joining the assault on Lawless’s hotel, the epicentre of his empire.
Background: This is England in 2029, the centenary of the ‘Wall Street Crash’. The Virulent Virus, food riots and the collapse of law and order has resulted in smuggling returning to these shores. Lawless is the most successful smuggler, so the government want him taken down. That job is left to Thomasina Mutesa. Aubrey is a malleable pawn in the ‘Administration’s’ plan.
No 7 Harry a feel good story set in my old school
How could you fail to enjoy the facilities at a boarding school? There was so much to do and so much to learn. Harry Hollister was happy at school until Stephen Inglis arrived. Suddenly, he feels threatened and then Stephen tries to run away. Harry challenges Stephen to a dare to settle things once and fall all. Beaten by the head for bullying, Harry has worse ordeals yet to come.
My sixth novel was an homage to John Buchan Innocent Proven Guilty by Michael Fitzalan
Philip Hayward is a mathematics teacher who thinks of himself as ‘Mr Nice Guy’. He tries to be generous and giving, but he harbours a guilty secret, he wants his brother, Patrick, dead. Ten years previously they had bought a flat together but when Patrick lost his job through shady deals, a year later, they were forced sell.
As the elder brother, Patrick was the principal name on the mortgage and he held the account. When they sold, the capital payment for the flat was paid into his bank, and he disappeared to America with all the money. The mortgage company came after Phil for the whole debt, leaving him with a huge sum of money to pay off and nowhere to live.
He fantasized about fratricide; the bitterness at his unfair treatment had become greater as time passed and as his poverty weighed more heavily on him.
When a serendipitous meeting reveals his brother’s whereabouts, he stumbles into his brother’s new house to discover a body.
His wish had come true but wishes and reality are two different things. With his brother dead, he feels duty bound to find out who killed him. The police want him ‘to help them with their enquiries’ because he has left a bloody footprint on the floor.
Phil sees himself like the fugitive, Hannay, in ‘The 39 Steps’, the only way he can stop running is to find the culprit and clear his name.
It’s time to call in some favours, but has he really been good enough for people to help him; a known murderer who had motive and who was the last person at the crime scene?
Can he prove his innocence before the police move in and who is Diana Deverill who signs herself “Deadly nightshade” and pursues Phil at every opportunity?
His distinctive looks and height give him away at every turn but will the help of the Muslim community save him from the clutches of the law and allow him to track down the real murderer?
My Fifth Novel Major Bruton’s Safari Michael Fitzalan
Synopsis – Opening with Michael waking up in the bungalow at The Hotel Reste Corner, the reader is introduced to the sardonic Duncan and Major Pip Bruton. Michael and Pip are pilloried by Duncan. In the second chapter the rest of the family, the three daughters, one of whom is Pip’s wife, are introduced, sitting around at the Speke hotel in Kampala. Flashing back to the flight over Kilimanjaro, Michael explains how he came to be invited by the family on their trip for the coronation. The tourists visit the Coronation Site at Buddo and Jinja with disastrous results to everyone’s nerves. Awaiting the arrival of another brother, the three at Reste corner, start competing for attention.
The brother arrives citing Uganda’s poor accident rate only to be confronted by a head on collision. Going on Safari near the Murchison Falls, Liz’s temper is tested by the driver and Michael flies home to Entebbe through a tropical storm, ignored by the aid workers who are on the plane. On his return to Kampala by taxi, he gets to know the market and the way the people live. In the final chapter, he is staying with Pip when he hears the Kabaka is getting married. Will he fly off to Africa again, for a wedding instead of a crowning?
My third Novel – A Dark Kafkaesque novel ‘SWITCH’ – by Michael Fitzalan
‘SWITCH’ – by Michael Fitzalan My third Novel – A Dark Kafkaesque novel ‘SWITCH’ – by Michael Fitzalan – the most controversial with graphic details of every nature. On a […]