Paul Schiernecker

Tag: Fiction

  • Christmas 2025

    Happy Christmas, to those who celebrate.

    Also, I’m late on this, but Happy Hanukkah too.

    I’m sat on our huge orange sofa, cuddled up under a blanket with E while our puppy sits at my feet, wondering when we are going to take him out for a Christmas Day walk. The End of an Era is on. There’s tea and mince pies waiting. Life is good.

    I guess this is the time of year when I take stock of everything that has come before. I think I’ll do some kind of Wrapped post separately, but all the same, I’m sitting in a very interesting period of my life.

    Despite everything going on, I am feeling incredibly creative at the moment. I’ve managed to get my next book off to my agent and the edits on TCOA back to my editor before the self-imposed deadline of now.

    That’s left me feeling open to new opportunities in a way that I haven’t been in a long time. I’ve been working on what I am hoping will be my next book throughout this year. To have that off my desk for a little while, as it is considered, means I have to keep moving with something else.

    For a long time, I’ve had an idea in my head and in the last week, I’ve written both an opening and an ending that I am now looking to fill the gaps on. It’s different to anything I’ve done before and a pivot in tone, but it’s quite comforting and also justified. I don’t like to detail anything out in case it’s a story that doesn’t fully arrive or that I need to write just to write rather than to share. All the same, it’s coming together.

    At the same time, another idea has presented itself that I want to take my time with. There’s a whole world I would need to build for it and a level of planning that looks different to anything I have done before. That means it’s unlikely to rear its head for a while so I’ll finish up the above and let it gestate a little longer.

    For today, I’m giving myself a break and letting my tea go cold.

    Feliz navidad.

  • The Life And Loves Of Jet Tea – a review

    Jet Tea is a man plagued by the twenty-first century. Stuck in a series of jobs which don’t really do justice to the years of ability he has built up, and dumped by the first real love of his adult life, he bounces from pillar to post, and pub to pub, trying to find love and answers at the bottom of a pint glass.

    The joy of The Life and Loves of Jet Tea is in how English it is, therefore how relatable. There is an element of Douglas Adams to the prose, the awkward nature of not really being completely comfortable with the way we feel about our surroundings. Set against a backdrop of West London it’s a literary A-Z of the places to head if you want to face the arseholes you spend so long avoiding and confront everything which disenfranchises you from the world you are unfortunately a part of.

    Accompanying Jet Tea on his voyage of self-discovery are his two sole friends, Maurice and Hayden, who for the most part are the cooler sect of the tripod. While they are all able to make a mischief of themselves, there is the image that Jet Tea isn’t able to deal with these things in the way his friends do. His dyslexia and distance from the world make him a target on top of his outwardly expressed ‘geeky’ appearance, and there is the concern he will never come out on top. Faced with rejection at every turn he continues unabated for the things we all want in our mid-twenties.

    The book is comforting, thought-provoking and hilarious throughout, displaying the kind of aforethought only someone who has been there could have achieved. It’s a must read, and can be picked up through Amazon.

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