C. M. Taylor

C. M. Taylor (born 1972) is an English literary and science fiction novelist who has published under the names Craig Taylor, Ed Lark and C. M. Taylor.

Born in Birmingham in 1972, C M Taylor has lived in West Yorkshire, Suffolk, Cambridge, Edinburgh, India, Spain and Brussels. He is married with two daughters and currently lives in Oxford.

C M Taylor has ghostwritten for an internationally best-selling author, and contributed material to Plan B's The Ballad of Belmarsh album. His journalism has appeared widely, including in The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

Taylor's novel Cloven is a dark treatment of the BSE epidemic in Britain in the 1990s.

The dystopian satire Grief was nominated for Best Book of the Year 2005 by the British Science Fiction Associationand was described in the BSFA's review as 'magnificent', and a work of 'breathtaking originality.'

The novella Light is set in the e-commerce boom of the late 1990s and features the author's own Primitivist drawings. In Time Out London the novelist Nicholas Royle described Light as 'compelling', and 'delightfully unusual.'

Published by Corsair, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, Taylor's Premiership Psycho is a dark satire on the excesses of celebrity and football culture.

The novel is narrated by Kev King, an all action midfielder, 'compulsive shagger' and psychopathic customer vigilante who "targets those who have committed offences against consumerism", King shakes off a fall from grace to become an unnamed London Premier League club's star player.

Kev narrates the novel himself in an aggressive, slangy and product-obsessed "inventive language", which has led one critic to call Kev King a "stream of consciousness brand warrior". While Kev King's obsessions and neurosis have led to him being described as a "worthy and logical successor" to Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho.

One critic of Premiership Psycho has found Kev King to be "arrogant" and "full of misplaced self importance", while another reviewer stated that the book was "detestable", "sexist", and, "aimed at those who see woman as objects".

Yet most reviewers have interpreted Kev King's abundant and exaggerated faults as a "merciless satire" on the shallow world of overpaid footballers, with FourFourTwo magazine calling the book "American Psycho for the hundred grand a week generation...", "genius" and "brilliantly appalling", while The Sun called Kev King a "huge mickey take on celebrity" and the Daily Mirror described him as "horribly entertaining".

The singer Plan B has said of Premiership Psycho: 'The more of a c*nt Kev King is, the more I like him. How the f*ck is that possible? ...Very good writing. Best book since Kill Your Friends. Bring on the film.'

Premiership Psycho is the first part of a planned Kev King trilogy, with the second instalment, set at the 2012 European Football Championship in Poland and Ukraine, due for release in 2012.

Film rights to Premiership Psycho have been sold.

Collaborating with underground fashion label Terratag, Taylor launched kevkingcouture.com in August 2011, a spoof celebrity fashion brand aimed at skewering the lifestyle pretensions of the famous. Taylor blogs at the website kevkingcouture.com

• Light, as C.M. Taylor (ISBN 978-1-905315-00-0, ebook ISBN 978-1-905315-11-6)
• Grief, as C.M. Taylor (first published under the name Ed Lark) (ISBN 978-1-905315-02-4, ebook ISBN 978-1-905315-10-9)
• Cloven, as C.M. Taylor (ISBN 978-1-905315-04-8, ebook ISBN 978-1-905315-12-3)
• Premiership Psycho (2011, ISBN 978-1-84901-594-3)