MARK FRANKLAND

I wear two hats when I write this blog of mine. First and foremost, I manage a small charity in a small Scottish town called Dumfries. Ours is a front door that opens onto the darker corners of the crumbling world that is Britain 2015. We hand out 5000 emergency food parcels a year in a town that is home to 50,000 souls. Then, as you can see from all of the book covers above, I am also a thriller writer. If you enjoy the blog, you might just enjoy the books. The link below takes you to the whole library in the Kindle store. They can be had for a couple of quid each.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

HERE ARE TWO AUDIO EXTRACTS FROM 'THE GREAT FOODBANK SIEGE' WHICH WILL BE ON SALE VERY, VERY SOON


So all you need to do is follow the links below to hear my dulcet tones reading two extracts from 'The Great Foodbank Siege'

EXTRACTS

https://www.spreaker.com/show/mark-franklands-tracks


This is the blurb from the leaflet we are having printed which will give you a feel for what the project is all about


WHAT IS THE BOOK FOR?

I am a man who wears two hats.
Hat Number One - A thriller writer – ‘The Great Foodbank Siege’ is my twenty third book.
Hat Number Two - A Foodbank Manager. The First Base Agency Foodbank in Dumfries.
Right now the Foodbank Manager’s hat is weighing heavy.
Every day twenty hungry people come to us for emergency food..
5000 in the last year. 30,000 since we started the project.
Never once have we had to turn anyone away.
It’s a responsibility everyone involved with First Base really feels.
Right now we have a £15,000 funding hole for this year.
Unless we raise the cash, the lights will go out in January.
For this reason I have joined my two hats together and written ‘The Great Foodbank Siege’
You can buy a digital copy for £3 at Amazon. Every book sold gets us £2 nearer to filling the £15,000 hole (Amazon’s cut is £1 by the way)
We need to sell 7500 books
That is what ‘The Great Foodbank Siege’ is for.
I really hope you will help us out.

WHERE DID THE STORY COME FROM?

Basically I started out with some fact and turned it into fiction.
THE FACT
In March this year, David Mundell, the only Tory MP in Scotland, appeared in the Holyrood Parliament to defend his Government’s Welfare Reform Policies. He was asked to comment on some statistics I had produced in a blog. At which point he said that anything I said ‘should be taken with a pinch of salt’. Why? Because ‘I was a very prominent ‘Yes’ supporter’. His comments caused a minor media storm. We invited David to come along to First Base for an afternoon to help serve some food parcels and to hear about the problems people were facing. We never received a reply. On May 7th, the Conservatives won an outright majority and David became the Secretary of State for Scotland. All fact.
THE FICTION
In ‘The Great Foodbank Siege’ It is not David who is the Secretary of State for Scotland in the summer of 2015. It is James Shillingford-Moore. And James accepts our invitation to come to spend an afternoon at First Base.
But it doesn’t work out well. Two disillusioned veterans armed with semi-automatic weapons take control of the building and the Great Foodbank Siege gets under way.
It doesn’t take very long for things to get completely out of hand. Huge tensions develop between the Governments in Edinburgh and London. As the crisis deepens, the ties holding together the United Kingdom are stretched to braking point…
Like I said….pure fiction!
People tell me it is a quick and easy read. Entertaining. Some will like it, others will hate it. It is certainly irreverent. Thankfully free speech is still allowed!
Hopefully you will buy a copy and make your own mind up.

4 comments:

  1. I could get used to having stories being read to me...

    Hilarious...

    Can't wait, even if I have to read it for myself.

    ReplyDelete
  2. http://munguinsrepublic.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-great-foodbank-fiasco-is-followed.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mark: One of Munguins reader says: Could Mark put it up on Dropbox or similar, we download it and send the WHOLE £3 or more direct to First Base?

    Any chance?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mark, I'm reader above as Aucheorn. My reasoning is that you could do more good with £1 than Amazon and you know they don't need another pound. Even Paypal doesn't charge that much, but I'm not keen on them either.
    Using Dropbox you would be relying on trust, but people know how important your work is, I think you would gain a hell of a lot more £1s than you would lose.
    Jim.

    ReplyDelete