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A Modern Family is spending some quality time in the sun. The characters in Socrates Adams’s brilliantly funny new novel wouldn’t know how to do anything as mundane or as normal as this without a script or medicinal help – so we sent the book instead.

The following photos were all taken in the same place. But where? The first person to correctly identify the large village / town will win a copy of this hilarious new novel. Email your answer to kevin [at] bluemoosebooks [dot] com.

A Modern Family in the park.

A Modern Family at the playground.

A Modern Family at the pond.

A Modern Family at the swimming pool.

The following is an excerpt from the brilliant new novel, A MODERN FAMILY, by Socrates Adams.

A television presenter drives around a town in England. He stops at red lights, beeps at inconsiderate drivers, correctly applies his brakes, accelerates efficiently, observes the highway code, considers suicide, steers, checks all three mirrors, starts, stops, moves. The television presenter imagines a handsome man driving a high-performance car down a road by an ocean in the sun. He doesn’t care about whether or not he is that man.

He imagines an ordinary man, driving a low-performance car down a road by a supermarket in bawling, growling rain. He doesn’t care about whether or not he is that man.

He drives past a Tesco’s. He drives past another supermarket. A small, sweet smelling cardboard pine tree dangles from his rearview mirror.

I need to get some shopping, he thinks. If he doesn’t get shopping from a supermarket, his children will die of starvation. He doesn’t want that to happen. He imagines his children playfully eating from steaming plates of food. He introduces his children to the audience of thirteen million, viewing at home. Time to shop, he thinks, happily.

He parks in a supermarket car park. Rain tracks down the windscreen. He grips the steering wheel a few times, happy that it yields slightly to the pressure. The dashboard of his car is a smiling face, helping him to express his emotions. He laughs to himself and feels fine. He takes the key out of the ignition.

A customer walks past the television presenter as he lopes through the shop entrance. The customer thinks, I recognise that man from the television. He looks worse in real life. He looks really awful in real life. The customer thinks briefly about asking for an autograph, but decides against it. A thick spray of water flies from the presenter’s head as he shakes his long, grey, locks. His scalp is visible through the hair, soaked to the skull. The customer goes about his business, getting into his car, driving home, and living the life of a customer.

Everything in the supermarket is covered in plastic. The presenter looks at the products on the shelves and thinks, I know what that is, or, what is that? He occasionally reaches out and touches something. Touching items in the supermarket provokes a melancholic surge which he cannot understand. He thinks, I am nothing, and goes on with his shopping. The aisles in the supermarket are badly organised. There’s an aisle of cheap children’s toys wedged between the meat and the dairy. The customers of the supermarket often think as they wander around, where is the item I’m looking for? The television presenter doesn’t think this. His brain simply engages ‘supermarket mode’. He walks up and down the aisles, basket in hand, feigning deep, passionate interest in products he sees; picking them up and setting them down at random with a sage look on his face, the look of a master chef, selecting the ingredients for a prize-winning banquet.

I Am Nothing, is the television presenter’s default setting. He is so good at thinking it, there’s nearly no effort whatsoever. He sometimes just feels that I Am Nothing is a kind of background radiation, an after effect of the big bang, like white noise on a television set. He thinks that without I Am Nothing there would be nothing. And that is major-league bull-shit, he thinks.

The television presenter first started thinking about things in terms of a type of league and some kind of shit a few years ago. One of his co-presenters had said ‘that is major-league bull-crap’ and he had found it very funny. He sometimes says, ‘minorleague horse-crap,’ or ‘ultra-league crab-crap.’ He just loves it.

What to make, what to make, what to make.

The great thing about food is that it is tasty, if you prepare it properly and make it from ingredients that you love to taste, says the presenter, to an audience of twelve and a half million at home. The presenter’s hands finally alight on some pickled whelks and Irish soda bread. He cannot decide whether or not the children will like this for dinner. He thinks about buying more pickled things to match up with the whelks.

Once, the television presenter had presented a television programme from the sea-side. He remembers the smell of the sea very vividly. He thinks that whelks, and other pickled fish are like the sea-in-a-tin. He takes his purchases to a counter. The cashier swipes his choices across the bar-code reader. The presenter is waiting for the cashier to mention something about his left-field choices. Maybe he’ll say something about how refreshing whelks are. Something about how the sour, complex notes of soda bread make it more interesting than standard, yeast-risen loaves. The cashier aggressively clears his throat, coughs painfully, wipes sweat from his forehead, hits his chest with a fist, and then whispers, almost imperceptibly, three pounds forty three.

