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Michael Cargill
Regular updates of sarcastic and irreverent nonsense.
My books
I have written and self-published six books and they are available to buy from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. My first two are free on Smashwords and they can be downloaded in Kindle, Nook, Sony, and PDF digital formats. Paperback editions are now available for some of them as well.
Reviews of my books are on Goodreads and also on the above Amazon links.
Anyone unsure which book to start with I would recommend giving Shelter from Thunder a go. Not only is it short but is also one of my personal favourites.
Saying Goodbye to Warsaw
Like any girl who is loved by her family, Abigail Nussbaum loves to chase butterflies, enjoys lying on her back looking for shapes in the clouds, and happily teaches young children to make daisy chains.
In the eyes of certain people, however, Abigail has committed a heinous crime. The year is 1940; the place is Poland; Abigail happens to be Jewish.
Along with half a million other Jews, Abigail and her family are evicted from their home and forced to live in the bombed out ruins of Warsaw, the Polish capital.
Although a handful decide to fight back, is the uprising strong enough to save Abigail’s spirit?
Jake
Jealousy, lust, and teenage insecurities are the lifeblood of any large school. Loneliness can strike without warning, spreading through the cramped corridors like an epidemic.
Some people look at Jake in awe, others look at him with hatred. Jake is just an ordinary boy who wants to be liked.
Jake wants to know why the girls never seem to notice him. Jake is… well, he’s Jake.
Underneath
Now look at their face. Are they happy? Are they sad? Or are they angry? Can you even tell?
How well do you actually know the people closest to you? Have you ever seen the real person that lies just underneath what you see…?
Shades of Grey
John is not a very nice man. He works for the government. So who has tied him to a chair and what do they want?
James is a British soldier during WWII. Tom is a young boy with a terrible secret.
Three stories. Three very different people. All of them battling to survive.
Bits of Cargill
Justin Bieber’s diary. Vladimir Putin reviews a glass of Coke. Steve Jobs speaks from heaven. Vegetarians are the real hunters.
Satirical news items, opinion pieces, and other nonsense.
Shelter from Thunder
Finding shelter from German bomber planes is almost a daily part of his life now, but he wonders when his luck will run out…
Michael Cargill 
shelter from thunder sounds my kind of book xxjen
Well, feel free to download it and have a look. Hope you like it!
Great! Will add them over to my Kindle.
Please do! Hope you like them.
“Diary of a dork”…I can’t even imagine a better name for a book. Brilliant!
Thanks! I thought long and hard about that one.
I’ve only started to read your last book, but I really like it. Don’t you consider to go to a publisher? Don’t want to force you- it’s just that I think you might have success.
If I could, I would! Thing is I have pretty much only just started writing so I haven’t got anything that would really attract a publisher yet. Self-publishing is pretty easy but promotion is the hard part.
Glad you are enjoying the new one so far!
Send copies off to publishers all over the fucking place. It’s not too, too tricky to find out where to send them or addresses of people who’d review them.
True enough but I have only just started it really. Going with proper publishers means you tend to lose some control and I have read a fair few horror stories from people doing just that.
Time will tell of course.
I finally had the time to read the entire story, and it was unexpected and very well written! In the beginning, I couldn’t have guessed it would turn out that way. Not too difficult, good change between the normal and italic text, and so on. Very recognizable writing style :). It would be a part of a series of stories, you said?
This is the one I emailed you called Shades of Grey, right? (it’s midnight and I have been drinking).
Glad you liked it! Yes, it is the first story of a set of three short stories I will be releasing. They won’t be related to each other in any way, just separate beasts entirely. Currently on the cusp of finishing the second one and then I have to crack on with the dreaded proof-reading.
I quite enjoyed writing parts of it actually but others were a bit of a slog. It’s funny how writing can sometimes seem temperamental, you get stuck on some sections whereas others just write themselves.
It was Shades of Grey, yes, it’s a great title too, in my humble opinion.
Yes, writing isn’t always as fun as it may seem. I’ve been trying to write books, but I end up not finishing them. After a while the subject isn’t interesting anymore for me. End of story.
I think there were still some small mistakes (like two verbs where there shouldn’t be two) in your story, just so you know it before you spread them on the Internet…
A couple of people have liked the title of the story actually and I might use it as the main name of the book when I finally finish them all.
There are probably several mistakes still in it, I only proof-read it once so that it was at a point where I could ask people to read it and there wasn’t anything extra to add to it.
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Has anyone purchased Shades of Grey this thinking it was 50 Shades of Grey? I really hope so. I kind of hope you masterminded the title that way.
