Tiny acts of self-publishing
Neil Thorne on his remarkable novellas. Plus more School Streets on the way, we review Galata, our weekly events guide, news in brief, and more
If you discovered one of your skills is that you can write really small, what would you do with that? For local photographer and author Neil Thorne, he’s turned that skill into a book charting the rise and fall of a dystopian regime. As you do. We’ve been learning more about that and his new novella about Chatham. Further down, we have news of nine new School Streets likely coming to Medway, a review of Galata in Gillingham, our weekly events guide, news in brief, and more.
Tiny acts of self-publishing
by Steven Keevil
Neil Thorne is a local photographer and, more recently, a self-published author. Writing during his lunch breaks and evenings, last year he released ‘A Tiny Act of Rebellion’, with editorial support from his partner's daughter. “She’s properly clever,” Neil tells us. The novella's starting point of inspiration is based around what Neil describes as “a useless skill of mine” - the ability to write really, really small.
“With the right pen I can get such tiny writing you struggle to read it. For years it's always been a useless gift. I've never really had much use for it. I've just tried to impress people at the pub.” To be clear, it is incredibly tiny but still legible. Neil always had small handwriting, it’s just become smaller over the years. Neil writes everything by hand, and from a mindsight of efficiency, he found by writing small he could get twice as much on the page.
Being able to write something that a stamp could cover gave him the inspiration for hidden stories. “I constructed an idea in my head that there could be a world very much like our own, set in the future, where art and creativity are illegal. It came from a short story I wrote,” which was included in Confluence magazine. “The stories are really small and having them hidden beneath postage stamps and posted through the postal system under the eyes of this repressive regime.” The book has a mystery about it. Within the world of the book, who is writing these stories? Do the receivers know they are under the stamp? Questions Neil may answer one day, but not today.
It is much better than it needs to be in the world of self-published books. Clear thought has gone into the presentation and the story itself. The novella presents as a post-regime study, writing about the short, small stories as found fiction, with the stories replicated, thankfully, at a readable size. Sections are written as non-fiction analyses, studying what the stories tell us about the regime and speculating about the author's intentions.
The decision to present the story as an alternative future history book works, providing a compelling narrative to bring the whole thing together. “It just seemed the natural thing to do.” The project started during the covid lockdown, with Neil at home for several months, and during Scrabble sessions, Neil decided to create stories based on words that came up during the game. “I didn't aim to write anything big. I just played around and wrote stories.” A lot of the stories turned out to have a recurring dystopian theme.
Some of the stories appeared on Neil's Facebook page, “which I don't use all that much because I'm terrible with online stuff.” The page is called ‘The Tales of the Neon Bard,’ named after one of the stories from the Scrabble sessions. He also took inspiration from real world events. “When the Soviet Union took over a particular area, the first people they killed were the writers and the intellectuals.”
He decided on ten when picking the short stories because “it just felt right. I didn't want the book to drag on because people might get bored with the format of reading the story and the explanation, and so forth.” It took Neil months to work out, toiling during his lunch breaks, approaching each section one at a time. “It didn't always go easily. Some sections were much more challenging than others.”
Neil hadn’t yet decided to publish the book. He had a collection, which he would sometimes read from during events. When he did decide to move to print, he was clear that he would invest in himself and self-publish. He chose to keep it local, working with The Printers Chatham, who “were very patient with me.” He printed several test copies to settle on the final A6 book. “I wanted it to look a bit rough, but not amateurish.”
The majority of the initial print run were sold, and Neil is considering going into a second print. If you are interested in reading a copy, contact Neil via Facebook. “I do want to return to it, the idea or the concept of it. But I need to find a different way to do it because I don't want to just repeat it. I don't want another essay with 10 different stories because I've already told the rise and the fall.”
Meanwhile, he has finished self-publishing his second novella. ‘Loyal and True’, about stories and Chatham, set in a Chatham pub. “It is the motto on the Chatham coat of arms. I decided it's just the right title.” The story isn’t set in the present day, but not specifically at any time. “There's no mobile phones, no pop culture references or anything like that. It should be readable in 20 years’ time, and you could read it in one sitting.”
The book isn’t autobiographical, but the stories are based on some element of local truth. Is there something particular about Chatham which lends itself to the story? “A lot of people don't like Chatham, even people who live in Chatham. I was like that at some point, thinking I'm not always living here and it's not always an easy place to like as well. But I think it's about looking below the surface that there is interesting stories and stories that are worth telling. It's not just a dirty old town that should be pulled down and built again.”
He is hoping to release the book as part of Medway River Lit this November. Like many local creatives, Neil says that “writing is far more interesting for me than promoting it or getting online and telling people about it. That's the bit I can't stand sometimes.” We’ll likely read more works from Neil in the future, though. “I've got lots of stories that I'll look at printing up at some point.” It’s just a matter of finding the spare time.
In brief
🧒 Two-thirds of children in care in Medway are from outside of the area. The majority have been placed here by London boroughs, with many also coming from other parts of Kent.
🎉 Nucleus Arts won Community Charity of the Year at the recent Kent Charity Awards.
✍️ Charles Dickens’ writing chalet is open to the public this weekend. The Grade I-listed building is in Eastgate Gardens behind Rochester High Street.
