Copies of the signed Goldsboro books edition of The Gutter Prayer are in the wild, and reactions have been very gratifying so far.
Mostly.
Certain people – certain people known to me on a personal level, and whose names will be noted – have pointed out that my signature is (a) mostly illegible and (b) did not get visibly more illegible after I signed 700 copies. They have mocked my handwriting.
Now, to be fair, my handwriting could be better. It tends to alternate between “childlike scrawl” and “prescription written by a doctor who you sort of suspect of self-prescribing painkillers”. It is… well, there’s a reason I type everything.
But their mockery can be your gain.
Now that I’ve got some spare author’s copies, I’m doing a little contest. Below, you’ll find a page from one of my favourite books, hand-written by yours truly. To enter, all you need to do is comment and name that book. Twitter messages also work.
(If you don’t know the book, I’ll also accept your best guess at the text).
I’ll pick three winners from the correct answers on the 10th of January.
EDIT: I was somewhat unclear above – my author’s copies are of the mass-market edition, not the hardback. However, as I was as ambiguous as my handwriting, I’ll give away two paperbacks and one hardback on the 10th.
Gareth Hanrahan 
is it, uh…the bible?
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Lavondyss, Robert Holdstock. Luckily my own handwriting is likewise not so neat (I always went for speed rather than calligraphic perfection, great for written exams) that I’m pretty good at deciphering scribble 😉
Looking forward to reading The Gutter Prayer, whether I’m lucky enough to win one of the copies or when it’s published and I fork out for it!
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It’s evidently the cryptic, unbreakable cipher of the Voynich Manuscript. 🙂
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And finally, Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock. The final line was google-fu able.
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It’s from Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock 🙂 B
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Hey, drop me an email with your address, please (mytholder at gmail)
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So all I could pick out was that the main character is female, there’s a lot of ivy and a tree. Also some broken pottery that she was sifting through. Total guess here but The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin?
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Yes! My years of being a teacher and deciphering student handwriting finally paid off! The book is Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock
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Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock?
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I can’t read this and I want that hardback so badly 😦 I was just about to pre-order the paperback, heh. BUT… I can guess. Here I go.
Brother Behol ash salted books at lay everywhere. Take path among them, kind then wide and stepped sand the centaur foolish of the study, a great oak fire of how lust and tan a contrived seal. He make them menthol through the equally leivy, into the last. Like everything Eve is the sorry it was like with Ivy.
I give up, lol. It took me like half an hour to even come up with that nonsense. I couldn’t even find something by googling phrases I thought I had ‘translated’ correctly. 😦
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