Nigel Owen Spencer was born in Shropshire in 1963 on Frank Sinatra's birthday. He grew up in the Black Country, but escaped to Manchester as soon as he had learned to talk properly. He recently wrote an author biography that went something like this:
"The author has been, in no particular order, a bass guitarist, an anarchist activist, a born again christian, a band manager, a housing officer, a vegan, a record company boss, a rough sleepers' outreach worker, a punk rocker, a hunt saboteur and an organic farmhand. He is currently none of these things. He lives in Manchester with his partner and three year old son and earns his living as a mental health social worker. After the full time job, the young child, the writing and the regular forty-something bloke stuff, he spends his spare time listening to folk music and threatening to learn the five string banjo. He would describe himself as a greenish, humanist, meat-eating, leftie-liberal Guardian reading softie. He is also features writer at the wyrd folk website, The Unbroken Circle and a member of the South Manchester Writers Workshop. His favourite writers are Harry Crews, Michael Malone, John Kennedy Toole, Carson McCullers and Madison Smartt Bell."
Apparently agents and publishers like to hear this sort of thing. When Spencer showed the bio to his girlfriend, she complained that there wasn't enough stuff about her in it. So, to put the record straight, the photo on this page is by Celia Hooson.
Spencer would like to point out that "The Shit Of It" is his first novel. He hasn't got fifty unfinished manuscripts stashed under the bed; hasn't got an agent, a publishing deal or any previous form; does not have any strange compulsions to write and certainly doesn't write every day - apart from anything else, he's too damned lazy. However, he has the utmost admiration for those hardy souls to whom any of the above applies and would readily admit they are far better people than he could ever hope to be.
As an aspiring writer, he has nothing useful to say to other aspiring writers, apart from this:
· Join your local writers group, providing it's any good.
· Listen to the great Harry Crews: "There's only one piece of advice worth having - sit your ass down in front of that typewriter."
And so to the novel. "The Shit Of It" is a darkly comic novel of suffering, humiliation and partial redemption. It follows the protagonist, Slattery, a middle-aged local government officer, who makes up in self-confidence for what he lacks in self-awareness, as his life utterly unravels in less than a week. Amphetamine guzzling teenagers, gay gangsters, violent homeless alcoholics, dope smoking anarcho-hippies, Trotskyite trade unionists, and his long suffering wife are amongst a cast of characters who conspire to assist Slattery on his downward spiral. Salvation arrives in the form of a bizarre Indian religious cult, who stand for everything Slattery claims to despise. You can read the opening chapters on this site and further extracts on Spencer's Myspace page. To read Spencer's ramblings on folk music, have a root around the Unbroken Circle web site.
Nigel's writings on this site
