Ra Book's Been Read!
Friday 9:32 p.m.
I read this email first thing this morning after getting out of bed. It's from the sensei and reverend. It said:
"Fucking wonderful novel! Hilarious and insightful. A clear teaching of the Dharma along with an expose of the Scottish education system - what more can a reader want?! It's like a mixture of Bukowskie's Post Office and Mathieson's The Snow Leopard.
I'm not being kind - I honestly love this book."
So that was not the worst first reaction! But he might well be being kind. It's hard being the first person to read someone's new novel. But the sensei is a proper writer. Far more than I am. He makes his money writing. He does journalism. He reads a lot of novels. So that's been a good start to the day. Anyone can say what they like about it now.
The sensei says Irvine Welsh has contacted him for the first time in years. They were quite pally just before Trainspotting was published. The sensei knows so many rich writers! And some skint ones like me.
I'm going to Bellshill to see my auld maw soon. She was singing a song about the Irish potato famine last week. I dug up some fabulous looking tatties from the allotment yesterday. Had a meal of boiled tatties, fried onions and a fried egg yesterday. Though I am a fat basturn, I couldn't resist. Nothing like it!
]
6:20 p.m.
Nice visit to Bellshill. When I came back, I was trying to get onto the sensei's blog, but soemthing's weird about the url. Or me. Probably me. I thought he'd stopped blogging, possibly unable to tap the keys anymore due to running out of fat Tennesseans to eat. This begging bowl logo kept showing up ... anyway, a link from statcounter took me onto his stuff and he's fine, it seems. So I read up on August before I went to bed. Anyone who cycles should have a look!! Somebody will shoot him. I'm surprised the policeman who pulled him over for cycling in the middle of the road lane didn't. You can probably get to him by sticking Barry Graham into google. His webpage shows up first. Anyway, he was very nice about the book again on his bloggy.
"Read Hotboy's new manuscript in one sitting, and it's brilliantly funny and urgently serious at the same time. I emailed him and said it read like a cross between Bukowski's Post Office and Matthiessen's Buddhist masterpiece The Snow Leopard, but, really, Hotboy is an author who can be compared only to Hotboy. He's a novelist of ideas who's also a great entertainer, and he would probably be selling a lot of books if it weren't for the fact that he's so unique as to be unclassifiable, which scares publishers and leaves marketing people scratching their heads.
I hope the world catches up with him sooner rather than later." It's nice to have another writer who likes your stuff, at least some of it.
Sunday 5:36 p.m.
I sent an email to Pat Kavanagh of PFD this morning, and included in it the comments on the book from the sensei and reverend. I found an email from her when I put on the computer a wee while ago. She says she'll look at three chapters! She can't look at it till after the 18th, but this is a total score. She's got a brilliant client list and I've told her I won't send it to anyone else. Neither I will. She's the agent for Laurie Lee's estate. Why she even bothered to reply to the email (on a Sunday?) God alone knows!
Ra bliss and heat are getting easier and easier to access. You sit and shoot a breath and there it is! What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!
I read this email first thing this morning after getting out of bed. It's from the sensei and reverend. It said:
"Fucking wonderful novel! Hilarious and insightful. A clear teaching of the Dharma along with an expose of the Scottish education system - what more can a reader want?! It's like a mixture of Bukowskie's Post Office and Mathieson's The Snow Leopard.
I'm not being kind - I honestly love this book."
So that was not the worst first reaction! But he might well be being kind. It's hard being the first person to read someone's new novel. But the sensei is a proper writer. Far more than I am. He makes his money writing. He does journalism. He reads a lot of novels. So that's been a good start to the day. Anyone can say what they like about it now.
The sensei says Irvine Welsh has contacted him for the first time in years. They were quite pally just before Trainspotting was published. The sensei knows so many rich writers! And some skint ones like me.
