TO write Wasteground veteran journalist Dennis Apperly draws on his many years of experience investigating and reporting on crime and social deprivation on the streets of a tough city in the Midlands. The five main characters in the book - Midnight Sam, Scots Robby, The Professor, Lady Jane and Fen - form a band of homeless street-drinkers who beg, steal and borrow to survive. Their precarious existence is hard, dangerous and violent but at times both comical and tender. Besides following their often bizarre day-to-day exploits, the author delves deep into their individual backgrounds to describe how and why these unlikely comrades came to be on the wasteground. Dennis began his journalistic career in 1970 as a reporter with the South African Press Association in Johannesburg. He returned to the UK after three years and has since worked on a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Bristol Evening Post and the Birmingham Post. In 1985 he was appointed launch editor of a weekly newspaper called the Gloucester Express, during which time he organised an award-winning relief aid campaign to Umm Keddada, a remote village in Darfur, Sudan. He then spent a number of years free-lancing before becoming crime reporter for the Gloucester Citizen. Dennis, who is married with a grown-up son and lives in Cheltenham, has written a sequel to Wasteground entitled Looking For Lady. A non-fiction - The Road to Umm Keddada - is in preparation.

Looking For Lady takes up where Dennis Apperly's first novel Wasteground leaves off - at the funeral of The Professor, in the cathedral. They are all there - Midnight Sam, Scots Robby, Fen, Nobby and Splodge and Brian Davies, to name but a few - as Bishop John leads the huge congregation in a poignant farewell to the city's best-loved tramp. After the funeral, life on the wasteground goes on much as before, although Midnight Sam - who regarded the late street-drinker as his personal responsibility - is not the same since The Prof's death. Not only does he miss his friend, but he misses the vulnerable Lady Jane, who has been whisked 'up north' by the violent Blacklock. With not altogether welcome assistance from cronies old and new, Midnight embarks upon a chaotic mission to find the woman he slowly begins to realise he is in love with. The lovable down-and-out soon makes a remarkable discovery: find Lady Jane and he finds Midnight Sam. Meanwhile, Lady makes a remarkable discovery of her own - a discovery which changes her life and the life of Midnight Sam forever. Looking for Lady is more than a bitter-sweet love story with a difference. It is an Odyssey of hope for two seemingly hopeless individuals. Against a background of intermingled tragedy and comedy, the book demonstrates how it is possible for society's so-called misfits to rise triumphantly above the wasteground and proves that love really can conquer all.

Looking For Lady takes up where Dennis Apperly's first novel Wasteground leaves off - at the funeral of The Professor, in the cathedral. They are all there - Midnight Sam, Scots Robby, Fen, Nobby and Splodge and Brian Davies, to name but a few - as Bishop John leads the huge congregation in a poignant farewell to the city's best-loved tramp. After the funeral, life on the wasteground goes on much as before, although Midnight Sam - who regarded the late street-drinker as his personal responsibility - is not the same since The Prof's death. Not only does he miss his friend, but he misses the vulnerable Lady Jane, who has been whisked 'up north' by the violent Blacklock. With not altogether welcome assistance from cronies old and new, Midnight embarks upon a chaotic mission to find the woman he slowly begins to realise he is in love with. The lovable down-and-out soon makes a remarkable discovery: find Lady Jane and he finds Midnight Sam. Meanwhile, Lady makes a remarkable discovery of her own - a discovery which changes her life and the life of Midnight Sam forever. Looking for Lady is more than a bitter-sweet love story with a difference. It is an Odyssey of hope for two seemingly hopeless individuals. Against a background of intermingled tragedy and comedy, the book demonstrates how it is possible for society's so-called misfits to rise triumphantly above the wasteground and proves that love really can conquer all.

BACK COVER TO write Wasteground veteran journalist Dennis Apperly draws on his many years of experience investigating and reporting on crime and social deprivation on the streets of a tough city in the Midlands. The five main characters in the book - Midnight Sam, Scots Robby, The Professor, Lady Jane and Fen - form a band of homeless street-drinkers who beg, steal and borrow to survive. Their precarious existence is hard, dangerous and violent but at times both comical and tender. Besides following their often bizarre day-to-day exploits, the author delves deep into their individual backgrounds to describe how and why these unlikely comrades came to be on the wasteground. Dennis began his journalistic career in 1970 as a reporter with the South African Press Association in Johannesburg. He returned to the UK after three years and has since worked on a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Bristol Evening Post and the Birmingham Post. In 1985 he was appointed launch editor of a weekly newspaper called the Gloucester Express, during which time he organised an award-winning relief aid campaign to Umm Keddada, a remote village in Darfur, Sudan. He then spent a number of years free-lancing before becoming crime reporter for the Gloucester Citizen. Dennis, who is married with a grown-up son and lives in Cheltenham, has written a sequel to Wasteground entitled Looking For Lady. A non-fiction - The Road to Umm Keddada - is in preparation.