Because Dan’s novel has created some interest here – and in the interests of bringing some more of his work to the attention of people who might enjoy it – I’m pasting in below the short review of his last poetry collection that I did for Amazon. You can get a Kindle version of the book there, or free from Dan’s website.
“This is a short collection of poetry and prose which would prefer to be strutting its hour upon the stage but which works well on the page as well – although I occasionally got the impression that Mr Holloway’s preferred line lengths might have worked better on a slightly bigger, paper page.
Dan Holloway is a sort of Oxfordian Allen Ginsberg. Actually some of this is set in London and America as well. If Ginsberg was still writing he might well be writing like this – if he had embraced slamming, which I’m sure he would. There are relentlessly hopeful and hopeless poems in this little collection. And two tiny stories which are almost prose poems. There are marvellous images and rhythms.
My favourite is ‘Petals’
Published by Judi Moore
Hi there,
I hope you find something to interest you here.
In July of 2022 I published my fifth book: a volume of short stories set in and around Weymouth. I came to live in Weymouth in 2016, and one of the first things I looked for was a creative writing workshop. In fact I was lucky enough to find two – Off the Cuff and Weymouth Writing Matters – both of them exercise based. Those twenty minute exercises every week produced a lot of very short fiction that could only have been made here, in Weymouth.
When Covid closed down our lives in March of 2020 I immediately cast about for a writing project to keep me busy for the duration. There sat 10 notebooks full of workshop writings, never revisited. I wondered, what’s in there?
So through lockdown I keyed up the draft scrawls in those notebooks, finishing some stories, editing and polishing them all. While I was doing that, I was lucky enough to pique the interest of a talented artist friend, Mat Cross, who has made a full page illustration for each story in the collection (and a kick-ass cover for it too). Nowhere is the pandemic mentioned, because all these tales were told between 2016 and 2019. I’m sure there are many stories to be told about our Covid experiences, but these are not they. I don't believe you need to be a Weymuffian born and bred to enjoy these stories. Give them a go, why not.
In December 2017 I published my fourth book – ‘Wonders will never cease’. It’s a satirical campus novel set in the fictional Ariel University in 1985. If you enjoyed Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse novels, Willy Russell’s ‘Educating Rita’, David Lodge’s campus novels or Malcolm Bradbury’s ‘The History Man’ back in the day, you may enjoy revisiting the ivory towers of 1980s’ academe thirty years on. See what you think.
In the autumn of 2015 I published a volume of short fiction: 'Ice Cold Passion and other stories'. It contains 9 of my longer, better stories. Some of them won prizes before I collected them up and published them.
In 2014 I released a novella 'Little Mouse', which is an historical fiction set in Berlin and Edinburgh during and after World War II. It attempts to consider how war pursues those caught up in it for many years after the actual events.
My first novel, 'Is death really necessary?' I released in 2009. It is an eco thriller set in 2039, the basic premise of which is that petrol is, suddenly no longer available. I'm rather chuffed that the book is still topical nearly 15 years on. And my take on future technology (which has, of course, long since been overtaken by events) stands up pretty well [preens]. Take a crack at it, why not, and see if you agree.
All my books are available from all good online bookshops and FeedARead on paper, and as e-books on Kindle.
On a semi-regular basis, and about a month after the event, I post here reviews which I do for Big Al & Pals, the premier reviewer of indie books, based in the States. My interests tend to thrillers, SF, magic realism and other quirky stuff.
On this blog are also posted the reviews I did for Leighton Buzzard Music Club between 2010 and 2015. LBMC present annual seasons of eight monthly chamber music concerts at the Library Theatre in Leighton Buzzard, Bucks. They select young musicians just beginning to make their name - and the concerts are usually magnificent. I was very proud to be associated with them. I am delighted to report that they have survived Covid and are still running. Here is a link to their webpage. If you live in the area their concerts are well worth attending. https://www.lbmusic.co.uk/
From time to time I review other books I've enjoyed, and occasionally music, theatre and exhibitions.
BTW - it says the link to Facebook is broken. I dispute that. Click it and see what happens? In any case I am easy to find on FB, and very happy to see you there.
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Judi Moore 
thank you so much. Ebooks are the bane of poets’ lives for line breaks! That’s one reason the book is now available only as a free pdf and a pamphlet (both at http://danholloway.wordpress.com/work-in-progress/i-cannot-bring-myself-to-look-at-walls-in-case-you-have-graffitied-them-with-love-poetry/) – that way in both instances the line breaks are as they should be 🙂
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That’s sensible, Dan. I got around most of the line break problems by reading it in landscape rather than portrait format.
As poetry is, fairly obviously, a genre ideally suited to Kindling someone ought to be pressing Amazon and its ilk to make ebook formats more poetry-friendly. Every so often I send Amazon a list of things they ought to do to improve the Kindle experience for writers and readers. They profess to like this and promise make a note of it for their developers. I’ll mention this next time I’ve got a little list together.
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