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These are the words that came out of ar’ kids’ mouth when she originally read the first three chapters of what has now evolved after many, many years into Ar’ Back Yard – the first in what will be a trilogy of books soon to be released. Next will be After the Rain, and then finally will be a story set a decade later, Paralysed Souls.
Ar’ Back Yard is a remarkable journey into the dark corners of a place and time that is now revered as a golden age of music and culture. Joy Division, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Tony Wilson’s legendary Hacienda club have been enshrined and glamorised in films such as Control and 24 Hour Party People, and had an enormous influence on music, fashion and youth culture ever since.
But the reality of that scene was something quite different…
Ar’ Back Yard, is the fictional story of Chopper, a kid who grows up on one of Manchester’s worst estates, and his rise through the ranks of one of the toughest gangs in the city. Chopper carves out a career in crime – theft, violence and drug dealing – that mirrors the ‘80’s culture of greed that has taken over the rest of Britain. Like Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, and particularly Victor Headley’s Yardie, it is uncompromising in its depiction of a time and place most people could never even imagine.
Ar’ Back Yard is fiction, but heavily rooted in reality. I was born in Salford in 1971, and was there, in the thick of things. I am not proud of who I was back then, and in no way do I wish to romanticise the life that I and others led.
The harrowing realism of my writing should ensure that this does not happen.
I am currently working on two more books that will complete the story of Chopper and his world.
You see, for me - During the late 1980s and early 1990s Manchester witnessed some of the best and worst times the city had ever known.
Ar' Back Yard relives those times through the eyes and escapades of Billy Chorlton - or Chopper, as he is more commonly known. One of three delinquents, Chopper, along with Scotty and Kezlo, will take you on a roller-coater ride with a generation of kids and criminals alike, through an era that some will never forget.
Growing up with no formal education on one of the city's housing estates, Hulme, the three friends live out each day with one criminal activity after another.
The years pass and they sink to new depths within the criminal underworld that had always surrounded them, and Chopper becomes the first to realise that the times are changing.
With the music scene evolving and the new so-called designer drugs such as ecstasy and crack-cocaine hitting the streets, it seems inevitable that, being already actively involved within the drug trade, they should continue down this path and as the money begins to roll in beyond any of their wildest dreams they find themselves drawn deeper and deeper into the life.
However, whilst riding high on a wave of continued prosperity and enjoying life to its fullest, burdens associated with the dark nature of the business advance upon them, arriving in the form of old adversaries from neighbouring Salford, which sees Manchester and the surrounding areas drawn into a series of unwanted turf wars.
But the anxiety from such battles proves to be only one of their problems; an investigation into their activities which have expanded beyond the estate to the city limits is soon underway, an investigation which will see the involvement of Manchester's Serious Crime Squad and, to make matters worse still, the investigaters appear to finally discover a way inside what has been up, until then, an impregnable group.
It soon appears that everybody from the criminals to the law are closing is on their goals.
Buy the book right here by clicking the 'Further Info' page. Also Check out more animation and have a read through what we have released so far on the Extracts page. If you'd like to be kept updated about Ar' Back Yard then why not sign up to the mailing list on the contacts page.