My new book The Thing Is will be out in January hopefully. I’m aware that this is slightly too far away for anyone to care about it, but I feel as though I should be doing something to try and drum up a bit of interest rather than spending my limited free time watching hip hop documentaries and drifting into Wikipedia wormholes researching the breakdown of Dr Dre and Ice Cube’s relationship.



I certainly need to work on my sales pitch. Someone asked me what the book was about last week and I said;



“Hmm, I guess it’s a collection of anecdotal tales from various points of my life.”



I bet you’re gripped. Wishing away time until January already.



The issue is, however, that this is an accurate description of the book. Anecdotal tales from various points in the life of a spectacularly unspectacular bloke from Leeds. I think I’m in trouble, aren’t I?



As much as I enjoy writing, and I’m excited about The Thing Is coming out, I feel awkward talking about it in person (on the internet, evidently no such problem.) Even if my pals show an interest, I give short answers and try to move the conversation on to more comfortable subjects such as their thoughts on Dr Dre’s The Chronic. It’s self-indulgent enough to write a book about your own life, so to also talk about a book about my own life, I fear I would become insufferable. I need to spruce my description up a bit though, don’t I? Perhaps I’ll ask my old boss from a former recruitment job for some advice. She had the ability to make a commission-only job selling AA breakdown cover outside Morrison’s in Bradford sound like a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity. She wasn’t entirely honest but that’s by the by.



I finished The Thing Is just before our son was born, which feels like another lifetime now, but I have just read through it for the final edit and I’m really pleased with it. My first book, Bright Lights and White Nights was a novel but, to be honest, the protagonist was basically just me and, aside from the drugs and Triads, the story was representative of my own experiences living in Hong Kong. I thought I had created a good, original lead character, which kind of means I think I am good and original, doesn’t it? This is extremely arrogant.



It took me until after Bright Lights and White Nights had been released to realize how blatantly I’d plagiarized my own life. As a result, I tried to start a second novel about a bunch of people who are absolutely nothing like me in any way whatsoever. When I read back my chapter about a guy who was working in a soul-destroying recruitment job with a charismatic but morally-dubious manager, I could no longer kid myself. Perhaps when I’m in my forties I’ll write a novel that bears no semblance to my own life — a tale about how a group of young men from Compton went on to change the face of music?



A few weeks after Bright Lights and White Nights came out, I started writing a blog, Monday Musings. This started as an attempt to “gain an online presence,” an irritating phrase that kept cropping up in any research I did about book marketing, and something that I absolutely did not have (I have a presence in person — I’m unusually tall — but this does not help to flog books sadly.) I’d never thought of myself as a blog-writing kind of guy, associating the idea more with sun-kissed Scandinavians writing about finding themselves on Tibetan yoga retreats, so I was surprised to find I enjoyed it. After initially writing about my book and getting published, Monday Musings evolved into tales of the mundane and the unusual from my week, such as the time Louise and I were accosted by a giant man holding a box of biscuits.



Monday Musings gathered a steady following and I was pleased to hear that people beyond friends and family were enjoying it. So pleased that I wrote The Thing Is, an entire book in much the same style, only recounting tales from my whole life rather than just the past week. Given the general positivity around my blogs, I’m hopeful that people will enjoy The Thing Is and I’ll sell a few copies. This could be inaccurate and the only buyers will be a handful of friends and family and I will regret that my mum now knows I got arrested in Greece in my teens. Time will tell.



Anyway, here is the blurb that my publishers and I have agreed on;



“Andrew Carter is a man in his thirties with a wife and child, greying hair and a tendency to go to bed before 10 pm.



His second book, The Thing Is, is a collection of charming and hilarious tales about all that went on before. From a childhood where he cheated in chess tournaments and tough kids stole his SNES games, he grows into an adolescence including dalliances with drink and drugs, attempts at punk rock stardom and an overwhelming desire to look cool in front of girls.



Wanderlust takes him across the globe where there’s a spot of bother in Bolivia, Australia in a battered van, a police chase in the Greek mountains and a stint as a minor celebrity in Hong Kong.



There are late nights and fistfights, Sunday league struggles, call centre hell, a campus love story and a whole lot more.



Like a perfect conversation with your pals in the pub, you’ll feel fuzzy with nostalgia, wince in recognition and laugh out loud.”



If you think this sounds like your cup of tea, please have a look at my Facebook page which features regular (but not too regular that it’s annoying) blogs and book updates.

If you have a spare few minutes, here is a chapter from The Thing Is about my ill-fated stint as a recruitment consultant.

Thanks for reading!

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