The End of Days (A Barney Thomson Novella)

Added on 05 March 2011

Barney Thomson & The Westminster Christmas Massacre, previously published on this site as a serial in December 2009, is now available to download as a short novel on Amazon Kindle. The title has been changed to The End of Days, as it's not really a Christmas story as such, and for marketing purposes it seemed daft to lumber it with a Christmas title when releasing it in the spring.

Obviously, prior to making this decision, I paid a team of market researchers something in the region of £800,000, to be sure we were on solid footing. Decided to leave the setting in December 2009, rather than updating the story. The newspaper headlines and some of the off-scene side events are genuine, and I liked it being of the moment. At the time there was talk of the PM calling a snap election because he was improving slightly in the polls just before Christmas, but obviously  he never felt in a secure enough position to do so. If only Barney Thomson had really been cutting his hair. Well, just for the PM's sake obviously, not the rest of us.

This is the blurb:

December 2009. MPs are being murdered, in revenge attacks for the expenses scandal, and Westminster is in a state of turmoil. With the government on the verge of collapse, the last Labour Prime Minister – desperately clinging to power – decides there is only one way to reclaim the government’s authority: to launch an invasion of the eastern seaboard of the United States of America. As humanity stands on the brink of war, it may well be that we have reached the End of Days.

The world of men is at a crossroads: will it be annihilated, or will it survive and be allowed to evolve naturally into a beer-drinking sloth species with no appendages? Ultimately, when the blood stops flowing and the last money-grabbing MP has been stabbed in the head, the fate of us all and of Planet Earth itself will rest in the hands of one man; renegade barbershop legend, Barney Thomson.

Have a new cover on order, but this is it for the moment. Click on it to take you to Amazon, and buy this extraordinary piece of "macabrely comical satirical genius" for only 70p. Cheaper than a bar of chocolate. Well, some bars of chocolate.