For a bit of light relief from all those serious and tragic stories, I also pen some pretty radical comedy writing as Ray Fripp.

I currently have these four titles available on Amazon – two in collaboration with Harry Dewulf, who also edited the other two:

I, Smith (with Harry Dewulf)

The characters and story for I, Smith were originally created in the 1990s by Harry and a childhood friend of his – the TV comedian David Mitchell. Unsurprisingly, he wants us to be discreet about it, so erm . . . please don’t tell anyone.

Anyway, the story. The eponymous Smith is a wealthy and charitable businessman, and hence an obvious target for an assassination attempt by an international criminal organization. Action and devilment chase each other across the globe – to Rome, London, Paris, Tokyo, Miami and The Mumbles – as a motley assortment of characters try to kill and/or protect Smith and/or the Captain, his mortally idiotic sidekick. This multi-national crime caper also has some obligatory romantic interest for Smith, and a not obligatory but convenient Eight-Foot Chicken.

Defying the conventions of convention-defiance and consistently very, very silly, ‘I, Smith’ is a novel that not so much breaks all the rules, but completely ignores them and writes its own.
Then ignores those too.

Smith and the Outtakes (with Harry Dewulf)

No, not a warts and all exposé of aspiring but vertically challenged rock band. Don’t be silly.

As a taster for the novel, Ray and Harry knocked up this short story as a hypothesis on how they might have met (the two characters, not Ray and Harry) and what happened when they went on a double date with two women who weren’t all they seemed . . .

Also included are ‘outtakes’ that were deemed not quite stupid enough for inclusion in ‘I, Smith’. They do, however, pad the title out considerably, providing quantity if not quality.

 

 

E.T. the Extra Tortilla

In the same vein as ‘I, Smith’, this is very much a silly novel – possibly more so.

It’s a tale of literally intergalactic proportions, with a literally interstellar cast. Literally.

Take an utterly contrived plot, add some cardboard cutout characters with implausible names, throw in a few lame gags and truly awful puns, pepper the story with silliness and obvious clichéd stereotypes, and you have a novel of stupid freeform nonsense.

What more could you possibly want?

 

 

 

Easy Money

I guess this is a more serious, conventional novel – but with its fair share of silliness.

When Warwick Pollini stumbles upon half a million pounds in used notes, it sends him spinning. After all, he’s just an ordinary guy, content to shuffle between his mundane job and his cramped house, so he’s sure his life is about to change.
He isn’t wrong.
While he frets about where the cash came from and what to do with it, it seems the rest of the world is conspiring against him.
Add in some unwanted amorous advances and his own guilt-ridden paranoia, and soon his life is turned upside down.
Then the threatening phone calls start; they want their money back – whoever ‘they’ are. And Warwick faces the most difficult decision of his life, but not before he comes to realise what ‘Easy Money’ really means.
Full of caustic satire, Easy Money is an irreverent take on the obsessions of modern-day society, served up on a bed of unfathomable mystery and garnished with a side-salad of grotesque caricatures.