Not Quite Lost: Travels Without A Sense of Direction

by Roz Morris

Overview

As featured on BBC Radio Devon, BBC Lincolnshire, BBC Wiltshire, BBC Berkshire, BBC Oxford and BBC Bristol

In life there’s the fast lane, and then there’s the scenic route. Take your time getting there and you might meet people whose stories are as gripping as those of any famous name.

In Not Quite Lost, Roz Morris celebrates the hidden dramas in the apparently ordinary. Her childhood home, with a giant star-gazing telescope on the horizon and a garden path that disappears under next door's house. A tour guide in Glastonbury who is having a real-life romance with a character from Arthurian legend. A unit on a suburban business park where people are preparing to deep-freeze each other when they die.

But even low-key travel has its hazards, and Roz nearly runs down several gentlemen from Porlock when her brakes give up on her. She takes her marriage vows in a language she doesn't speak, has a Strictly-style adventure when she stumbles into a job as a flashmob dancer, and hears an unexpected message in an experiment in ESP.

Wry, romantic, amused and wonder-struck, Not Quite Lost is an ode to the quiet places you never realised might tell you a tale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781909905924
Publisher:	Spark Furnace Books
Publication date:	10/02/2017
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Roz Morris published nearly a dozen novels and achieved sales of more than 4 million copies - and nobody saw her name because she was a ghostwriter. She is now proudly publishing as herself and her work draws comparisons with Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury, Penelope Fitzgerald and Doris Lessing. Her novel Lifeform Three was longlisted for the World Fantasy Award. Her memoir Not Quite Lost was featured on 6 local BBC radio stations. She has also been a writing coach, editor and mentor for more than 20 years with award-winning authors among her clients. She has a book series for writers, Nail Your Novel (and a blog nailyournovel.com), and teaches creative writing masterclasses at venues throughout Europe and for The Guardian newspaper in London.

Table of Contents

Eve of destruction 9

A childhood home in Alderley Edge, Cheshire

Pardon our French 20

Paris; Mexico City

Nobody comes here in November 27

Craven Arms, Shropshire; Penzance, Cornwall

You are not Morgana and I am not Merlin 39Salisbury, Wiltshire; Glastonbury, Somerset

I came to find her 53

Westhumble, Surrey

Staircases to nowhere 57

Torrington, Devon

Travels without a sense of direction 67

Suffolk

A time traveller’s road 79

The A303, Wiltshire; Somerset

How to win an argument about a window 82

Norfolk; Lincolnshire

Cold sleepers 88

Cryonicists of East Sussex

You’re not from here 98

Holcombe Rogus, Devon; Porlock, Somerset

The mother ship 105

Shropshire

An earthquake 112

Vicenza, Italy

A bad cold and a village of lost voices 116

Purton Green, Suffolk

An experiment in ESP 122

Roehampton, London

Power stations of the mind 125

Gate Burton, Lincolnshire

Strictly faking it 130

Liverpool Street Station, London

Heyday 163

Baltonsborough, Bath; Somerset

West word 176

The places of Not Quite Lost

Editorial Reviews

12/04/2017
This slight collection of vignettes about the travels of novelist Morris (My Memories of a Future Life) meanders along at a gentle pace. Many of the episodes described occurred during ill-conceived trips to small British towns, with descriptions of problem-laden vacation flats with leaking roofs or wonky ovens, unhinged tour guides, and the busy highways or mud-rutted paths that separate the author and her husband from the nearest pub. To these sketches, Morris adds an account of her jolly encounter with a band of cryonicists and an interesting interlude about her decision to take part in a flash mob, an experience that led the author to consider a change in her career. All too often these episodes read like jottings in a diary rather than full-fledged essays; they describe incidents but do little else. The prose is pleasant but the book lacks the verve and insight that sustains many travelogues. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly

‘Filled with charm and wit … from small giggles to full-on guffaws’ – Davida Chazan aka The Chocolate Lady

‘Turns the mundane into the hilarious or the dramatic’ – Andrew Collins

‘I devoured most of it in a single, long, bewitched session’ – Henry Hyde

‘Bloody good – keep a copy in your guest room and you’ll never see your guests’ – Clare Flynn

‘Laugh-out-loud moments and old-fashioned GOOD writing’ – Icy Sedgwick

‘Move over, Bill Bryson … beguiling’ – Peter Snell, independent bookseller

From the Publisher