All Good Bookstores

Jeez! Can you believe that it has been a week, no eight days, since I last posted? So what have I been up to? Well you have every right to ask especially as it occured to me this morning that I have not as yet been at all clear what I am doing here, explained my purpose, elucidated my undertaking.

You see the Half Lived of the blog title refers to my novel. I've been at it for the past twelve months on and off and a couple of months ago I decided to give two fingers, the V's, the rods, to 9-5 and quit my job to finish writing Half Lived and it is going rather well thanks for asking.

Half Lived - Love, Language, Obsession.

Half Lived - Life is violence and violence is life…

Kenny-Sue O'Collaterol of The Manchester Evening Texan Echo writes;

Half Lived is a picaresque, hilarious, enlightening, dark, misanthropic, romanticising romp through the life and minds of its Scouse-Manc-Tex narrator, Truman; an obsessive, over-sensitive, opinionated, loquacious, loathing-never-loathsome, sharp-witted, often unwittingly witless, silver-tongued, leaden footed, multi-phobic idealist. Truman loves obsessively himself, Rose and words, though not always in that order.

For Truman life IS violence and vice versa in the same what that for Thomas a Beckett all action is suffering and suffering action. His life is a dynamic, fluid, multi-faceted, cyclical yet ever-changing state of minds.

Ultimately Truman is embarked on a transatlantic super tanker trawl of (self) discoveries in sight and sound, head and heart, words and pictures.

Or not, as the case may be.

Wise words Kenny-Sue.

The Full George Michael II

So what's the point? Next time you're in a bar, classroom, elevator, car...wherever...and you are stuck with someone of Faith, whether that dickface is crapping on about The Lord Jee-zus Ker-riste Our Lord and Saviour All Singing All Dancing Good with Wood Son of God or they are banging on about something real and inportant to real people like football or chocolate, grab that twat's nose loosely but with conviction between thumb and forefinger and tweak the living shite out of it. Then run, run fast before the river of their anger becomes an ocean and they try to kick your ass upon the floor.

Go on you know you want to: you know it makes sense. You've just gotta have Faith.

The Full George Michael

No! Not getting caught in a public bathroom stall in some LA shithole with your two hundred dollar jeans creased around your ankles below your fifty dollar skid-marked stretch Calvin's, if such an underwear item even exists (you tell me).

What I am talking about is Faith, in terms of unswerving belief not the 1987 hit single for Giorgios Trousadropolis, to which I must confess to dancing with cousin Step on an empty Student's Union dancefloor not realising as a succulent sixteen-year-old that irony, dancing and a sympathetic audience were utterly mutually exclusive.

Today seems as good a day as any to question the essential sanity of notions of Faith.

I don't have a problem with zealots, be they religious, sporting, social or whatever, chaining themselves to shit or even setting themselves on fire in a public square somewhere in the midst of the late night news reports; just stay there, on my TV, in the news, in your own back yard where your choices are yours to exercise. The Fiefdom of Trumania has no room for that shit.

I do have a fucking serious problem with people of whatever race, creed or even sporting persuasion with whom it is utterly, completely, entirely, wholly and absolutely impossible to reason. These people, from religious fanatic to football fanatic, really are arse-numbingly tedious.

I mean you have nowhere to go with these bastards because you see my mate Hamster, a crystalline Presbyterian, faithfully asserts that Faith is immeasurable by degrees as it is absolute, substantive, self-existing, unswerving. So you are flogging a horse so dead that it is nigh on skeletal; there is no beginning, no middle and with absolute certitude no end of or for discussions because they already believe irrevocably in the answer somebody else gave them.

Tru Legend

Life is a complicated thing, a sly fox, smoke and mirrors, a mixture of metaphors and a clash of clichés. Some would say that my life is glamorous; in fact some have said that my life is glamorous. I don’t know, everybody is always having more fun, has more friends, a better night out, knows people, went to a posher school, a better university, got better grades, went on more marches (more than one that is), actually did something in and for the societies they joined, got published in the Uni Rag, took their opportunities and didn’t mix their tenses.

I’ve been called a Marxist and labelled myself a misanthrope over the years. The former was a lazy label thrown at me by a professor the latter now only an occasional consideration.

Portmanteauism, Word-geekery and Vocabularian Expansionism are my things. What better toy than words? They don’t answer back and if you know the rules of the game you can bend, twist and amend them to your brain’s content. The first rule of Word Club is that you can bend the rules. Game on.

My name is Truman.

You'll want further salient detail and revelation, this will follow.