It takes the presenter four minutes to start his car. The rain has stopped. He turns on an uplifting CD of music from his youth.

On his drive home the presenter stops at some traffic lights. There is a lady at the traffic lights. He looks at the lady’s buttocks. He turns up the music from his youth. He looks very hard at the lady’s buttocks. He turns up the music so that it is very loud. He loves looking at the lady’s buttocks. The lady’s buttocks are his best friend. He looks at the lady’s face. She is not looking at him. He turns the music up so that it is very, very loud. He opens the window of the car. The lady still looks away from him. He starts screaming along to the lyrics of the music. He screams and screams and finally the lady looks at him.

She sees an old man, beating his head in time to the music, screaming incoherently, opening and closing his window, being beeped at by other motorists. His eyes are wide open. He has long matted hair. She looks away.

A Modern Family will be published on July 25th.

Ben Myers, author of PIG IRON, which we published May 2012, has been awarded the top award for fiction from New Writing North. The judge for the fiction prize, award winning author and recently seen on The Granta best of British young writers, Sarah Hall says Ben’s new novel, THE BAIRN is:

Quite simply. Excellent.

This is thoroughly deserved, as Ben is one of the best writers in the UK and highlights how great new writing just doesn’t have to come from the Sarf, or Oxbridge and that you don’t need to own a linen suit, wear comfortable brogues and swan around literary festivals talking about how much of the literary canon you read before you were eight.

Click on the links and see Ben in a tie. When he’s not collecting award he’s either writing or swimming in reservoirs on top of the Pennines.

• New Writing North announces Northern Writers’ Awards 2013 winners
• Benjamin Myers, Fiction Award 2013

Bluemoose author, Socrates Adams, has been named Young Bookseller of the Year at The Bookseller Industry Awards, which took place at the Hilton, Park Lane, London, on Monday.

The award acknowledges the talents of the rising stars of the bookselling world. Its criteria focuses on an ability to create imaginative displays, to engage with customers via social media, using the internet as a tool to promote the printed book, as well as customer service and an in-depth knowledge of books.

On receiving the award, Adams, said: ‘I feel totally shocked and utterly delighted to win the award. I sincerely wish I could share it with everyone at Blackwell’s Manchester.’

Adams is based at Blackwell’s University Bookshop in Manchester, where he began work as a temporary bookseller. He has gone on to manage the Business Centre, which works closely with university departments, the NHS, and many other institutions and businesses.

Sue Chapman, the accounts manager at Blackwell’s Manchester, is full of praise for their star bookseller: ‘Socrates is prepared to tackle anything. He’s popular with both staff and customers, and although he may sometimes have a dodgy taste in music, [he] is a pleasure to work alongside.’

The Bookseller described Adams as a ‘passionate bookseller and target-driven salesman – and he is a published author and award-winning filmmaker to boot.’

Adams’s next novel, A Modern Family, will be published in July by Bluemoose Books. Award-winning novelist, Jenn Ashworth, said: ‘A Modern Family is filled with wry observation, ruthless satire and, underneath it all, a real warmth. It is scathing, truthful and hilariously, painfully funny.’

The multi-talented Adams has also co-written, and starred in, an award-winning film, called Wizard’s Way. The film won Best Comedy Feature at the 2012 London Independent Film Festival, and is the 2013 winner of the Discovery Award at the London Comedy Film Festival. You can watch the trailer for the film below.

“A Modern Family is filled with wry observation, ruthless satire and, underneath it all, a real warmth. It is scathing, truthful and hilariously, painfully funny.”

Award-winning novelist Jenn Ashworth on Socrates Adams’ novel, A MODERN FAMILY.

By ROSS JAMIESON

First, there is the thrill of being shortlisted. Then, months of media speculation teasing hopes and fears, toying with a career’s turning point. Then, at long last, having finalised the acceptance speech – just in case – pleased it balances enough modesty with enough confidence to be credible, the envelope rips open, a few painfully silent seconds ensue, and a brave smile masks the disappointment. Missing out on your first book gong must be an emotional blow.

