Continuing last week’s theme, here I’m letting you know more about my latest published novel, An Excess Of…, which refuses to be classified in a single genre. Some categories that fit will, I hope, also suit your reading preferences: Eco Thriller, Literary Fiction, Environmental Disaster Novel, Shipwreck Survival Story, Future Pandemic.

A short introduction:

Six strangers. One shipwreck. A world they no longer recognize.

When a violent storm sinks their vessel in the middle of nowhere, six people who should never have met find themselves stranded on a deserted tropical island hundreds of miles from civilization.

Three men. Three women. All with fiercely opposing beliefs, deep-rooted prejudices, and passionately held convictions. In any other world, they would never have spoken. Here, they must cooperate or die.

As mutual attraction sparks between two of them, old superstitions, cultural clashes, and irrational fears begin to surface, threatening to tear the fragile group apart at the very moment they discover their one chance of escape.

But escape to what? The world they left behind has been reshaped beyond recognition by environmental catastrophe, by pandemic, by a humanity that refused to change until it was almost too late.

A brief excerpt:

The story is narrated by a brilliant young woman, who deals with the unfortunate burden of being deeply attractive, the only way her early life allows.

‘Freshly opened eyes revealed only darkness. Was I still sleeping, living a nightmare? Had I gone blind in the night? Roiling motion tossed me in the narrow bunk, raised wooden edges confining me, preventing a fall to uncarpeted floor. I knew where I was now. But poorly serviced engines were not throbbing through every portion of my body, nor bashing my ears mercilessly. The vessel must’ve lost power.

I rolled again as the angle abruptly changed. My hand found the hard edge, gripped it to stop the next lurch tossing me out. Reluctantly, I pushed myself awake. The ship must be drifting in the second tropical storm its captain had dreaded since we’d embarked. Like most in authority, the man was slave to his superstitions, but that didn’t lessen concern raised by the evidence.

In a former time, I’d have panicked, screamed, maybe even been sick with fear. But life had taught me knee-jerk reaction was generally unwise. Just ten at the start of the Covid 19 pandemic, when Mother forced me to isolate, I’d developed strategies to cope with loneliness and exclusion. That early imprisonment impacted on my emerging social skills. At uni I came to understand I was seen as unjustly impatient with people I saw as fools. Even so, I still struggled with anger and with tolerance of stupidity, but I was working on it.

The previous storm had turned out as no real threat, and the call on to deck proved unnecessary, but I recognised that may have no bearing on the current tumultuous weather. Dislike of confined spaces, a problem during childhood, I now usually managed by donning a careless attitude designed to fool me into a more relaxed state.

Breathe, girl. Deep. Long. Controlled. Settle the turmoil within, even if not beyond.

My watch should be where I’d left it. How anyone can wear them in bed… irrelevant thought. Outstretched fingers found the sharp edge of the steel cabinet and searched its flat surface. Nothing; the top empty. Even my partially unpacked rucksack gone.

Dim light from the corridor normally seeped round the ill-fitting door to the windowless box my ticket glorified with the name ‘cabin 23A’. A storage space hastily converted to accommodate inexperienced fools or those desperate to save cash in these days of uncertain and expensive travel. Which was I? The narrow passage we few passengers used on this noisy, dirty transporter of whatever products the ship’s owner could acquire usually carried some light. There was none.’

Some review extracts, to let you know how it’s been received:

Glen Donaldson on Goodreads – ‘Enjoyed? I positively feasted on this book!’

Cary Grossman on Goodreads – ‘It was amazing.’

Mark Henderson on Goodreads – ‘I spent a long and rewarding time reading and re-reading Stuart Aken’s An Excess Of… For anyone not already familiar with Stuart Aken’s work, his novels are predominantly classed as science fiction. Like many of the best science fiction writers he’s not only skilled at world-building but also at using his imagined settings to explore various aspects of the human condition and human responses to challenging situations.’

Madison Pafford on Goodreads – ‘An Excess Of… is a tense and compelling story that blends survival drama with deep explorations of human behavior.’

Pamela Turner on Goodreads & Amazon – ‘Thoroughly enjoyed this engaging and thought-provoking book which takes place just a few years into the future and is based around these six radically different characters who all become stranded on a remote desert island together. Their fight for survival – against both the elements and sometimes each other – provides the reader with a look at the realities of our on-going environmental crisis and also our planets fragile sustainability…
A well written and absorbing book, but one which left me with much to think about long after I had finished reading it.’

Walt Pilcher on Amazon – ‘In this page-turner, Aken’s characters face one challenge after another, mostly successfully but not without strife as their true identities and proclivities emerge, their conflicting worldviews are laid bare, and they say, do and experience nothing in moderation – hence the title, which applies not only to the characters but also to the underlying theme of man’s general inability or unwillingness to confront his impact on our endangered planet. It is intense. Still, there is humor, adventure, and romance along with the danger, and you will want to keep reading to discover the surprising resolution.’

You can buy through Amazon

Or you can go to your local stockist

If you read the book, a short review would be very much appreciated so that others may also find it. Thank you.