August Update

I spent much of the month of July attempting to drink myself into comfortable oblivion in a bid to escape reality, which has why there have not been any blog updates of late. My life, which never seems to run in a straight line for long, has recently been violently twisting and turning at a rate that has left me feeling seasick. My concentration span is down to less than five seconds, and I’m finding it damned hard to commit words to paper.

Still, here goes with the latest installment of this, the pretentious and largely unread thoughts of a worst selling novelist.

Early reviews for my latest book, The House of Fox, were not just bad - they were borderline vitriolic. I got the impression folk didn’t want to critique my work, so much as form a pitchfork wielding mob and turn up outside my home, demanding I be burnt at the stake for having the audacity to write such a piece of bullshit. ‘Puerile’ was the word thrown up the most often. My argument would be that of course it’s puerile; I wrote the fucking thing. It was never going to be anything but puerile.

One guy said he found House of Fox really boring, because he’d personally participated in all the lurid acts described in the book and there was nothing in there to excite his imagination. I can only say I take my hat off to the man, although I’m still not entirely sure as to whether he was reviewing the novel or boasting about his own sexual prowess.

One or two more positive opinions are slowly starting to drift in, but it’s safe to say House of Fox will remain firmly in the love it or hate it camp, with the vast majority of readers falling into the latter category.

In other news, the two ladies who have moved into my house have turned out not to be the rutting nymphomaniacs I’d hoped for, but rather a couple of fundamentalist Christians, who eat, sleep and drink Jesus. They never swear, watch only Christian movies, listen only to Christian music and pray before they do virtually anything. On laundry days the washing line is crammed with neat rows of eminently sensible underwear.

Many years ago I learned never to argue with religious types, as it’s such an utter waste of energy. Faith will trump logic, evidence, common sense and reality every time. I’m not the sort of fellow who likes to cram his opinion down other people’s throats – live and let live has always been my motto – but last night I got the feeling they were making a first attempt at trying to convert me, and if this scurrilous behaviour persists I will have no option but to return the favour and drag them down into my own, personal darkness.

So God, if you’re listening, I respectfully ask you to encourage your servants to keep their mitts off me, or I will introduce them to jazz, vodka and butt plugs.