Agent: Courtney Miller-Callahan, Handspun Literary.

It’s a cheery, hopeful love story proving that those with mental illness can have just as much fun-and sex-as those without.

Still, Hall’s trademark humor and heart shine through. Hall writes Darian’s dialogue in Essex dialect-suggesting, for example, that the inscription to Ash’s latest novel should read, “To the geeza what I slept wif and then done a runner on in the middle of the night, making ’im feel like a right slapper?” This near-caricature has a distracting effect and distances readers from the narrative, especially as none of the other characters speak with comparable dialectical mannerisms. Though Hall has a sensitive hand with Ash’s mental illness throughout, the happy relationship results in an almost unbelievably huge alteration in Ash’s personality and approach to the world. After a few initial hiccups, these polar opposites fall into a shockingly successful relationship as Darian’s good cheer coaxes Ash into situations outside of his comfort zone. The newest edition was released on 17 January 2023 with a brand-new cover. It was first published on, with the second edition being published on 18 March 2018. He lives his life between the cycles of his illness, haunted by the ghosts of other people's expectations.

Ash Winters, a reasonably successful London novelist with bipolar disorder, meets Darian Taylor, a glitzy, self-tanned Essex fashion model, at a nightclub. Glitterland is the first book in the Spires series, written by Alexis Hall. Once the golden boy of the English literary scene, now a clinically depressed writer of pulp crime fiction, Ash Winters has given up on hope, happiness, and-most of all-himself. There is a lot to be titillated by in this delightful gay romance from Hall ( Boyfriend Material), the first in his Spires Series.

Glitterland by alexis hall