Events of an Ordinary Life

Events of an Ordinary Life is a collection of wide-ranging and wildly imaginative tales. The series is a mixture of fiction, supernatural fiction and true event stories that will keep you wanting more. You’ll find comedy, suspense and drama in a very enjoyable reading experience.

Ever Young

Jack Branson is an aspiring journalist for a large publishing company. He is assigned to report on a government-supported medical scheme called Ever Young, a gene-editing procedure that promises to eliminate all genetic frailties and negative medical conditions. Those who commit to the scheme will be guaranteed good health until the age of 95, whereupon they would submit to the government’s terms of termination. Magnum, a world-famous German computer company, has taken control of the Ever Young scheme, and their deep pockets allow them control of the government.

But Jack discovers Magnum’s deeply concerning wartime history. The corruption and violence that ensue when these eugenicists are entrusted with data of a now intimately networked world threaten the entire global order. Governments stand and fall by their capricious nature. Who dares to confront the truth?

Although Ever Young is fictional it is loosely based on the true actions of a major multinational technology corporation who benefitted significantly from their involvement in the Holocaust.

Everyone Follows Ella

Detective John Mathers must discover the identity of a social media influencer, Ella, who is driving vulnerable teenage girls to suicide, before his own daughter, Dawn, becomes their next victim. In a world where beauty is idolised, Ella offers the girls the chance to be as beautiful as she is; to preserve their youth and looks forever by becoming one of her ‘chosen angels’. Dawn is a shy, withdrawn girl who Mathers has sworn to protect since the death of her mother and who he does not want to see age a day. As he enters the girls’ online world, Mathers finds Dawn’s profile; a profile of a girl strikingly different to the impressionable innocent who hides in her room. He soon learns that to discover Ella’s real identity he must discover Dawn’s real identity. When the truth of Ella’s identity is finally revealed it will reveal with it a deeper truth of his own identity, and that of the daughter and life he thought he knew.

Everything is Smoke

Everything is Smoke is a book of poetry unlike anything written in recent years.

The author uses plain language to invoke the most powerful senses – passion, pride, humour, whimsy – he takes you from the deepest grief to the highest exaltation and all stops in between. He takes raw emotions and imagery drawn from his own life to bring you the strongest experience of yourself as a human being.

A journey into this book is a journey into your own soul as each verse, each stanza, each individual poem will take you to the very extremes of your inner self.

It is the job of the poet to take the triumphs and tragedies, the victories and mundanities that we all experience and can never adequately express, and frame them in such a way as to make the heart quicken. Throughout this book you will experience beauty in the ordinary, wonder in the everyday and be lifted having been filled with the intricate depth of your own life.

You are invited dear reader to take these thoughts, these creations unto yourself and take from them all that you need to walk with renewed meaning and fulfilment.

Evolving Perspectives

This book has been split into three separate parts. You can read each part as a separate book. They can also be read in any order.

These parts share characters and events, so after reading one part, you will find additional insights and perspectives in the other parts. The order you choose to read the parts will produce slightly different results regarding how you will feel about the events that unfold.

The book is designed to be an easy entertaining read filled with interesting well drawn characters. I have tried to include a real sense of place for the two principal cities in which the book is set: Brighton, UK, and Sydney, Australia.

The three parts are as follows:

Connect – A cyber-thriller based on what happens to a woman who has her Facebook account hijacked and enters the world of hackers and the Dark Web to try and find who did it and get revenge.

One for You – A comedy romance that follows a group of single people who sign up to a speed dating event to find their perfect partner. Some of the dates that result from the event lead to true love, but others provide hilarious results.

Only Hope – A morality tale about a man who pins all his future dreams in life on winning the lottery. Has he wasted his life waiting for something that will never happen, or will he win and be happy as he always hoped?

Ex-Cop

In London, 1989, the metropolitan police are dealing with the biggest drug crime. Drug problem is rising in the capital and it is up to them to stop these lowlife dealers from smuggling drugs in their city.

PC detective Barry Dermative is the expert when it comes to drugs criminals, however, although he works for the police, Barry does not obey the law. He takes his job seriously and has his mind on only one man; Maverick Loki, more commonly known as Loki.

Barry failed to catch Loki before and has hungered ever since like a wolf. But when he finally succeeds in the arrest, the tables totally turn for him and his life gets turned upside down.

After spending time behind bars, Barry feels hopeless and just full of regret. The only chance for him now is redemption as he gets requested from his close friend, Michelle, to go and help her son, Lucas; to stop him from following his own footsteps. Barry needs to stop Lucas from getting his life messed up by the drug gang, just like they ruined his!

