An affecting meditation on identity and escapism.

— Dazed and Confused

Heidi James’ prose, at its best, sings.

— Will Self

I can’t recommend the work of Heidi James highly enough. .. macabre and deliciously black

— Laura Hird

Original and intriguing.

— Guardian unlimited

James’ debut novel is a dystopian meditation on identity, fiction, Cartesian duality, and stolen jewels. A hallucination of decline and disintegration, this darkly comic novel unpicks the seams of manic realism.

Heidi James’ novella The Mesmerist’s Daughter (published by Apis Books) was launched in July 2007. Her novel Carbon (published by Blatt) will be out in Summer 09 and is published in Spanish by El Tercer Nombre. She has collaborated with artists including Delaine LeBas, Marisa Carnesky and Tara Darby. Her essays and short stories have appeared in various publications and anthologies including Dazed and Confused, Next Level, Flux, Brand, Another Magazine, The Independent, Undercurrent, 3:AM London, New York, Paris, Dreams That Money Can Buy, Full Moon Empty Sports Bag, Pulp,net etc. She is a doctoral research student.

“Salome winks her shellac eyes at me in the street lamp darkness and jiggles her tits in my face. She lies on the bed, her face next to Dickies and starts licking his eyes, his lips, his cheeks, whispering with her vagina; he is rocking his hips, dry humping the bed in his thwarted frenzy. Salome gets up and kneels with me between his legs. I do nothing until she tells me to. She scoops her fingers into my cunt to lubricate them, before turning and inserting them in Dickie’s anus. Dickie curls his back towards his head and wants more, Salome laughs at his straight boy enthusiasm for arse fucking. ‘Have you got a dildo babe or a vibrator?’ I shake my head, then remembering the day I arrived here reach under the bed and pass her my grandmother’s thick rod of rubber, still uncleaned since the old girl used it. Salome rams it in his hole, his cock muted under his body but he is panting and wriggling as if he is about to come and pushing back against his toy cock. He shudders and lays still, his shoulders flapping as he recovers his breath. Salome kisses his face, leaving the vibrator in his arse, while she offers me another line of coke.”

.