Straitjacket Blues Stories of Unease

Emotional vampires, control fantasies, murder and the horrors of World War Two... Come play in the dark, unsettling world of Dave Franklin's short fiction. This anthology contains Shelter, Camaraderie, Straitjacket Blues, Dead Man's Fall & The Goodreads Killer. Length: 58,000 words.Dave Franklin has also written five novels - Looking for Sarah Jane Smith, To Dare a Future, Manic Streets of Perth, English Toss on Planet Andong & Girls Like Funny Boys. With a politically incorrect take on life similar to Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis, Franklin's caustic brand of profanity-filled prose is not for the easily offended.

About the Author

Born in Wales, Dave Franklin published his first story in a fishing magazine at the age of sixteen. He emigrated to Australia in 1999 and made his living as a reporter, earning the distinction of being sacked twice by the same Perth-based newspaper group. He then spent nearly three years teaching English in Korea, during which the mortality rate of the children under his care remained at an impressive zero. He now teaches ESL to adults in Brisbane, helping (among others) Thai Lady Boys get to grips with their past participles. The major theme of Dave's small, character-driven stories is alienation, the symptoms of which include male immaturity, misogyny, dysfunction, self-destruction, violence and a childish glee in winding up the politically correct. There are no car chases or explosions in his books; instead he prefers outlandish sex scenes while focusing on exasperated loners full of doubt. Readers who like his work tend to see its humour (and disdain for his own characters) whereas his harshest critics take everything at face value. Indeed, some observers would argue that the highlight of his writing career, which has seen him produce five novels, remains being published in a fishing magazine.

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