Lloyd Markham RSS

I think around the time I first started reading, really. Though the seeds were perhaps planted even earlier. When my dad would read me bedtime stories as a child he would often change things to amuse himself—inserting rude jokes and non-sequiturs into otherwise innocent books and fables. Eventually, I wanted to join in on the fun. I would wrestle the books away from him and declare, "No! It didn’t go like that, Dad. It went like this!"

Funny as it is to think about it now, those early experiences with my father probably put the idea into my head that I could make up stories too. 

What I’m saying is I blame my father for everything. 

Read the interview in full on the Cardiff Review website

Buy Bad Ideas\Chemicals by Lloyd Markham from our online shop for £7.99

Join us for the Cosmic Re-launch of Bad Ideas\Chemicals at The Full Moon, Cardiff on 30 November 2017

Alex Haagaard gives a deep reading of Bad Ideas\Chemicals in her review on monsteringmag.com:

'It is perhaps best characterised as a slightly magical-realist dystopian satire of 21st century British neoliberalism; for all its more fantastical elements, this is a story with a very strong sense of place and time. A unique desperation pervades everything in Goregree—clinging like a film of mildew to the town's arrogantly optimistic historical architecture, and smothered under a layer of cheerful bureaucratic indifference. This is a portrait of the Welsh valleys—after the closure of the mines, and under austerity.' 

'[...] Bad Ideas\Chemicals is, at its heart, an account of what it is to be a freak. It portrays with painful honesty the many ways that society lets freaks know we're not welcome here.'

'[...] both disturbingly real and terribly sad.' 

Buy Bad ideas\Chemicals from our online shop for £7.99 and free P&P

As his debut novel, Bad Ideas\Chemicals, was released last month, Lloyd Markham is our Author of the Month for August.   About Lloyd: Lloyd was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, before he and his family moved and settled in Bridgend, South Wales. He describes his teenage years as ‘miserable and strange and consisting of bad nights out’ before he embarked upon a degree in Creative Writing at the then University of Glamorgan, which is now the University of South Wales. Lloyd also earned an MPhil from the University of South Wales. He enjoys noise music, Japanese animation and the documentaries...

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