Our Authors
Neil Cocker
Neil Cocker was born in Falkirk in 1972. He has worked as a teacher in Lithuania, a dishwasher in the US, a book reviewer in Australia, and a whisky label designer in the wilds of Clackmannanshire. He now lives and works in the Netherlands.
A Canongate Prize winner in 2001, his short fiction has been published in various anthologies.
Books by Neil Cocker
The Vodka Angels
January 1995, and snow falls mercilessly on the Lithuanian town of Paupys. Cammy Shanks limps past the crumbling tower blocks on his way to a lunch appointment with the Kovalenko family. Haunted by memories of his dead lover and bewildered by his deteriorating mental health, Cammy is unsure what this new year will bring – if he survives it, that is. As he trudges through the slush, he takes a short cut through the forest and stumbles across the town’s mass grave from the 1941 massacres – a chance encounter that will lead him into Lithuania’s bloody and terrifying past, and ultimately help him face his own demons.
The Vodka Angels is a novel about worlds that have fallen apart, and how people rebuild from the rubble left behind. A highly arresting read, extracts from the novel have been published in the Canongate Prize anthology 2001 and New Writing Scotland 21.
Distillery Boys
Fin McPhail has left Scotland behind for a fresh start, and at last, his luck seems to be changing – he lives in a luxury apartment in Amsterdam, works as Marketing Manager for Silverburn Malt Whisky, and rides his bike cheerily around the seventeenth century canals. Nobody calls him McFailure anymore. But this weekend, a little piece of Scotland is coming to Amsterdam in the shape of a stag party – namely Fin’s future brother-in-law Dingo and his colleagues from the Silverburn Distillery, who are determined to drink, snort, smoke, and screw everything they can get their hands on. Fin has promised his beloved sister he will steer Dingo clear of all the temptations on offer in Europe’s citadel of sin and deliver him back home in one piece in time for the wedding. But on their disastrous first evening, Dingo goes missing, and it seems that Fin’s embarrassing little secret is to blame for his disappearance…
Distillery Boys is a head-on collision between Pulp Fiction and Whisky Galore, and follows one man’s attempt to survive the wreckage.
