The Invention of the NVLA - A Warning From Alternative History
Currently, I'm offering some of my titles at various discounts on Smashwords , in support of their big end of year sale - and I've included On Chestnut Tree Lane as a free giveaway. Which has resulted in a number of readers very kindly looking me up or messaging me through my Reddit profile to say thank you (and even to make quite adorable whimpering noises where my books have been particularly effective!). As part of those conversations, a couple of people have asked me how I got the idea for the NVLA and how - in universe - something like the world of the NVLA came to exist. I completely understand this curiosity , because as awful as the NVLA is, it's also oddly seductive in some ways. To be honest, the question of how I got the idea at all isn't very interesting (as I've said before, it was at least partly to annoy Mrs Whitehouse !) - but the history of that world is. And, in fact, I briefly toyed with including an "Afterword" to On Chestnut Tr...