I’m a writer, musician, film-maker and music promoter. Which means I do lots and lots of different but increasingly interrelated stuff – on a day-to-day freelance basis as well as longer term contacts

There’s copywriting across all media and marketing disciplines (SEARCH ‘COPYWRITING/CREATIVE DIRECTION TO FIND EXAMPLES) for lots of different commercial and charity/governmental clients for more than 20 years… There’s editing/proofreading of publishers’ fiction and non-fiction manuscripts…(SEARCH ‘BOOKS’ FOR EXAMPLES) There’s screenwriting and film projects (SEARCH ‘FILM’), novel and ghost writing (SEARCH ‘BOOKS’) … And finally there’s a range of live music events and festivals (SEARCH LIVE EVENTS), mostly working with young people through local authorities and youth organisations – and these involve pretty much all the other stuff I do. The posts here are just some of my more recent projects.

EMAIL ME AT: kev@kevsaunders.co.uk or call 07773845679 and I’ll tell you more!

This is an interactive microsite designed and built for Herts County Council Youth Connexions to promote positive relationships for young people. This is just one small part of a year-long project involving residential workshops with groups of young people to generate ideas, which I then knocked into shape as this website – as well as a series of live music events and printed material. I wrote the press releases, organised the events and worked closely with Youth Connexions on compiling the report for presentation to Herts County Council.

CLICK THE PICTURE TO SEE THE SITE!

Roger Wade, creator of Boxfresh and owner of Brands Inc and Donna Lambert (Lamb to Slaughter) asked me to write the launch brochure and trade press release for Roger’s latest retail revolution: BOXPARK – the world’s first pop-up mall!! I’m very chuffed to have taken part in this project because it’s one of the very few times that the word ‘revolution’ is used correctly and appropriately. This is exciting and radical stuff!!

Here are a few excerpts from the brochure, designed by Hamish Makgill of Studio Makgill, Brighton

Check out Heartbreak Hotels here: www.heartbreakhotels.co.uk or click the picture!

Written recently by yours truly, this is a very cool website offering some of the coolest grooves on the planet (and off it) from the likes of Marden Hill, Beamish & Fly, 45 Dip, Defoe, Spacehoppa, Sugarman and many more. There’s a huge range of music of various styles for use in TV, film, ads and so on – and among the tracks on offer you’ll find a few of my own! CLICK THE DOORBELL TO ENTER!

I came up with a complete exhibition stand, A5 leaflet, a set of postcards and business cards with the straightforward theme of: SIMPLE

CLICK THE PICS TO CHECK OUT M-Y EBOOKS!

EXHIBITION PANELS FOR M-Y EBOOKS at Frankfurt Book Fair

M-Y EBOOKS - leaflet copy and design for Frankfurt Book Fair

Acumus Insurance Home Page

Acumus Insurance, the leading social housing insurance company, asked me to rewrite their entire website and ensure that the new copy fitted comfortably within the space available in the new design without the need for visitors to scroll down. Quite tricky to be that concise with such a complex subject with lots of detail to cover!

Click the picture to see it full size – and check out the complete site at www.acumusins.com

‘

‘what chere be with you?’

Watch.er n – a person who watches or observes somebody or something. A voyeur.

Say Wotcha! to Bart Raines, who’s condemned forever to be a watcher after a childhood prank left his eyelid glued to his beloved telescope. Stuck with one eye that can’t not see, he’s turned voyeurism into a lucrative blackmail industry.

Say Wotcha! to former rock star, avid coke fiend, Richard ‘Winston’ Smith who’s watched by millions – among them erstwhile school friend Bart, who’s orchestrating revenge for Winston’s teenage betrayal through the sinister global surveillance network he calls the Daisy Chain.

Say Wotcha! to high class whore Daisy Chains (neé Raines) and her teenage son Joe, who’s abducted along with his girlfriend by a sinister ‘Christian’ cult, which leaves the kids to die, hogtied and helpless in a derelict drainage tunnel slowly filling with sewage.

Watched by the world’s media, Winston, Daisy and Bart reunite to use fame and the Daisy Chain to save two teenage lives – and their own souls – from the filth that’s about to drown them. Wotcha! is a comic spit in the eye of born again zealots with a wink and a twinkle to the rest of us. Mining a rich seam of coal-black humour and sex, drugs and rock and roll, it starts on a bitter-sweet nostalgia trip and builds up to the pace of a thriller.

Available from Amazon UK, US, France, Germany & Canada and WH Smith and Waterstones online. ALSO AVAILABLE AS A DOWNLOAD FOR YOUR IPHONE – JUST DOWNLOAD STANZA APP (details at www.lexcycle.com)

Read the reviews:

A debut novel that has everything…, 18 Jan 2008

Nell Bacon, Saffron Walden, Herts

That corny but useful little accolade ‘unputdownable’ could succinctly say it all about Kev Saunders’ debut novel ‘Wotcha!’, but it doesn’t really do justice to this gem of a book, because Mr Saunders can write, I mean, he can genuinely, most definitely WRITE. This is quality stuff, from the opening chapter, with its beautifully vivid but troubling portrait of a family walk on a bleak coastal landscape (amidst the stench of seaweed and wood rot and those rusty padlocks you can already smell the sickness of the human psyche), to the final fast-moving chapters that offer an exhilarating and macabre carnival of rescue, redemption and revenge – it’s more than a racy romp through a sticky web of lies and lives.

