Cambridge lecturer’s literary lockdown project to help calm sons
Added: (Thu Oct 28 2021)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
A much-needed escape from Covid has turned into a five-star-rated debut novel for a caring mum and her two children.
Cambridge researcher and lecturer Olive Twist turned her passion for literature into a lockdown project to help calm her sons.
During 2020, Olive, along with her autistic children, cut a long story short, writing A Contrary Case of Being Afoot in Small Print.
The imaginative and highly entertaining fantasy adventure has already been described by reviewers as ‘awesome’, ‘wow’ and ‘I found myself lost between the covers’.
Olive, who lists the likes of Aviaq Johnson, Manaan Kapoor, Elizabeth Seeger and Rabindranth Tadore among her favourite authors, admits writing her first novel was a therapeutic as well as creative experience.
She explained: “A Contrary Case of Being Afoot in Small Print was written with the help of my children, who are both neuroatypical, on the autistic spectrum.
“The final touches to the book were made during the 2020 Covid-19 crisis, when we all needed a safe place to escape the confines of isolation.
“Each of the book characters represents an effort to reconnect with familiar people and places, and to resurrect a newfound sense of routine.
“Humour has been a source of therapy in reformulating and transforming my elder son’s experiences as an epileptic into manageable fiction that we can all enjoy.
“A Contrary Case of Being Afoot in Small Print is set in a free space, where we are still able to connect abstractly, and independently.”
Olive’s novel follows the fortunes of four school friends who band together in search of the missing Aurora.
But little is what it seems in the alternate world of Jed gZed as they travel along in their highly-strung school bus through a quagmire of puzzling chapters.
Alone, and beguiled, Aurora awaits the search party in an unknown place somewhere between a capital and its neighbouring lower case.
Baffling yet uplifting, A Contrary Case of Being Afoot in Small Print is a stunning piece of storytelling.
Olive’s desire to write started with a gift from her own father when she was a child.
She added: “I started writing a diary when I was seven years old.
“I started to write with zest after my father purchased a typewriter for me at around the age of 10.
“I have read so many books that I decided I could write one, too.’
Olive and her sons are currently working on the sequel to A Contrary Case of Being Afoot in Small Print.
For more information visit Amazon and search for Olive Twist, where the Kindle and paperback versions of A Contrary Case of Being Afoot in Small Print are available.
Notes to the Editor
PublishNation was formed in London in 2011 to provide high quality services to writers at affordable prices.
Since its launch, the company has assisted in the publication of around 2,500 books in a variety of genres for clients throughout the world.
For more details on PublishNation, visit their website at www.publishnation.co.uk