Chantelle Atkins was nominated as an Indie Author who deserves appreciation and acknowledgement of her work. I am pleased to present this author a showcase blog post.
Author Bio:
Chantelle Atkins was born and raised in Dorset, England and still resides there now with her husband, four children and multiple pets. She is addicted to reading, writing and music and writes for both the young adult and adult genres. Her fiction is described as gritty, edgy and compelling. Her debut Young Adult novel The Mess Of Me deals with eating disorders, self-harm, fractured families and first love. Her second novel, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side follows the musical journey of a young boy attempting to escape his brutal home life and has now been developed into a 6 book series. She is also the author of This Is Nowhere and award-winning dystopian, The Tree Of Rebels, plus a collection of short stories related to her novels called Bird People and Other Stories. The award-winning Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature was released through Pict Publishing in October 2018. Her next YA novel A Song For Bill Robinson will be released in December 2019. Chantelle has had multiple articles about writing published by Author's Publish magazine.
“The Interview”
Tell me two things about yourself that are separate from writing.
I run a Community Interest Company called Chasing Driftwood Writing Group. We run writing groups, clubs, workshops and projects for adults and children.
Why do you write?
I write because I have to. I really have no choice in it. The words and the worlds and the characters and their stories are all there in my head, vying for attention, so what else would I do with all of that?
Brag about ONE accomplishment as a writer
The Tree Of Rebels has won two awards
Name up to five people who inspire you
Charles Bukowski, Stephen King, Kate Rigby, Amy Reed, SE Hinton
If you could sit down with anyone, living or dead, and have a conversation with, who would it be?
Charles Bukowski because everything he wrote or said makes me either smile, cry or just nod my head in complete agreement. He inspires me to write and also to try poetry. I think he would be an incredibly interesting person to talk to.
Books:
The Mess Of Me
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side – series
This Is Nowhere
The Tree Of Rebels
Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature
Synopsis of next release; A Song For Bill Robinson
Tensions are building on the notorious Holds End estate.
The local community centre is fighting for survival and the murder of 15-year-old Lewis Matthews remains unsolved…
Wannabe teenage singer, Bill Robinson, just got out of hospital after surviving a vicious attack. He thinks he knows who attacked him…and why. When a violent feud escalates between him and local thug Charlie McDonnal, Bill vows to find the killer and help save the community centre by taking part in the local singing contest.
How can music bring a shattered community together? And can Bill keep his own demons at bay long enough to win the singing contest and find out who killed Lewis Matthews?
Excerpt
There was trouble in the air. Something dark was rising out of the gutters and the shadows of the alley ways, with a glint in its eye and chaos in its mind. Everyone could feel it, and though they tried to shrug it off, it kept coming back to cloak them in uncertainty. Something new, yet as old as time.
Bill Robinson could feel it too. Something was coming. But what were you supposed to do when you felt like that about the place you lived in? In the bathroom, he locked the door, removed his t-shirt and examined his body in the mirror. He felt like the evidence was stamped all over his skin. The large, dark blue eyes he had inherited from his mother stared back at him, his face unblemished apart from the graze to his right cheekbone. He turned slowly, looking at the artwork of violence. The bruises and scratches stared back at him, asking, what now?
It gave him a shitty feeling to look like a punchbag. And still his mind kept asking him urgently; what happens now? Was Charlie McDonnal finished with him?
And then the other questions lined up, bustling for their turn. Did McDonnal mean to kill him that night? Or just humiliate him? And the biggest question, the one that made his guts turn over inside of him; why him? Was it because they had bumped into each other the night Lewis Matthews died? And if so...
Website links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chantelleatkinswriter/