Sunday, December 18, 2011

Wee Rockets

When Gerard Brennan published a fragment of Wee Rockets under a different title a few years ago, I threatened to call him, stick my arm through the phone, and grab him by his Carlsberg-swilling gullet until he revealed the fate of the story's scared, aimless, violent, barely teenage protagonists.

I'm pleased to report that the full book is available now, without violence and at a more than reasonable price, from Allan Guthrie's Blasted Heath. Visit the company's Web site to hear Brennan read from Wee Rockets and to accompany him on a stroll through the story's West Belfast millieu.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

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25 Comments:

Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

You'll hear no nays from me to your yey. I will report back with details when I'm done reading.

December 18, 2011  
Blogger Kelly Robinson said...

Glad you didn't have to grab him by the gullet.

December 19, 2011  
Blogger Gerard Brennan said...

I'm raising my coffee cup to you, Pete! Carlsberg will come when I get off work at the end of this week.

Thank you.

gb

December 19, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Kelly, there's too much violence in this world for me to have grabbed him by the gullet. I probably would have stopped at threats.

December 19, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Gerard, I can remember when you'd drink a Carlsberg with lunch during the week. You've becine a responsible adult.

December 19, 2011  
Blogger adrian mckinty said...

Peter, Ger,

Carlsberg, really?

Loved the wee rockets.

December 21, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Yes, Gerard showed me the Real Belfast Experience: West Belfast, the Republican Museum, and a light lunch washed down by a Carlsberg in an airy pub furnished in blond wood.

December 21, 2011  
Blogger seana graham said...

Did you guys see the little promo trailer? You even get to see gb himself taking us all on a wee tour of the neighborhood. It's here.

December 21, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Yep, the link I posted includes the tour. I know that view of the hills!

And I wonder who shot the video. Gerard calls the book a look at spide or chav culture. "Neds if you're from Scotland," he adds, appearing to glance off camera. At Allan Guthrie, perhaps?

December 21, 2011  
Blogger seana graham said...

Maybe he was just looking over his shoulder to make sure the neds weren't coming to beat him up.

...I think I may have been reading too much Irish crime fiction.

December 21, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Maybe some exchange program allows neds, spides, and chavs free passage into one another's territory, the better to foster intercultural understanding.

December 21, 2011  
Blogger seana graham said...

Yeah--that would work...

December 21, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

The program could be called the Nedwork. Not sure how that would work outside Scotland. Or inside Scotland, for that matter.

December 21, 2011  
Blogger seana graham said...

In America, it would just sound like someone had a cold.

December 21, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Not to anyone who read this.

December 22, 2011  
Blogger Gerard Brennan said...

Nicely spotted, sir. The camera man was indeed a Scottish chap. Kyle MacRae, the Blasted Heath social media expert. But I think I was on full alert as well, Seana. Can't be too alert. Paranoia is a survival tool.

my v-word is mottion, as in move!

gb

December 22, 2011  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Ah, so you improvised the bit about neds. Very nice.

My v-word sounds like a letter from a sailor to his distant lover: dearfar

December 22, 2011  
Blogger Photographe à Dublin said...

While I agree with Gerard that some paranoia is essential for survival, the suspiciousness engrained in some societies ensures that I have become very discerning when it comes to travel.

January 05, 2012  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

P a D, I think our man Gerard is too young to have lived through the worst of the Troubles. But I can well imagine habits of suspicion being ingrained in older inhabitants. Even in this age of Murals Tourism, I found the Peace Wall that runs between the Falls and Shankhill Roads in Belfast an unsettling sight.

January 06, 2012  
Blogger Photographe à Dublin said...

If a wall can scare you, you are fortunate not to have visited the North of Ireland in the past.

"http://widgetinghour.blogspot.com/2012/01/shilly-shallying.html#links"

January 07, 2012  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

The wall was not scary as much as it was disquieting. Same for my first glimpse of Belfast as my bus pulled in from Dublin late in the afternoon: A big mural proclaiming that I was entering Loyalist Sandy Row.

But once I got out into the city, nothing scared me. Of course, I visited no notorious housing estates, not did I sing "God Save the Queen" of "The Fields of Athenry" in inappropriate places.

January 07, 2012  
Blogger seana graham said...

I'd go. But then, it wasn't part of my childhood frame of reference at all. Which is kind of funny given my Irish Catholic paternal side of the family. But they seemed to have saved most of their political spleen for this side of the Atlantic.

Though of this, there was plenty.

January 07, 2012  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I did feel a bit of a chill at the mighty roar from the outdopor drinkers at the Glasgow Rangers Supporters Club on the Shankill Road.

January 07, 2012  
Blogger Photographe à Dublin said...

I used try to keep my spirits up by joining in the forced good humour that is always a sign of being in a very unomfortable place.

It didn't really help much...

January 08, 2012  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

The outburst from the Rangers supporters was genuine, I think. A visitor, perhaps from Glasgow, on the open top deck of a double-decker tour bus yelled, "Go, Rangers!" as we rolled down the Shankill. I was sitting across the aisle from, situated so I could not see the men at the Rangers Supporters Club. That made their answering roar all the more startling.

January 08, 2012  

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