The Blurt of Richard Davies Reading Guide

Introduction.

The Blurt Of Richard Davies is a 151,000 word dystopic novel - my first - which I wrote between December 2012 and May 2014. I published it on Wattpad shortly afterward. Years later reality has diverged from the 'future' I imagined, though unfortunately many of the themes covered in the plot remain only too relevant.

Written as a series of diary entries it charts the story of Richard Davies, an executive journalist working at Independent Media Services - a 'new media' company - in the course of the year leading up to the first General Election to be held in ten years following the post civil war partial break-up of the former United Kingdom, now known as the Federation of England, Wales, and Ulster; Scotland having seceded by force.

All well and good, and a credible dystopian plot I hear you say; but why should it need a reading guide? The reasons are many.

The first is actually getting the work noticed. As it contains occasional and descriptive instances of man's inhumanity to man, along with many instances of profuse swearing (you can't set a grittily realistic urban dystopia in the city of Portsmouth without including plenty of foul language and local dialect!) I responsibly but naively chose to rate it a 'mature', not realising that doing so would render it all but invisible in Wattpad searches.

Had I known then what I have learned in the time since, I would have rated it instead as 'PG 13'. Yes, I know it is possible to apply to the Wattpad staff to get a work re-rated, as I also know that given the dark, adult themes described in the book there would be little chance of a successful outcome. Nor am I the sort of person who plays by those sort of petty rules. So the content may be a little too strong for some tastes? Well that's just too *expletive deleted* bad!

I don't have a problem with books being classified; far from it, I'm all in favour of accurate ratings so that an informed reader may come to their own decision as to a work's suitability for them. No, what incenses me is Wattpad's condescendingly overprotective nannying mentality which regards a 'mature' rating as a pretext to hide a work from its rankings, title lists, and search results unless the tiny 'include adult content' box is specifically checked before the search is made. How do you search for something you don't know exists? Wouldn't it be easier just to list all of the works available on Wattpad, but if an 'underage' reader (assuming young people don't fake their date of birth when they register for a Wattpad account so they can read 'adult' works) tries to access an 'adult' book a pop-up appears on their screen informing them they are unable to read the story until they are old enough? Yes, I know... So if this guide has caught your attention, you now know of the Blurt's existence if you didn't before.

But rants about Wattpad aside, there are other, more practical reasons to create a reading guide.

Looking at the reader engagement statistics (and I have my doubts about their accuracy) it appears quite a few of the readers who begin reading the Blurt don't make it to the end. This is hardly surprising; there are many and varied reasons which would explain why. For some people it may not be their kind of book, but they may not realise this until they have read a couple of chapters further in. Others may find parts or all of the narrative disagreeable or profoundly depressing: Yes, it does cut close to the bone; I make no apology for it. And I admit there are quite a few long chapters with detailed world building involved: The Blurt is an involved, hopefully involving book. If you have the intellect and attention span of a goldfish then it isn't for you.

No, this guide is for those who may read the story, but wonder if, or how the plot will develop. The answer is yes, a lot will happen, but in a diary written over the course of a year describing Richard's daily struggle to get by in an impoverished world there will be some 'flat' spots. I deliberately wrote it so, because life in the dystopian society I describe isn't fast paced or exciting all the time: No, the existence described in this world would be a boring, miserable grind; it wouldn't be a realistic portrayal otherwise.

So what follows is a chapter by chapter description of the action without spoiling the plot. This will hopefully give you the incentive to stay the course. For those of you who Wattpad consider too young and impressionable to view it I'll include an off-Wattpad link where you can read the Blurt on another site without needing to register or jump through other hoops in order to do so.