Book Extract: Under Vixens Mere By Kit Fielding

I’m so excited to be welcoming Kit Fielding to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for his book, Under Vixens Mere.

If poor Harry Jones hadn’t lowered himself into the water one freezing winter’s night, a long-buried secret would never have come to the surface.

If …

Big Ed and Milly had been able to have children,

Karen hadn’t longed for love and romance,

Lorrie hadn’t finally ditched Petra,

Dinah hadn’t found out the truth about Barry,

Jed hadn’t dealt drugs and got Anna pregnant,

Carl Thomson hadn’t come looking for him,

and Moses hadn’t heard the commotion …

then there would be no story of Vixens Mere to tell.

There’s a chance to win some books below but first, Kit has shared an extract from Under Vixens Mere with us today. Grab that beverage and the blanket. Find that comfortable chair and enjoy. 

*****beginning of extract*****

The tenuous trail that brought them to Vixens Mere begins when Big Ed and Milly the Mystic wake up together in his roughly converted Transit van at the Reading Festival in the August of 1978. They’re on a lumpy and rather grubby mattress in the back of the vehicle and it must be about ten o’clock when Big Ed rolls himself over onto his back and encounters the soft prone body of Milly the Mystic. He yawns, looks at her curiously and says, ‘You been here all night?’

She says, ‘I think so.’

Big Ed studies her a bit more. ‘What do they call you then?’

‘Milly.’

She sits up, notices that her breasts are bare, lifts the covers, peeps down further at her naked nether regions. She looks at Ed, a question knitting her brow.

‘Did we …?’ she begins.

‘Must have, I suppose.’ Big Ed looks appreciatively at her breasts. ‘But we could make sure.’

‘If you like,’ she says. ‘Though I must have a piddle first. Have you got a bucket in here?’

Milly the Mystic never does find her clothes, not a stitch. Nothing. She couldn’t even divine where she left her knickers so she finishes off the Festival in one of Ed’s oversize shirts and little else. But it’s really not a problem because the weather’s hot in the day and Big Ed keeps her close in the coolness of the night.

After their intimate introduction, Big Ed and Milly the Mystic are never apart. They make a decent living together because, despite their overfondness for alcohol and chemical substances, they’re grafters. They work the bars at the festivals together – Milly has a good head for figures and a good figure – and Big Ed’s large and strong and always willing to sort out the drama. Milly also sells her merchandise of crystal necklaces, herbs, dried flowers, ankle chains, and the like, from the back of the van. She also pretends to read palms and tell fortunes but she doesn’t pretend to take the money, so she does quite nicely in the financial stakes.

With the onset of the snowy winter of ’78 the couple pull into an old farmyard, complete with its own deep well, hidden in the Mendips where they meet up with a few more of their own kind. Renovation and gentrification of this kind of disused building is still twenty years into the future. Here there’s a stone barn with a many-holed roof where a fire can burn brightly and smoke escape without suffocating anyone.

These others of the same ilk gather around the fire at night for a few jars of Special Olde Scrumpy cider and a smoke. It’s a rough and ready commune of a dozen gatherers within three large vans, a removal lorry, and a mini-bus, all of varying ages and even more varying designs; arcs of rainbow, bright flowers, white clouds. Mind they’re all spotted with outbreaks of rust.

The Somerset weather’s bitterly cold on this high ground and firewood is foraged from the hedges and tumbledown buildings to keep the woodstoves alight, the food pots simmering. Outside, bodily warmth is mostly contained within a common collection of army greatcoats that found their way onto the black market just in time for the first frosts. Discounting the hairy heads and beards, you might be deceived into thinking this could be an army base. Big Ed has two stripes on his arm to Milly’s one and he continually pulls rank on her until she blatantly disobeys orders. He says he’ll have her court-martialled for insubordination and Milly says she’ll serve her sentence in Bluto’s van if Ed wants. That shuts him up because Bluto’s a muscular lad barely into his twenties and, even on the coldest of morning, he dips a bucket of water from the well and gives his bare torso a good cleanse with soap and flannel. This causes a few curtains to flutter in the residents’ windows. For everyone else on site, hygiene is a cat-lick from a bowl inside the shelter of their respective vehicles. This is especially noticeable, and only partially diluted by the Moroccan brand, when backsides are aligned to the evening fire in the barn.

It’s a long winter this one and it drags itself well into March before wet weather defrosts the ground. There’s talk between them of upcoming gatherings, licenced and unlicenced, and the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge. ‘Be thousands there this year. It’s going to be a monster.’ Every day the numbers dwindle until there’s just Big Ed and Milly left poking the fire. One night they think that they’ll take a drive, park up near a pub and have a good drink. They’re well on that road when they get into conversation with a fellow traveller. He’s called Randy and he walks the walk and talks the talk as the potent cider flows thick and fast. Tales are told, events relived, locations revisited. But their newfound friend talks wistfully of the upcoming season.

‘Not for me,’ he says. ‘I’m calling it a day because,’ he pauses, takes a massive swallow of Exmoor Scrumpy, ‘because I’m getting married. Settling down.’

The words are delivered as though he’s confessing to a mortal sin. It seems he’s had a rethink about his life and he’s thinking that at twenty-eight years of age it’s time for convention. His girlfriend won’t live his life and, if he wants her enough, he’ll have to live hers. He’s been holed up on the canal for the winter on an old barge and now he’s putting it on the market. His girlfriend’s won not only his heart but the argument too.

Randy says pensively, ‘I suppose it’ll pay for the reception,’ and stares into his glass as though the answer’s in his beer.

Big Ed says, ‘What’s it like?’ and Milly, with barely a comma’s break between Ed’s and her words, continues with, ‘Yeah, what’s it like?’

Randy says, ‘Well, it floats.’

*****end of extract*****

About Kit Fielding – 

Kit Fielding plans and writes his novels in a motorhome at various locations around the country.

The feeling of impermanence is natural to him due to his mother’s traveller roots and a childhood succession of tied-cottages accommodation in different parts of England.

Kit Fielding says that there was always a curiosity about what was waiting, or was lurking, just around the corner. This legacy has stayed with him to the present day and it feeds into his work.

Connect with Kit and Inkspot Publishing via Instagram and Facebook.

Under Vixens Mere was released in September 2025 by Inkspot Publishing. Click to buy on Amazon UK, Amazon US, Barnes & Noble and Waterstones.

*****

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Laura

I'm Laura. I started Novel Kicks back in 2009 as I wanted a place to discuss books and writing - two loves of my life. As someone who has anxiety, these two things give me, and I am sure countless others, a much needed escape.
There is a monthly book club, writing exercises, prompts, reviews, author interviews, competitions and guest posts. I cover many genres and I hope there is something for everyone.
I grew up by the sea in Dorset and currently live in Poole with my husband, Chris and three cats. I love writing and have a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing from Falmouth University. I am writing my first book. If only I could stop pressing delete. Chris has threatened to stop it from working. Haha.
I have always loved creative writing since I was in first school and would very much like to meet my teacher, Miss Sayers, to say thank you for all the encouragement she gave me then.
When not writing, I love reading, cats, Disney, singing (I can't sing but this doesn't stop me,) and falling into a good TV show or film. If I could step into any fictional world, it would be amongst the characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.
I love reading many genres and discovering new authors.