I'm going to Bellshill to see my auld maw soon. She was singing a song about the Irish potato famine last week. I dug up some fabulous looking tatties from the allotment yesterday. Had a meal of boiled tatties, fried onions and a fried egg yesterday. Though I am a fat basturn, I couldn't resist. Nothing like it!
]
6:20 p.m.
Nice visit to Bellshill. When I came back, I was trying to get onto the sensei's blog, but soemthing's weird about the url. Or me. Probably me. I thought he'd stopped blogging, possibly unable to tap the keys anymore due to running out of fat Tennesseans to eat. This begging bowl logo kept showing up ... anyway, a link from statcounter took me onto his stuff and he's fine, it seems. So I read up on August before I went to bed. Anyone who cycles should have a look!! Somebody will shoot him. I'm surprised the policeman who pulled him over for cycling in the middle of the road lane didn't. You can probably get to him by sticking Barry Graham into google. His webpage shows up first. Anyway, he was very nice about the book again on his bloggy.
"Read Hotboy's new manuscript in one sitting, and it's brilliantly funny and urgently serious at the same time. I emailed him and said it read like a cross between Bukowski's Post Office and Matthiessen's Buddhist masterpiece The Snow Leopard, but, really, Hotboy is an author who can be compared only to Hotboy. He's a novelist of ideas who's also a great entertainer, and he would probably be selling a lot of books if it weren't for the fact that he's so unique as to be unclassifiable, which scares publishers and leaves marketing people scratching their heads.
I hope the world catches up with him sooner rather than later." It's nice to have another writer who likes your stuff, at least some of it.
Sunday 5:36 p.m.
I sent an email to Pat Kavanagh of PFD this morning, and included in it the comments on the book from the sensei and reverend. I found an email from her when I put on the computer a wee while ago. She says she'll look at three chapters! She can't look at it till after the 18th, but this is a total score. She's got a brilliant client list and I've told her I won't send it to anyone else. Neither I will. She's the agent for Laurie Lee's estate. Why she even bothered to reply to the email (on a Sunday?) God alone knows!
Ra bliss and heat are getting easier and easier to access. You sit and shoot a breath and there it is! What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!
posted by Hotboy at 9:39 AM
11 Comments:
I say!
Wonderful review from the sensei and reverend.
Must dash - got to see a man about a pitch.
MM III
Great to be ravingly reviewded! Now conjour all that raBliss and rainfluence and see if his people can get in touch with your people!
Heather: It was great that he liked it. The sensei was intrumental in getting Are You Boys Cyclists published. What we both need is an agent! Hotboy
I like some of your stuff too. I'll read the book if I can skip all the bliss stuff, which doesn't help.
There's a new movie based on a Bukowski thing, looks great! Did you ever see the Ben Gazzara Bukowski film? Blew me away, as the young people say.
The meal sounds like stovies!
Adolf! Zeig! It's probably not your kind of book. No penguins in it. As long as I don't have to read it for a while, I don't care who else reads it. My floor is littered with books and poetry by Bukowski that I haven't read yet! You'd be better off reading that! Hotboy
Hey hotboy, just stopping in to say hello!
Have a great weekend.
~xo
Adolf! I fancy seeing the one with Matt Dillon in it! I sent you the book since you mentioned it in your blog, but it's a waste of your time reading it since you're so irredeemably flatheided. On the plane you could read Alive, about the plane that crashed in the Andes. Then they ate the dead bodies. Lucky you're not vegetarian, eh? Hotboy
Seems I should have gone into a better explanation of what I felt! ;)
Lee Ann: Too late now! Once these buddhists are on your case they never let go! Hotboy
HB - the hyperbaric chamber's actually quite a buzz. Pure oxygen at 3 atmospheres. One spark from a nylon pantaclava and we're all barbecued, with the flavour sealed in. Try blissing your way through that.
But barring accidents and black spots, they say you'd live forever.
Adolf! Doesn't Michael Jackson sleep in one of them? Bound to be a great idea though. If there's chi in the air, it should be in the oxygen, eh? Chi times three! That's bound to help. Hotboy
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