If you’ve been waiting for a novel about a good-hearted baker from Stratford-upon-Avon who collects belly button fluff, knows a thing or two about potatoes, presents fourth rate concerts at an elderly care home and gets embroiled in the conspiracy to end all conspiracies, then the newly-released Fart and Toast could turn out to be the most compelling read of your life. It’s even got a swan murderer and a rock star with a broken penis!
And what’s more, the author knows a thing or two about greeting cards as he is none other than Stuart Caldwell, founder and owner of greeting card publishing business, Splimple.
Wordsmith extraordinaire Stuart Caldwell makes quick work of summing up his second book: “Well, I’d say it’s a humorous, slightly surreal, vaguely romantic, faintly satirical, quirky, adult fiction mystery, if that helps!”
The new book, now available on Amazon is the latest triumph of Stuart‘s 40 year writing career. He returned to England with his wife and three children 25 years ago, having spent several years in Australia. He wrote what he terms as “daft poetry” for a while which led to Splimple while at the other end of the scale his first book was a serious political thriller. ‘It’s now out of print and I fully intend it to stay there!’ he says. ‘Writing serious stuff is too much like hard work and makes you depressed about the state of society.”
Learning from this, Stuart changed tact for his second tome. He said to himself “If I’m going to spend a year writing something, I want it to be an enjoyable experience – and creating Fart and Toast was huge fun.”
Fart and Toast runs to 450 pages and the cover (designed by Stuart’s son Matthew) describes it as ‘thrillingly odd!’ It’s available now on Amazon and the Kindle version will be released shortly.
Check out the little trailer for the book: https://www.stuartcaldwell.co.uk/video.html
Top: The cover design of Fart and Toast was created by Stuart Caudwell’s son, Matthew.