Tom Hunter, the Clarke Award director, chats with Adrian Barnes during the award ceremony at the Royal Society, London, on 1st May 2013.

And yet, while book award shortlists are dominated by London’s corporate publishers, the journey of a debut novel – published by an independent in the North – making it onto the shortlist of a prestigious book prize, is itself a cause for celebration. More importantly, it might also be part of an emerging, welcome trend, of book prizes once again recognising the quality of independent publishing. The signs are promising.

When Canadian novelist, Adrian Barnes – who is originally from Blackpool – learnt his novel, Nod, had been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Britain’s most highly-regarded science fiction book prize, it triggered a remarkable and uncanny memory: ‘Arthur C. Clarke was an early hero of mine. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey as a tiny, tiny kid, and it blew my tiny, tiny mind. Then I went out and read every book he ever wrote. He’s deep in my DNA.’ It was the start of a lifelong love of science fiction.

Barnes’s achievement is no mean feat. He shrugged off a record 82 titles to get onto the Clarke shortlist. He has received much critical acclaim, and his writing has been likened to that of JG Ballard, John Wyndham and Anthony Burgess. Sam Jordison, books journalist at the Guardian, said: ‘Adrian’s clearly someone to watch, having got so far, so fast, with his first book.’

But Barnes is particularly delighted to be associated with a prize whose inaugural winner, in 1987, was fellow Canadian novelist, Margaret Atwood: ‘For me, Atwood is one of those people from all of history you’d choose for a dinner party.’

However, despite the praise, Barnes doubts Nod would have been published at all, had it not been for an independent publisher: ‘Nod has a big concept that corporate publishing might find appealing, but it’s also a fairly quirky story. My previous experience trying to get published was of agents and editors being very positive about my writing, but ‘marketing’ being reluctant for various reasons.’

You can almost hear the sigh of relief, when Barnes goes on to say: ‘I’ve heard horror stories of writers having had their novels mangled by bigger houses.’

It is a sad but common complaint about modern corporate publishing, of marketing and accounts departments usurping and controlling editorial decisions. Publishing has become an incredibly conservative environment, where mainstream publishers are generally terrified of taking editorial and financial risks, churning out, instead, tried-and-tested story templates. Publishers rarely invest in up-and-coming talent anymore, resulting – somewhat predictably – in a scarcity of new and original voices. It is all about image, how that image can shift units, and how quickly those units can be shifted.

With this in mind, it is interesting to note Barnes’s reaction, when asked if he agrees with the consensus that Nod has pushed the boundaries of science fiction: ‘No. One of the great things about science fiction is that it has no boundaries. So there’s nothing to push. Just an infinite universe of possibility.’ It is almost too ridiculous to point out, without a hint of tragic irony, that this simple sentiment, and the liberating premise it offers writers, is utterly alien to modern publishing.

And yet, somehow, corporate publishers have dominated book prizes for years. However, three independents – And Other Stories, Myrmidon and Salt – made the 2012 Booker shortlist. This year, as mentioned, Bluemoose Books, of Hebden Bridge, were shortlisted for the Clarke Award for Nod. And several of the larger independents – granted, it is often difficult to know where to draw the line between the corporates and the larger indies – have featured on various shortlists in recent years, too. Could it be that the vacuum left behind by the corporate publishers, while they wage war over a tedious literary middle ground, is starting to be re-occupied by the independents? It is a tantalising prospect for all those who have stuck to their publishing principles over recent decades, in an industry seemingly hell-bent on mangling the power of the written word.

The exposure has its benefits too, as Kevin Duffy, of Bluemoose Books, explains: ‘As a small independent, we don’t have the marketing heft of the major publishers, and to be shortlisted for a major prize like the Clarke Award means Bluemoose and Nod will reach a much bigger audience – put us in the shop window for a while. It has done just that.’

