Author(s): James Laidler

Australian Fiction

Charlie Lansdowne's life is going nowhere ...fast. Trapped at home with his eccentric father, Roger, and his stroke-affected grandfather, Frank, he finds life a daily exercise in dysfunction as three generations of men strive to get along. But when Charlie meets the volatile and tempestuous Maxine - a surfer girl who works at the local abattoir - his life goes supernova. Friendships implode, passions ignite and death comes stalking in the night. Pulling Down the Stars is a story about the confusion of love, the longing for reconciliation and the need to pull our unrealistic dreams back down to earth. About the Author In 2010 Laidler's first novel, The Taste of Apple, was published by Interactive Press. The Taste of Apple won the 2010 IP Picks Award for Best First Book. In 2009 he won the The Australian Poetry Centre's 'Poetic Monologue Competition' and his short one-man monologue, 'Before the Fall' was funded by The Australian Poetry Centre and performed on stage at the 2010 Melbourne Writer's Festival. In 2009 he was runner-up in the FAW Shoalhaven Literary Awards, highly commended in both the CJ Dennis Literary and Poetica Christi Awards. In both 2009 and 2010, he was shortlisted for the Olvar Wood Fellowship Awards. His work had been widely published throughout Australia on Writer's Radio, ABC Radio National and Melbourne's RRR; and in the literary journals: Going Down Swinging, Cordite, Poetica Christi, Poetry Matters and Peril. For more information please visit www.jameslaidler.netor