Stars Upon The Ceiling

Winner of 2nd Prize For Fiction 12+, Annual Writer's Conference Competition, Winchester. Stella Marison, a new girl at Lee-by-Sea High School, joins a psychic awareness group. She is drawn to Lex, the charismatic founder of the group. Lex has strange, vivid dreams of ancient Phoenicians, and a black monster composed of slime arising from the depths of the River Tamisis, and is determined to uncover their significance - whatever the cost. The group are plunged into a mysterious world in which unknown forces play havoc upon their lives. A mysterious old woman who leads a solitary existence high above the town, turns up a series of Tarot cards which reflect the unfolding events in the lives of the four young people in the town way below. Set upon the banks of the Tamisis estuary, with unseen horrors ever present and prowling around the outskirts of the commuter town, the teenagers struggle to come to terms with their own deep, conflicting emotions and confusion of sexual identity as they develop into adulthood. Meanwhile, the ancient gods exert their strange influence upon past and present, and powerful forces draw the lives of everyone deeper and deeper into the mysterious tide of events.