NOTE
Floaters has gone on sale since this article was written:
There are not many copies left.
Publication date was brought forward due to surprise early publication of a Guardian article about the book:
END NOTE
For more than twenty years I’ve lived by the River Thames. My daughters have grown up swimming in the river but they’re hesitant to swim in it now.
For those outside the UK, you might not know the state of our waterways but they’re not doing well. Yet the ‘owners’ of our water are doing very well - they’re true modern day alchemists, turning shit into gold.
The year 2026 is a big year, a once in a generation opportunity for those campaigning for cleaner waterways, with a variety of legislative and industry opportuities on the table. There’s even a Channel 4 drama coming up about it - Dirty Business.
I wrote the novel Floaters - a crime caper with a stack of damn good jokes - about a group of teens who take the fight to the water industry. People seem to especially love the book’s ex-raver local policewoman, PC Mixtape.
To support the campaigning opportunity offered by 2026, and before wider book trade publication of Floaters, a unique limited art edition of the book is being published, with 50% of profits going to Surfers Against Sewage.
Only 215 copies of this first edition will ever be printed. One copy for each mile of the Thames.
Each copy will be hand-numbered, signed, and hand-named after a feature of the waterway associated with the numbered mile. It’s kind of cute.
The edition will not be for sale commercially through Amazon or Waterstones but only via a single author webpage which I will send privately to all subscribers to this substack the day before the web page goes public, with thanks to you for reading my ongoing schizzle.
Once copies are gone they’re gone.
I’ll be doing readings, events and press in support of the campaign throughout 2026, but everything will get announced here first. Expect more information in the coming days.
Publication date: March 1st, 2026
Here’s the book blurb:
Sometimes cleaning up means getting dirty first
School’s out, meaning a long summer of freedom for three best friends – lost boy JP, high-achieving No Phone and ever-changing Twix – but when they dive gleefully into their local wild swimming spot they find sewage oozing from an overflow pipe.
Eww! They’re angry and bewildered, but what can they do? Can their spirit of rebellion turn to genuine activism when they meet gutsy boomer Barbara Bone, especially when she exposes MP Julian Coutts and the water company’s role in the sewage dumps?
A mad plan evolves, to take revenge, but can JP, No Phone and Twix really pull off their unlikely eco-heist? Funny, fast-paced, and heartfelt, Floaters is a coming-of-age story capturing the generational moment when youthful despair turns to fearless action.
Info on Surfers Against Sewage:
Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and all it makes possible. It was created in 1990 by a group of Cornish surfers, fighting to clean up the sea that was making them sick. Now, Surfers Against Sewage campaigns on all that threatens the ocean - plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation and water quality – by taking action on the ground that triggers change from the top.
Here’s the super simple cover look:
And for those of you who do not know me as a writer…..
Praise for C M Taylor
You’ll have a hoot: The Guardian
Taylor is clearly a very accomplished and witty prose stylist: The Mirror
As with all good satire, this dystopian vision inspires laughter and loathing in equal measure: Independent on Sunday
Magnificent: Sport Magazine
Brilliant: The Sun