🍺 The City of Rochester Society has awarded Shepherd Neame a conservation award for restoring The Royal Crown in Rochester High Street. The pub underwent a significant renovation programme earlier in the year.
🚆 Rail replacement buses will replace rail services between Gillingham and Faversham on Sunday to allow engineering work to take place.
More School Streets are on the way
Earlier this year, Medway Council launched its School Streets scheme, which restricts traffic from entering roads around schools at the start and end of the school day. We don’t have any empirical data on how well the scheme is working yet, but despite the initial panic about the scheme being part of some globalist agenda, Medway Council is presumably satisfied, as they propose introducing the restrictions outside nine more Medway schools.
The council will begin a consultation on the following locations this Monday:
Crest Infant & Nursery School / Delce Academy, Rochester
Cliffe Woods Primary School, Cliffe Woods
Fairview Community Primary, Rainham
High Halstow Primary Academy, High Halstow
Hilltop Primary School, Frindsbury
Horsted Primary, Chatham
The King’s Pre & Preparatory, Rochester
St Margaret’s Infant School and St Margaret’s Church of England Junior School, Rainham
St William of Perth Catholic Primary School, Rochester
Much like the first batch of schools, most of these are unlikely to impact the surrounding traffic. Most are located on quiet roads or cul-de-sacs rather than busy through roads. The interesting one is High Halstow Primary Academy, which is located on the only route through the village, making any detour to avoid the area rather lengthy. Similarly, depending on which streets are proposed, restrictions around King’s could limit one of the few roads between Rochester's town centre and the suburbs to the south.
For now, though, this is speculation as Medway Council has declined to provide any details on the plans while they have put out a press release. Presumably that will become available when the consultation goes live on Monday.
Out to Lunch: Galata Diner and Cocktail Bar
In which Steven Keevil assesses the lunch options available in our towns. This week, he’s been down to Galata Diner and Cocktail Bar in Gillingham…
Once you have found somewhere to park on a nearby residential street, Galata can be found on Watling Street in Gillingham. Depending on which window you sit by, you can see elderly pedestrians crossing four rows of traffic or the gentrification of the area. The waiter was friendly, and the venue itself was welcoming and comfortable.
The menu is busier than you might expect. I had gone there for Turkish food, but American options were plentiful. I ordered Turkish sausage for a starter. It was not entirely clear what this would entail. For a main, I ordered chicken kebabs, swapping the rice for house fries, and they came with a side salad.
The Turkish sausage came in a main-sized portion, a tasty combination of a mild chorizo-type sausage cooked in a tomato and onion sauce. The house fries in the main turned out to be regular fries and were slightly disappointingly plain. The chicken kebab was delicious, well-seasoned, and very generously portioned. The side salad came with a standard but enjoyable coleslaw, and raising Galata into the upper echelons of salads in Medway, it came with a dressing with pomegranate seeds.
Galata is a pleasant venue with good, generously portioned food. If you find yourself on the A2 in Gillingham, it’s definitely worth a visit.
Events this week
🎨 2makeit is a small charity helping rehabilitate prisoners and ex-prisoners by providing opportunities for creative expression through music and the arts. An exhibition of work created through their programme is on display in the Rochester Cathedral Crypt until 26 Sep. Free.
🛍️ Rochester City Vintage & Artisan Market is back tomorrow (Sat 14 Sep). Stalls will litter Rochester High Street, selling gifts, homewares, and curiosities. Free.
🎻 Medway trio The Ashen Keys launch their debut album tomorrow night (Sat 14 Sep) at the Medway Little Theatre in Rochester. They’ll be playing all of the songs from the album, and special guests are promised. Tickets £10.
🥖 Rochester Farmers’ Market returns this Sunday (15 Sep). Traders offering a wide range of food and drink will be in Rochester's Blue Boar Lane car park. Free.
❓ Playopolis are hosting a scifi and fantasy quiz on Wednesday (18 Sep). Six nerdy rounds with prizes to be won. Tickets £5.
📷 The Last Call is a new exhibition of photographic work by Philippa Stanton. It celebrates the ordinary and overlooked, particularly public phone boxes, and can be viewed at The Halpern Pop gallery at Nucleus Arts’ Rochester site from Wednesday (18 Sep) until 1 Oct. Free.
🏺 The Halpern Gallery at Nucleus Arts in Chatham hosts a Medway Ceramics exhibition from Thursday (19 Sep) until 1 Oct. Highlighting the diversity of clay, see work from various Medway artists in the medium. Free.
More Authority
Gillingham Football Club have got off to a decent start this season, but as ever, these things can all fall apart quickly. Our resident Gills columnist Ben Hopkins puts on both his optimist and pessimist hats to ponder the positives and negatives of the season so far.
On Sunday, our interview is with Cllr Alex Paterson, Medway’s new Portfolio Holder for Community Safety, Highways and Enforcement. We discuss his start in journalism, his move into politics, councillors on social media, and more.
Remember that our Medwayish shop contains a wide range of Medway-related gifts and products designed by local creatives. We have books, mugs, t-shirts, prints, and other fun bits and pieces. Check it out!
Footnotes
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Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: How To Be Hopeful by Johnny Foreigner, Shrag by Shrag, and The Great American Novel by Proper.