Foreword

​‘The Dancer’ is by far the darkest of all short stories I've written . The idea came after I had frittered away an afternoon on social media, observing faces that smiled without reason, laughed without laughter. A world within a world, an illusion masquerading as reality and truth; I saw pictures and videos of people selling their dignity for small change, in the hope of finding fame and favor. After the entertainment had waned I looked over said videos and photos with an assessing eye, I began to consider their limits, wondering what they would sacrifice to finally make it and how far they were willing to go to obtain the stain of celebrity, stardom and wealth? ‘The Dancer’ asks this very question of Egypt, a young woman who can’t seem to catch her big break – until she is offered one that she discovers has interesting stipulations…

The year is 2006, and I'm sat at home watching some of the most shoddy, amateur music videos you could ever imagine, the majority looked as if they'd been filmed on an old shoe, with headphones for recording sound. Without a smidgen of care for quality control, Channel U boldly showcased video after video from aspiring artists, giving for the majority, disenfranchised young men and the occasional women a platform to display visuals to their music, all whilst pointing fire-armed-fingers at our screens, rhyming about love interests, money, general debauchery and a whole load of haters. Ashamedly we loved and lapped it up, because people that looked like us, and sounded the same, were now on our screens and in our homes 24/7.

We all got excited when Leon from the endz had got his video up, in his over-sized Nike tracksuit, surrounded by fifty guys making mean faces whilst hanging out of cars way above their current earning potential. No one ever thought it was really going anywhere, like when I tell people I’m an author and they reply with "Really? Good for you mate".

I remember going to friends houses and we'd turn Channel U on for a laugh, but as the years progressed, as did the talent and in 2006 one such talent appeared on my radar and has yet to leave. I saw the video for his track 'Punctuation' first & ' Ina Da Ghetto' and realised that Grime was beginning to take itself seriously, filtering out of the talent-less, waning and weak, leaving those competent and capable of carrying a scene so brittle in its infancy (its odds for real establishment at the time looked bleak), it needed the kings among them to ride out for its survival, a call with which was answered. Arise King Wretch 32. ​

Decided i'd drag my ass into this century and have a trailer made for my book.  BIG props to our actress Olivia Murray - 100% pure unrefined talent. Enjoy, share, comment.