Ex-Cop 2 - Secrets Are Only Made for Liars

In this thrilling novel set in 2007 at the Metropolitan Police, follow PC Lawson on a journey where his lifelong dream of catching a notorious villain comes true, but not in the way he expected. A real mystery unfolds as a lorry escapes the UK, leaving the police puzzled, suspecting that it may contain drugs. The ingenious story follows a cunning and wealthy villain who turns the tables on the Met by exploiting their own policies to humiliate them in front of the PSD, the public, the press, and the media. 

PC Lawson knows that catching this criminal will be no easy feat, and if the Met is to succeed, they must overcome their past, learn to forgive, and trust again. However, with the PSD and half of the force breathing down his neck, Lawson knows that the only person who can help him is someone he cannot afford to be associated with. It’s a huge risk, one that could cost him his life and his career, but he’s willing to take it. Follow along as Lawson navigates a dangerous game of cat and mouse, where the stakes are high and the consequences are dire.

Excalibur's Gold

A couple's search through the historical wonders of the Welsh countryside for clues to the greatest discovery of all times: King Arthur himself.

Join them as their search takes them from the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct near Llangollen to the Devil's Bridge via the shore line St. Govan's Chapel in Pembrokeshire, all because of a clue found in an old oil painting of the Britannia Bridge on Anglesey.

Exits and Entrances

Exits and Entrances is a selection of poems, spanning four decades, by Paul Hollingworth.
Hollingworth incorporates different styles from lyricism, elegy, and rap influences to enhance a resonant statement on varied subjects such as birth and loss, psychosis, redemption, technology, the financial sector, social disorder, and a favourite film or song.
Location is important to his work. Hollingworth takes the reader on a journey to the high Andes of Peru and Chile, to Glasgow, to Canvey Estuary, and to a family home in Andalucia.

Expendable Soldiers

John Knight and his colleagues, who are part-time Australian Army soldiers, have escaped the Japanese once. Now they must continue to chance their arm as they setup a coast watcher network. The Coastwatchers will report on the Japanese from the islands of New Guinea. It's more than the Coastwatchers and the army who are under threat from the Japanese. There are many civilians in the New Guinea region who will soon be within the clutches of the advancing Japanese army. No one could have imagined the speed and efficiency of the Japanese army or their capacity to inflict cruelty on the innocent. They are not playing by the gentleman's rules of war. John knows there is no sense regretting his decision to join the part-time army. No one knew that the Japanese would attack New Guinea in 1942. It was just bad luck that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Australian Army is not prepared for the Japanese and considers John and his colleagues expendable, as they undertake their important mission. The group is using a stolen Japanese gunboat to deceive the Japanese but now they must fight their enemy on land and sea. The Coastwatchers on the islands around New Guinea are depending on John's group for their lives. John's group of part-time soldiers know they must quickly become better soldiers and have the luck of the Irish, if they are to survive the war.

Expendable Soldiers 3 – Counterpunch

Lt John Knight returns to the New Guinea frontline. He now leads small teams of special forces soldiers, who operate behind the lines, in the fight against the Japanese. The war has turned for the Japanese with Allied forces slowly pushing them back. But they are hanging on and are not a spent force.

Nothing has changed. It is still a fight to the death.

But now the allies, including John’s team, know how to fight the Japanese in the jungles of the Pacific. The Allies are no longer the pushover that they were at the beginning of the war.

John and his team are always on their own, and a long way from help, when they take on the Japanese. John continues to rely on cunning battle tactics and ferocious gunfights to ensure his team is punching above their weight. But will this be enough to overcome superior Japanese forces?

This is the third and final book in the highly popular Expendable Soldiers series.

Exploitation

Exploitation is an unceasingly fast-paced, action-packed, graphic, and red-hot account of one man’s battle to cauterise the human trafficking money flow from infectious criminal organisations as they tirelessly replicate and engage in barbarous internecine warfare.

It is narrated by the controversial, yet – mostly – justified, protagonist, who solely gets his hands bloodied – sometimes regrettably – as an assassin for a Russian crime family in order to gather intelligence on their human trafficking operations.

Round after round of being bludgeoned, hunted, manipulated, and lied to takes its toll on the narrator. This forces him to grow increasingly reliant on his knowledge, wit, and resourcefulness, as well as his own professional network.

If you commit a crime, he will be understanding. If you have any involvement in human trafficking, he will be ruthless.