I just made up that title. It is not true and you don’t care. You want the story that everyone’s talking about because you’re human, and because it’s a bloody good read that will leave you uncomfortable in your own skin for all the right reasons. You’ll find the story inside the novel:  a kick in the gurus by maclean mottram.

How could you support such an anti-hero hero? How could you not, knowing his story?

Enter the debate, fictionhead, but be warned, you can’t buy it yet, this book is going to be opened to the internet, the entrails of some chapters are going to be dangled in front of you. Be warned, this story, nine years in the making, could be the unmaking of you. It’s not horror, but it should be because as we all know, the real horror of human life happens between human and human. Then again, survival, redemption, taking the piss in the biggest way possible just to survive it, laughing at your unmade wounds, is also a daily reality that needs no monsters.

Not when the humans are a father and son.

This post is sponsored unknowingly by Bulmers fruit cider because I’ve been drinking while I wrote it. Perhaps I wouldn’t have written it, wouldn’t have kicked this off without it. I’m not condoning drinking, I’m condoning blogs and book launches, so this is two birds with one bottle. I’ve no idea what I’m doing, which makes it fun. Like tipping over a stranger’s drink.

Question: What happens when a mind that doesn’t know right from wrong from right is hypnotised by the motivational messages of a CD playing in the stereo of a stolen car?

You’re about to find out. You’re about to get a kick in the gurus.  

I dare you to share the shit out of this – don’t get left behind. Be an early influencer, your friends will think you rock. #akickinthegurus #macleanmottram.com

email me at macleanatmacleanmottramdotcom

 

 

 

In my notebooks, years of them; in the backs of cupboards, where loose proof copies were sent to the naughty step; in compulsive thoughts that are part of 3am and 4am waking times; behind guilt’s pathetically flimsy skin, shamed by what the world would or wouldn’t think; under fear of damage I might do. There, in those places, I found something.

Balls. Courage. Some attitude and respect for the craft, for the characters, for the plot, for the life of the book that took nine years of mine.

So enough running, enough cowarding, enough scapegoating morality and weakness.

The book. It’s back. This time, it’s getting out. This time, I’m going to drivel at you till you read it, even if it might kill you. Yes.

Even this book will kill you.

But at least you’ll die with a good book in your hands.

Here’s how the story ends. Not my story, not A Kick in the Gurus, I mean the story. Here’s how the story ends – in a coffin. For you, for me, for everything that’s alive, the end result is death. That’s what you get for being alive.  Call it the prize, if you like, probably ironically. Call it the cost. The cost of life is death.

You turn up here – don’t blame me, or the universe, you’re on your own with this one. See, we share an end, but not at the same time or in the same way. I have no idea what it’s like for you to die, nor you me. Shit, i may not even have a clue how it feels when I die and ditto for you. You need to be alive to experience anything, right? So how are you going to experience death? You’ll be dead.

This shit isn’t even far out. Epicurus said it a couple of thousand years ago.

If I am, death is not. If death is, then I am not.

Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

It kind of makes every worry you have a heap of shit. Unless you have real worries of course, in which case I’m sorry for talking out of line.

But…

What do you make of it?

I think I get this way around the time it’s time to go back to work as a teacher.

I’m in a pattern of teach, holiday, holiday ends so think about this kind of stuff ‘cos going back into class is a kind of death of freedom. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching. But it’s still a bit like dying. My life will be given over to the class, to the school, for the next nine months full of 50 hour weeks. It’s how it is.

But what do you with this Epicurus stuff? Let me know.

2018, London

 

 

Hi, fiction-heads. if you missed preview 1 or preview 2, click to catch up. Otherwise, we’re in…

2nd gear 

Potential. Teachers said I had none, social services say I’ve got loads. What is it anyway? It’s nothing, ‘cos whatever it is, it isn’t used, it’s like I’m a body lying there and no one can work out if it’s ‘cos I’m just born or ‘cos I just died.

I don’t want to be potential, I want to be actual.

My physics teacher said I was a rock on top of a mountain that’s scared to make a decision to be a rock at the bottom of the mountain. But I don’t want to be a rock at the top or the bottom, I want to be the rock that’s moving, the rock that smashes things.

 

 

I’d love to know your thoughts. Even if they’re not about this book – I’m nosy like that. Please come back and see what happens next.

Enjoy your incredible life, make the most and please share this post. You are the difference.

Maclean

London, 2018

Good world to you,

If you missed the first preview on Father’s day, you can click here to read it here first.

We continue your pre-release previews from the very beginning of the novel.

It starts right now…

 

‘I will ascend into heaven…I will be like the most high.’

‘Yet thou shall be brought down to hell…’

– Isaiah 14: 13-15

 

half a prologue

 

1st gear

 

I’m a universe.

 

 

 

Come back to taste 2nd gear tomorrow.

Thank you.

Make the most & share this post.

Maclean

London 2018