David Milnes
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I was first published in the Northern Arts Magazine, Panurge (ed David Almond) and in a Constable hardback anthology of short stories, Signals (ed Alan Ross, of London Magazine); that second story was reviewed in Times Literary Supplement by Booker nominee, Shena Mackay, where she described my writing as “bleak but impressive”.
Though a couple of agents took an interest in my novels after these publications, they both rejected in the end, and after many years of rejections I gave up that route, which, it turned out, was exactly the right move for me. I have published the following titles, perhaps best described as tragi-comedies, under my own imprint - whattradition books - in this order: The Ghost of Neil Diamond in 2008 and 2010, which has received more than 10,000 words of favourable reviews from established reviewers such as Bookmunch U.K., Dissident Books New York, The Novel Blog, AlternativeReel, Parrish Lantern, Tony’s Reading List, Poetic Justice Magazine, Joseph’s Reviews and many more; The Whores of Coxcomb Hall (2010) (under a pseudonym), To Have Nothing (2011), The Pathology of Graphology (2019), Way of the Infidel (2021) and An English Airman Foresees his Death (2021).
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Way of the Infidel
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Tragi-comedy
We live. We earn. We die. There must be a curse on the infidels because as soon as a fellow is ready to quit the desert with his bag of gold, he commits suicide, or dies in bed, or in a car crash, or just falling downstairs. One man alone knows someone out there is pulling the strings, and it isn’t Allah, and it isn’t God. SAMPLE PDF
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An English Airman Foresees His Death
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Tragi-comedy
At the turn of the millennium, a Battle of Britain ace takes on his last enemy: his own kith and kin. When he has them in his sights - no mercy - but they slip away into clouds of paranoia. Cold, broke, alone, flying low, he has nothing left on his side. Yet he would not have it any other way. SAMPLE PDF
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The Ghost of Neil Diamond
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Tragi-comedy
Take a Neil Diamond impersonator with his back against The Great Wall of China: the struggle for fame and fortune is over, and the dark comedy of survival has begun. SAMPLE PDF REVIEWS: Alternativereel, Florida Bookmunch Big Lychee, Hong Kong Dissident Books, New York Parrish Lantern, UK Paul "The Book Guy" Alves, Canada Zouch Magazine
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The Whores of Coxcomb Hall or The Ghost of Jimmy Savile
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Cultural Satire
To escape her aged and unsightly husband, Clara White sets up a business offering sexual favours to the frustrated youth of Coxcomb Hall boarding school; she prospers, but “‘tis the strumpet’s plague to beguile many and be beguiled by one.” SAMPLE PDF REVIEWS
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The Pathology of Graphology
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Tragi-comedy
At a lonely seaside bar, suicidal car valet, Geoff Osmah, gets rolled by ex-Radio 2 raconteur and celebrity graphologist, Fraser Davis: a crime that sets in motion the endgame for ailing dj Pete Moran, whose health, art and wealth are crushed beneath a weight of circumstance he does not understand. SAMPLE PDF REVIEWS
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To Have Nothing
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Tragi-comedy
In a dark night of the soul, a bourgeois citizen runs away from his Ipswich home: his whole career, his whole life, has been a lie, a waste, a wilful delusion. Penury and penance in a Notting Hill squat go well until a pre-Thatcherite workers’ cooperative - Two Strong Arms - led by a minor aristocrat, storms the squat and lays waste to his retreat, leaving him with literally nothing at all. SAMPLE PDF
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The Graffiti Killer
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Thriller/Satire/Dark Humour
Kirkus Review, August 2025: "Readers won't soon forget this ... Our verdict: GET IT". The Graffiti Killer was 'Ghoul 14' in the 1971 Charlton Heston movie, 'The Omega Man', and a former band promoter who once worked on Barry Manilow's U.K. tours. Now his mind snaps on the fulcrum of our age: he becomes so ashamed and revolted by what he has done with his life, the sheer waste of his life, that he sets off on a mission to rid the world of 'trasheteers', those he sees as villains forcing trash culture down upon him. His first victims are a group of graffiti artists who have defiled iconic locations all over Europe. After that, he targets more well known artists from popular culture in all its forms. Here is a cultural terrorist in a maniacal rage. SAMPLE PDF
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