Deity
Page 28
Anyone who wore a mask, who stayed at home, who had to endure the ache of loneliness, not seeing family, friends and loved ones. You helped write this book too.
For me, writing was an escape from all the horror. It was one of the things that kept me going through that first lockdown, and without the following people, Deity would never have been possible:
Karen Sullivan and the Orenda team – there’s a reason you’re CWA Crime & Mystery Publisher of the Year 2020. Cole Sullivan and West Camel, Team Orenda is not Team Orenda without you, and Mark Swan, you designed the best cover you’ve ever created.
Huge thanks to my phenomenal agent, Sandra Sawicka, whose belief in me never wavers. She’s always there with a good idea up her sleeve and a spookiness in her heart.
The book bloggers: your reviews, your kindness, your love for books is truly astounding, and I am forever in your thrall. Just know I read and appreciate every single review and kind word.
Fellow authors: your books help shape my own, you provide solace in the bleakness and I hope we’ll be able to meet in person again soon.
My family and the Zoom-quiz Tuesday-night taskmasters: Ben and Claire, Richard and Sally, Jimmy and Sassy, Bryn and Lesley: you mean the world to me, even more so now, and I can’t wait to hug you all.
My emotional-support animal, Sarah Farmer, for being predictably brilliant through everything. You’re a beautiful creature who deserves extra kudos for having to spend the entirety of lockdown in my company.
My son Harry who, during lockdown, understood that I had to spend a couple of hours a day writing: you showed such strength by being such a good lad, doing your home-school work, playing, laughing, drawing and being the best company anyone could ever want in a dark time. We got through it together, mate, and you showed such unbelievable endurance and strength. I’m so immensely proud of you.
And of course you, lovely reader. Here we are, blinking in the light at the end of another little journey in the darkness. Please make sure you have all your valuables and personal possessions with you. I hope we’ll see each other again soon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- and US-based anthologies, such as Midnight Movie Creature, Selfies from the End of the World, Cold Iron and many more. His novella, The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013.
Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller, Six Stories, was an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and a WHSmith Fresh Talent pick, and film rights were sold to a major Hollywood studio. A prequel, Hydra, was published in 2018 and became an international bestseller. Changeling, book three in the series, was published in 2019 and was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Book four, Beast, won the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Independent Voice Book of the Year award, 2020.
Follow Matt on Twitter @ConcreteKraken and on his website: https://linktr.ee/MattJW.
The Six Stories Series
Six Stories
Hydra
Changeling
Beast
Deity
Copyright
Orenda Books
16 Carson Road
West Dulwich
London SE21 8HU
www.orendabooks.co.uk
First published in the United Kingdom by Orenda Books, 2021
Copyright © Matt Wesolowski, 2021
Matt Wesolowski has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–913193–48–5
eISBN 978–1–913193–49–2