Indeed, the publicity surrounding Nod has resulted in the sale of foreign rights in Europe, and a major Hollywood film company is currently reading the book. But, for Duffy, the pleasure of this success stems from the very core of the novel itself: its words, its values, and its vision – in short, its literary worth:

‘When you first read a book like Nod, and get very excited because the writing and story is brain-freezingly brilliant, you just want as many people as possible to share that with you. Getting shortlisted for the Clarke Award means many more readers get to hear about Nod, see the shortlisted books, talk about fiction and the value of wonderful writers who illuminate and explain our world with their stories. The best recommendation for books is word-of-mouth; and the Clarke Award does this brilliantly, by bringing a community together to discuss books, focusing our minds on what lies ahead.’

I doubt the same pleasure is to be gained from upweighting, analysing unit sales, and measuring one’s KPIs.

Duffy’s is an optimistic, yet plausible, vision of the future of books, of what books should be, and of how we should engage with them – a lost world reclaimed from the ‘market’. And with the power of social media to put us in touch with like-minded readers, the discussions in book communities could and should be bigger and better than ever before. Its social reach, its ability to give a valid voice to all readers, rather than the few selected to comment, is democratically empowering.

A curious battlefront exists, dividing book marketers from genuine lovers of literature. Publishing is a pretty straightforward affair, but it has been battered for years by business theory and jargon. It is a toxic relationship. Time will tell if we really will see a return to a publishing industry of independent words, ideas and voices. But, in the meantime, independents, press on.

Adrian Barnes graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in 2008. The outcome of his studies? Yep, that’s right – NOD.

The following is taken from an interview with Adrian by student journalist, Neil Harrison, for Humanity Hallows, a blog about the Humanities Faculty at MMU. You can read the article in its entirety here. [Updated July 2014 - the original article is no longer available]

Asked whether he was a writer before receiving his Master’s Degree in 2008, Adrian laughs, “Not in the ‘published, having-a-book-out kind of way!’ I’ve always written, and always been an avid reader but the reason I took the [MA] course was to become a teacher. I needed that qualification in order to do that and in Canada, with a family and other commitments, it can be quite difficult to do, so the online course made sense.”

As part of the MA, students are required to have completed a novel and in Adrian’s case, that novel was Nod. When asked about his approach to writing, the author, who clearly has more than one string to his bow–being a teacher of creative writing and also the proprietor of the Rossland Telegraph media outlet– says,

“I write fairly quickly, I can have [a first draft] written in around three weeks … I’m bragging a little there … but I re-write forever.”

The novel itself is an exploration of the consequences of lack of sleep on a mass scale. As well as the award nomination, it has gone on to receive critical acclaim, with The Guardian describing the book as “outstanding.” The premise seems inspired in its simplicity, so just how did it occur to him?

“I often have difficulty sleeping myself, right at the moment, for instance, due to the travelling. I think what interests me most of all is the way that tiredness, loss of sleep, can begin to affect the strongest relationships, even in a family setting. There’s a very thin veneer there when you begin to think about it; how would society continue to function? They say you can only survive for six days without sleep before going mad.”

Where, then, does Nod sit within the science fiction genre? Adrian largely dismisses the notion that the book is his journey down the much wandered ‘zombie’ path. It is, however, an apocalyptic scenario set “just a little into the future,” says the writer.

“I would describe the book as being in that sub-genre of science fiction, speculative fiction. It’s very much a ‘what would happen if…’ kind of scenario, in much the same way that Cormack McCarthy’s The Road is, for instance.”

Concurrent to the theme of insomnia, there is an etymological aspect to the book, hinted at in the title itself. The Land of Nod, whilst being an almost comforting notion for most who aspire to drift off to it, is in actual fact the biblical place of exiled torment for Cain—banished for the crime of slaying his brother Abel—which is described in The Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Not such a comforting notion. Adrian says,

“I am fascinated with medieval words and their meanings, which have often come to take on different forms through the centuries. The principle character is an etymologist and the dual aspects of certain words, certain notions, begin to take shape and bear relevance as the events of the story unfold.”

As well as promoting Nod, Adrian is currently working on other projects; both fiction and non-fiction, and there has been interest from movie companies in the United States, eager to see his debut novel adapted for the big screen. Clearly, Adrian Barnes is a name to look out for in the future.

Neil Harrison is studying Social History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is an aspiring journalist and a terrible guitar player. Read his blog LooseRiver and follow him on Twitter @LooseRiver.

Leeds’ Waterstones don't think much to being ‘completely out of the literary world’ either.

Read more in the Guardian.