I may have a few questions to ask you about this book stuff. I’m re-editing my stuff and want to get it over and done with.
If the amount of refunds are anything to go by, then yes people are buying it thinking it is the dirty one!
Feel free to ask me any questions about self-publishing.
Not sure how good this is but it might be something to help get some exposure.
http://storybundle.com/faq
I just discovered your blog and I’m enjoying it immensely. Sarcastic and irreverent indeed.
I’ve been looking for something short to read on the metro to and from work, so I downloaded Shelter from Thunder and Slaughter in Barnaby Close. Looking forward to reading them!
Ah, so you’re the reason behind my viewing stats going through the roof!
Good to have you on board, it’s always nice to hear from people who have enjoyed my silliness. Let me know how you get on with those two books as well.
Haha whoops. Didn’t mean to be quite so conspicuous 😉 Thanks for looking into my blog and I will be sure to let you know what I think of your books!
Slaughter in Barnaby Close was creepy, man! I was surprised by the gore, but I guess given the subject matter I shouldn’t have been. I think the most memorable moment for me was settling into the first scene, getting to know Cassandra, investing myself in her problems, and then–thchunk, no more Cassandra 😉
Did you get a chance to read my angry poetry, by chance? I did end up posting it, here: http://wp.me/p4FKit-3C. I’d also recommend my short story Almas, though it’s not done. Let me know what you think!
I promised to let you know what I thought, and even though I wasn’t a huge fan of Barnaby, I thought I should give Shelter from Thunder a chance.
I. Loved. It.
Such a different flavor from Barnaby, although again, I shouldn’t have been surprised, given your talent to write from the perspective of anyone and everyone.
[Spoiler alert]
Poor Sam. What a nervous little chap. His timid nature makes for a very fun and likable narrator. The story of his friendship with Nolip was touching, the ending poignant. And just for fun, I have a twist ending for you.
After some digging, they came upon what appeared to be a family of three — a man, a woman, and a boy of about school age. None of them were moving, or showed any sign of life. The bodies were slowly, and carefully, brought round to the front of what was left of the house.
The workers searched through the pockets of the three victims, but only the boy had anything that could be used to identify any of them. It was a letter from a local school that only mentioned the boy’s first name. The head of the team took out a label, scribbled “Sam” on it in large letters and tied it around the boy’s arm. A wagon was called up and the three bodies were placed on the top of the pile. Some of the bodies in the pile also had labels tied to their arms but most did not. One unlabelled body stood out from the rest. The body was of a young boy of about school age. What made him stand out was the faint smile on his face, made even more apparent by a cleft palate. No one would ever know it, but the last thing that went through the boy’s mind was
I can’t wait to say hello to my friend Sam, and tell him about the funny thing that happened in the corridor.
Well, this certainly made my day! It’s always nice when someone enjoys my work, especially as Shelter from Thunder is one of my favourites.
Barnaby was the second book/story I wrote (Shelter was the first) and is my least favourite of everything I’ve written. It was my first foray into horror and the main thing I took from it was that it wasn’t a genre that I’m likely to revisit any time soon…
By the way your reposting of the ending to Shelter had me really confused and worried until I realised what you had done!
It sounds like you have a pretty honest view of your own work, which is always a good thing!
What did you think of my alternative ending? To clarify, I liked yours and I absolutely wouldn’t change it, but what I wrote was actually what I thought happened for the first three minutes after I finished the story. As promised, I was reading while commuting, and anxiously trying to finish it as I got on the metro, so I missed a couple key words, skimmed ahead, and thought the italicized quote was Nolip’s. I thought, oh NO! It was all a mistake and they were about to be reunited! and instead they died feet away from each other, each with the other’s letter in his pocket.
Then I sat down and reread it slowly and realized I was totally wrong, but I loved your ending too 🙂
Yeah, one of the downsides/upsides of not having a publisher is that my honesty doesn’t get watered down by a public relations department!
You’re the first person to post any kind of fanfic for my work so it was something of a shock in a way (not necessarily a bad one though). It’s impossible for me to completely rational when it comes to the things people say or do with my work, but the changes you made were very small so I didn’t have a strong reaction to it one way or the other. If someone came along and posted an entirely new chapter about Sam and Nolip then my head would probably explode.
By the way, your posts prompted me to take another look at Shelter and I ended up updating it again. The story is still the same but the writing has been improved! This puts me in two minds:
– Editing is torture and can make me hate my own work.
– Once the editing is over and done with, I’m all proud of my work again.
So you have my thanks.
Ha. Sorry to prompt the torture but glad it turned out well in the end! You’re very welcome.