Michael F. Russell

Michael F Russell grew up on the Isle of Barra before leaving to study Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow, followed by a postgraduate diploma in Journalism Studies at the University of Strathclyde. He is deputy editor at the West Highland Free Press and writes occasionally for the Sunday Herald. His writing has appeared in Gutter, Northwords Now and Fractured West, and he has now written his first novel.

Set in the near future, in the aftermath of a technical catastrophe, Lie of the Land is a bleak examination of the claustrophobia of small-town life. For investigative journalist Carl Shewan, the Scottish coastal village of Inverlair is a picturesque cage. Imprisoned in this remote refuge, Carl struggles to adapt to impending fatherhood and to a harsh new existence in an ancient landscape, until a childless gamekeeper offers him an alternative to guilt and alienation.

Lie of the Land is a novel that questions how far the state will go to preserve an orderly society and examines an Armageddon in which human technology plays a central role.