gareth bouch :: stuff & things

I’ve finally put RIVERCITY online.
It’s a dark novel – basically a smart read involving some grim murders, conspiracies, the supernatural, a bunch of history and philosophy and a film-noir styling.
I actually wrote it years ago – 1997 – which feels like another life now! But it’s had a number of drafts and I also reworked it into a film treatment.
Having said that I’ve not really done enough with it and it’s spent the last few years languishing on the Mac and remaining unread.
I figured that, in the absence of any deal for it, I might as well just put it out there in its entirety and for free.
If you want to go and read it then click here…

It’ll be interesting to see if revisiting it and tidying it up for putting online will re-ignite work on some other unfinished writing projects…

Being a tetchy and grumpy old bastard from time to time means that I write “Disgusted of Stockwell” – type letters to my favourite newspapers. Have done a few to The Metro, but can’t lay hands on them right now, but here’s some nice ones to The Guardian and The Independent On Sunday…

Letter to The Independent On Sunday, December 2007
(Countering a shrill and sinister Home Secretary’s alarmist calls for 42-day detention laws)

Sir: It’s interesting to note that, in desperation, Jacqui Smith explicitly (and emotively) says she wants to extend the amount of time “a terrorist” can be held. Interesting in that it is both misleading and incorrect: the detention is surely for “suspects”.
Gareth Bouch
London SW8

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Letter to The Guardian, May 2004
(The Pentagon claims that Chalabi and the Iranians led it up the garden path and tricked it into invading Iraq on poor/rubbish/non-existent evidence)

Ah, so it was all Iran’s fault. Of course, the USA wouldn’t otherwise have ever imagined lying and conniving to invade a strategically important, oil-rich country. It could never have been anything to do with the long-held ambitions of the bunch of recycled Reaganites. And the US would never have misused intelligence to wage a propaganda war on its own people to convince them Iraq was involved in 9/11.
Gareth Bouch
London SW8

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Letter to The Independent On Sunday, August 2003
(Peter Hain wrote an article a week prior, bemoaning spin whilst amazingly mamaging to trash the reputation of the BBC in the interests of supporting his government’s pro-war stance)

And what does Peter Hain use his supposedly anti-spin article for? A full-spin against the BBC.
Gareth Bouch
London SW8

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Letter to The Guardian, February 2003
(Answering the editorial position of The Guardian newspaper that the “eve of war” debate had been a ‘good day for democracy’)
Is it really a “good day for democracy” when the only part of a war debate the prime minister can stay for is hearing his own words coming out of Jack Straw’s mouth?
Gareth Bouch
London SW8

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