Authors in the Media – December 2024

‘Tis the season for agency authors in December.

George Harrison‘s debut novel Season, received high praise in the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday.

The Telegraph’s Declan Ryan said, ‘Harrison feels – and captures – this world rather well. We’re served the recognisable cocktail of frustrated tenderness, zealotry and madness that we induce when we outsource our happiness to millionaires in leisure-wear.

Sticking with the newspapers, Mira Harrison, author of the One in Three, was reviewed in the New Zealand Listener, the Otago Daily Times, interviewed on the podcast Write Spot with Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature, and was the Book of the Day in the New Zealand Herald.

Mary Novakovich received a mention in The Guardian for her audiobook version of My Family and Other Enemies. A blend of memoir and travelogue, this vivid portrait of Lika in central Croatia tells of a family and Croatian region steeped in culture and tumultuous history. Read by the author.

Fellow travel writer Ros Belford, saw her book Children of the Volcano picked out by Wanderlust as one of the books of the year.

the author – fresh from a break-up – relocates to Sicily to give her daughters a childhood to remember, and herself a new go at life. What follows falls into the ‘inspirational’ bracket of books about overcoming the odds, though it paints a portrait of island life that will have travellers intrigued.

Last but not least, Rikki Stein‘s memoir, Moving Music, continues to generate coverage. This month a review in AfroPop Worldwide, and an accompanying interview. An audiobook version, read by the author is coming soon.

Mark LeVine, longtime contributor to Afropop Worldwide said, ‘While this book will no doubt inspire musicians and fans who already love these genres, we can hope it also inspires a new generation of behind-the-scenes forces in the business, who can help move the music, the artists who create and perform it, and the industry people who more often than not hinder if not outright ruin it, back to a foundation of the Underground Spiritual Game that has always animated the most powerful, creative and at least for a time, successful pop music.

Songlines also has picked the book as one it its ‘Books of the Year‘, saying ‘Rikki was also crucial to the success of the musicians of Joujouka, that extraordinary village of Moroccan musicians. And then there are the stories about the Grateful Dead, Guinea’s Les Ballet Africaines, the ever-courageous Ugandan singer Bobi Wine, and more. A great read.

Here’s to 2025!

SEASON by George Harrison to Lightning Books

Eye/Lightning Books has netted George Harrison’s debut on the ‘drudgery of fandom’.

The story follows two men who sit in adjacent seats over the course of a football season and form a friendship. Season examines “the healing, unifying but often maddening role of ritualised sport in the lives of ordinary men”.

As quoted in the Bookseller, editor Dan Hiscocks said, “This is an immaculately written, formally original debut novel which captures the agony and expensive drudgery of loyal fandom, as well as those occasional soaring highs that make it all worth while. It’s also about male isolation and friendship. I hope it will touch any reader, whether they care about football or not. George Harrison is an exceptional talent and we’re proud to have him on our list.”

Harrison penned Season as part of the Escalator Talent Development Programme at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. He was mentored by novelist Michael Donkor.

Harrison commented: “Given the paucity of serious literary novels set in and around our national sport, I feared it might be a long shot to find a publisher willing to take a risk on Season. But right from the beginning, the team at Eye Books have proven that they understand and share my vision for this novel to an almost telepathic degree.”

George has edited and ghostwritten several non-fiction books, and he has also worked as an editorial consultant on other people’s novels. He edited the final memoir of the golfing great Peter Alliss, Reflections on a Life Well Lived, and is also the co-author of Inside Allenwood, an Amazon bestseller about the life of a white-collar criminal in an American prison.

Season, will be published by Lightning Books in January 2025. Pre-order here.

His website can be viewed here.