The Tornado Ashes Club by Pete Tarslaw

Thanks to Daletha Butts’ Blog About Natural Disasters 

Title: The Tornado Ashes Club

Author: Pete Tarslaw

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

Pete Tarslaw wants to be a bestselling novelist. He wants a lazy lifestyle, he wants a fabulous beachfront property, he wants to show off to his ex girlfriend. So he carefully scrutinises the bestselling books lists, and creates a formula for success. He chooses to write a literary novel; because then you don’t need a plot.

His book, The Tornado Ashes Club, is about a grandmother and grandson on a road trip to scatter the ashes of an ex-lover into a tornado. The book seems destined to sink into obscurity but then a D list celebrity is photographed hitting a paparazzo with a copy…

The Tornado Ashes Club becomes the most talked about, the most blogged about, the most read, admired and reviled book in America.

Also featured in How I Became a Famous Novelist are Protracted by Jean Fung (former sex columnist for The California Tech), about hooking up and engineering at a prestigious university; 

Strip Tease, one of Pamela McLaughlin’s popular Trang Martinez series; 

Cumin: The Spice that Saved the World by Arthur Grunberg; 

Cracked Teeth by Dexter Eagan; 

A Fire in the Entrails by Ted Easkey, winner of the Warburton Prize; 

Manassas by Josh Holt Cready; 

Myopia Dystopia by Suzanne Freidegger; 

Sageknights of Darkhorn by Gerry Banion; 

Kindness to Birds by Preston Brooks and 

Dreaming of Buck Owens by N’Gome Tula, a memoir by the Nigerian human rights activist. About his time as a diamond miner and his love of American culture (in case you were not aware, and I wasn’t, Buck Owens was a country musician who with his band The Buckaroos had 21 No: 1 hits).

You may have guessed, this is another book that I read about and wanted to add to the list. I probably would read this if I had a copy - unlike a few books I don’t really fancy. But I haven’t yet. Maybe one day. I rather like the sound of the Trang Martinez series. Do we think he’s a scruffy PI in NYC or LA?

Thanks to Met Office