Understand Stone Angels & You’ll understand the Street Artist Banksy.

My first novel Stone Angels now has 57 reviews UK ( 51 reviews, USA) on Amazon, but what I find fascinating is how all the reviewers have a different view of the plot.

Yes, they all have found it to be a dark and disturbing novel. Artist, James Ravencroft is a driven man who sees the world through a series of lines on canvas. When I wrote the novel, I wasn’t sure whether I could put into words James’ descent into madness while keeping the reader wanting to know more, or whether I had the ability to write his drive to paint that the reader would understand him enough to keep turning the page.

I knew what I didn’t want to write. James isn’t a rapist, nor in his eyes is he a murderer. He doesn’t see his treatment of his angels in an earthly sense of cruelty after all his paintings put the models at the centre of his universe. To him they are a thing of purity and beauty and the world will want to possess them, to pay a fortune to own an angel paintings, and he was right.

We learn at the end of the book as James sits waiting in the police station ( no spoilers here) his paintings are changing hands on the black market for large sums of money. James realises his mother’s obsession with owing her own work was that she understood that its real value wasn’t in her skills as an artist, but how much an unique piece of art is worth to others.

As the Street artist Banksy shows us in real life the true value in art isn’t in its creation, but the uniqueness of the piece of work. To own something no one else has. Even though Banksy paints works of art for all of us to enjoy on sides of buildings the paintings are stolen from us and sold to the highest bidder. In Stone Angels no one really care that the models suffered for James’ art they were only interested in what the paintings were worth.

Here is the latest review on Stone Angels.

My other news is The Last Thread, my latest short story in the Women of Horror anthology vol 3 The One That Got Away is going to be used in an university in America in a English course. How wonderful is that for all us writers in the book.

Chat again soon. I’m off for a walk now.