The story is excellently crafted, masterfully controlled (even with the electric blue language) and gorgeously and most lustfully written. There is a slick cinematic feel in its artful episodic weave. Imaginative creations aside, Kev Saunders seems to write about what he knows, about people and places he knows and has known. The author’s voice is authoritative, his characters’ voices authentic. There is lewdness mixed with lyricism, real pathos amidst the pantomime, narcotics laced with narcissism, vicious humour cavorting with extreme voyeurism. And, it has to be said, this book is funny.

Our hero, one-time rock star Richard `Winston’ Smith is the central character and lynchpin for all other supporting characters with their narrative perspectives. This somewhat debauched, arrogant but witty, incorrigible but `lovable rogue’ has (just about) survived the hedonistic and cynical world of late 20th century sex, drugs and rock `n’ roll only to enter – alas, hedonist and deeper-cynic still – a darker, more twisted and sadistic world, one which is brilliantly and intricately linked up with the brutal events, liaisons and secrecies of the past. Smith, in a suitably surreal, corrupt, clumsy yet poetic fashion, acquires a motley crew of characters round him – wild, eccentric, ruthless, loyal, greedy, kind, callous, vain, scheming, naïve, vulnerable…Bit by bit, grim truths are revealed and it takes a clever conspiracy employing perverse professional deviancies of one kind to uncover another – and the nature of this other, though horrific, is handled in an honest, sensitive and perceptive way by Saunders.

While poor Rich Smith is unequivocally our good bloke with a heart – despite his troubled soul and addictive tendencies – the richer and ruthless Bart Raines, victim-turned-vengeful-voyeur, is possibly one of the most original, disturbing, repellent yet compelling characters you’ll ever encounter in a (post-) post-modern novel. Although not the true villain of the story, he is, in soul and incarnate, born from a deadly centre of unspeakable corruption, and those roots he nurtures through his earth-world of employees and enemies and his ether-world of the Internet.

The pace never lets up, although the shifts from one narrative voice to another and the time travel across decades and generations allow us breadth of vision and breathing spaces. The dialogue in the novel is varied and the author avoids the danger of over-indulging his foulmouth fest of word-pun, quip, cheeky banter and backchat. Difficult when you know this writer must have a passion for words, their music and their teasing possibilities. And music echoes in so many ways throughout the story, nostalgically and mockingly, snatches of a pop-song, the snarling of a punk lyric: chants and refrains that haunt the hunter and the hunted.

In that laddish and Loaded kind of way, sure, there are chills, thrills and pills in Wotcha!, but this is not the vague and lifeless anatomy of soft porn that pulp fiction might offer up, this is a palpable, breathing body of narrative, very much alive and kicking. And it succeeds, beyond entertaining, to `anatomize’ personal and violent histories to find `any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts’ (to plagiarise a bit from the Old Bard, himself.) Kev Saunders, like any good dramatist, novelist or screenwriter – knows how to woo the intelligent reader/viewer, by making the ordinary both extraordinary and poignant and by showing us (without telling us) how you can’t escape your past; hubris with all its excessive entourage is bound to fall; Nemesis will track down the tyrant; the innocent will suffer; but love, whatever the tragic outcomes, can (perhaps) in the bittersweet end, conquer all.

And finally, I have to add that it’s true, I really couldn’t put this book down.

How to get bags under your eyes!!, 7 Jan 2008

P.M Phipps

This is the most gripping book I have read in a long time…so much so that I am now suffering from ever more droopy bags under my eyes as a result of reading ‘Wotcha’ until 1.30 every morning!! I want to finish the book as soon as possible, ’cause I want to know what happens but at the same time, I want it to last for ever (or at least until Kev Saunders has finished writing his next book!). If you got a book voucher as a present this Christmas, it would be well used on this book…if you didn’t get a voucher, buy it anyway…..and join the ever increasing Kev Saunders’ fan base with bags under their eyes!!!

A Rollicking Roller-Coaster of Rock and Roll, 17 May 2009

N.T Game, Sydney, Australia.

The perfect mix of raw sex, drugs and rock and roll with black humoured comedy written in beautiful poetic prose; how on earth did Saunders do it?

If this book sounds like your bag, then the characters (so alive, you will believe they exist) will be you friends and enemies rolled into one. If not then this book will open your eyes and give you an insight into how others live their lives.

This book should come with a health warning, it is so addictive that your life will temporarily change; you will be totally incapable of putting it down. The only downside is the disappointment of finishing the last page and the not knowing when or if Saunders will produce another like it.

