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Bad Ideas, Bad Ideas\Chemicals, Cardiff, Carnival Bookshop, crystal jeans, honno, Light Switches are my Kryptonite, Lloyd Markham, News, pop-up shop, writing -

Cardiff-based authors Lloyd Markham and Crystal Jeans have opened a bookshop in Duke Street Arcade, Cardiff to sell their new novels with their Festival of Bad Ideas this week. The Carnival bookshop popped up on Sat 1 July stocking copies of Bad Ideas\Chemicals, the dark, weird debut novel by Lloyd Markham published by Parthian that has already garnered a cult buzz amongst other top writers:

‘A dark and witty take on small town life.’
– David Towsey

‘bleak, weird, grim, cool... it will probably become a cult classic.’ – Rhian Elizabeth

'Some writers try to do weird. Some writers do weird. Lloyd Markham is weird.'
– Christopher Meredith

The shop also stocks Crystal Jeans' second novel Light Switches are my Kryptonite by Honno:

'In Sylvester, Crystal Jeans has created a character as evocative and alluring as her own name. Her book is an amazing piece of literary ventriloquism; convincing, moving, funny, flawlessly sustained, and utterly compelling.' – Niall Griffiths

as well as her first novel, The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise (Honno) recently longlisted for the Polari First Book:

'Think Caitlin Moran in Gabalfa, Cardiff - dysfunctionality made humorous and page-turningly entertaining and moving.' – Tony Curtis

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Bad Ideas, Bad Ideas\Chemicals, Carnival Bookshop, Lloyd Markham, News, pop-up shop, writing -

Several years ago. on my way home from a night out, I paused on the old bridge near the centre of town to look at the water below. I think it must have rained upstream or something because the river was surging. It looked strangely inviting to my drunken mind. I stood there watching the murky water for a long time and felt a perverse urge to jump in. Then, a passing police officer, as if sensing the bad ideas in my head, bellowed at me from the other side of the bridge, “Hey, mate, are you okay?” snapping me out of my trance.

Bad Ideas\Chemicals is a book about moments like this. Moments when you feel hypnotised by some irrational urge you cannot fathom. 

It is also a book about self-destruction.

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A Van of One's Own, Bad Ideas, Biddy Wells, Cardiff, Carnival Bookshop, Chemicals, Festival, fiction, launches, Lloyd Markham, memoir, novel, pop-up shop, travel -

Join us this summer for The Festival of Bad Ideas (1-9 July) as our Carnival pop-up bookshop returns to Duke Street Arcade in Cardiff. On Saturday 1 July we'll be launching Lloyd Markham's dark and weird novel 'Bad Ideas\Chemicals' at 4pm at 3-7 Duke Street Arcade, with more bad ideas (but no chemicals) to follow throughout the week. In a year of bad ideas, one more can't hurt. Or can it?

We'll also be launching Biddy Wells' travel memoir A Van of One's Own in store on Thursday 6 July at 5.30pm.

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