Strangel but ….Cool , 6 Nov 2008

The Book Fan, UK

This is a sublime book that will challenge your ability in seperating the layers of each characters motivation set amidst a sea of influence and counter influence – to understand this book at its best I would suggest listening to some serious music – London Calling as well as 20 Jazz Funk Greats

Its twisted – but hey so is real life – its complex – anything worthwhile generally is – its sad – Ditto most unoriginal of me to say – but its original – try it buy it – theyll get it in and send it to you – go on give your brain a treat – give your Id the equivalent of a big PHAt line – other suggested listening is Live 1981-1982

Kidnap, 10 Jun 2008

OWP Kennedy, UK

Kev Saunders kidnapped me with this book, he tied to me to comfy chair and bound in my hand a frothing tankard of sheer creative genius, I drank the whole lot down willingly and with gusto.This book is great, pure and simple! Now read it.

Oliver

Wotcha!, 4 April 2008. J Finnegan.

Wotcha was a great read, it kept me on the hook from start to finish. Very rock n’ roll, very gritty, very intriguing, in fact very shocking in places, but witty and clever enough throughout to balance the light and the shade.

I think Mr Saunders must be my age as i identified with his youthful start all the way through to his middle aged middle paged, rock star cynicsym. It could have split into a trilogy at one point, but cleverly weaved itself from a trident to a spear to strike with thrilling effect. Good is good so i wont go on or i might disappear up my backside.

Read it!

Wotcha, 1 Mar 2008. G Porter, UK.

The good,the bad, the mad and the ugly all jockey for position in this masterfully woven thriller, which finds our hapless hero in a race for life,in more ways than one!Follow the seam of black comedy all the way from the nostalgic trip through the 70’s punk era before ‘pc’ was invented (hurrah!))to the stupendous climax, encountering hooker, pervert,vicar,and psycho along the way.Grab this fabulously deviant, funny and curiously touching novel with both hands and meet the unforgettable cast.Where are they all now Mr Saunders, and when is the film coming out?

Gillian Porter

Wotcha! , 29 Feb 2008. Vanessa Rogers, UK.

Anyone who loves Ashes to Ashes should read this! An eighties washed up rock star who will do anything for cash finds himself in the middle of a frantic dash to save the son he has never met. I love it; from the seedy, coke head hero (who I want to marry), to the nasty, but vulnerable Bart. Through it all is the glorious, sexy Daisy. The music references are spot on (as they should be), the clothes are cool and the vibe created of a Punk inspired London has made me very happy, thank you.

Tres Bon (very good), 10 Feb 2008. C Fane, UK

The first novel by Hertford’s “Mr Music” Kev Saunders – musician, promoter and writer among other things – Wotcha! Is a dark, action-packed and very often hilarious tale of revenge, redemption and religious zealotry.

Just like rock `n’ roll, there are liberal helpings of sex, drugs violence and swearing, but at its heart is a group of highly original and truly memorable characters.

The hero, Rich Smith, is the washed-up, coke-head singer in a once-massive rock band, who is planning to make a comeback; when his past returns to not so much haunt him as turn his world upside down.

Rich’s links to the other protagonists is told in flashback, woven throughout the novel. There’s his childhood friend Bart Raines, a vengeful voyeur who wants to make Rich’s life hell; and Bart’s sister Daisy, a one-time hooker and mother of a teenage son Joe, who has never met his father (Rich).

When Joe and his girlfriend Lily are kidnapped by Bart and Daisy’s father’s religious cult, the trio have to team up to save them.

It is fascinating to read how these troubled characters overcome their difficulties and use their resources to fight true evil.

Saunders’ minor characters aren’t just cardboard cut-outs either: Daisy’s friend Roland (whose business takes him to the depths of debauchery but who can’t bring himself to swear) and the vicar Ralph (who gives into rock `n’ roll temptations but maintains his halo) are both hugely likeable.

The cruelty of schoolkids and the excitement of the punk era are brought to life in flashbacks, written with the authority of a man who has seen it all.

The multiple point-of-view narrative allows the reader to see into every aspect of the characters’ lives – much like Bart’s surveillance network.

The pace builds up to warp speed, keeping you gripped until the satisfying conclusion.

My only (very mild) criticism is the occasional use of untranslated French, but since it can be worked out in its context and it’s not vital to the main plot, it’s about as problematic as breaking a fingernail would be for a builder.

All in all, Wotcha! is a brilliant read and another highly successful branch on the Kev Saunders Tree of Talent.

Dedicated non reader, until now., Gav, Broxbourne UK

20 Jan 2008

As somebody with little time to sit down and read, once started, I found myself having to make time to continue what I found to be an enthralling, entertaining and thought provoking read.

Like Pavlov’s dogs, after the bell rings, I eagerly await the next meal. Congratulations Kevin an excellent first novel.

`Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’ –Blaise Pascal