A Novel Development for the Male Trailing Spouse

 

Will ya look at that? 

That is a novel. A-work-of-pulp-fiction. It's seventy-thousand words long and took fourteen months to complete. What an utter bloody slog. Lots of days, and nights, tinkering down the word mine. Not sure what the literary agent back in Blighty will make of it. Need a snappy, one-page outline to accompany the sacrifice. DING-DONG! Now I'm wondering: perhaps I need another agent, a newfangled, hot-shot agency? Perhaps in the US of A? Maybe a b-spoke jackal up in NYC? I dunno. Let's be realistic and practical. Let's see what the old fart back home in England thinks of the manuscript first.

  

So, what's it all about? It's not navel-gazing, namby-pamby bullshit about some artsy-fartsy English guy who can't get his leg over. No sirree. This is a post-modern, multi-genre, action movie novel with humor, and suspense, in every chapter.  A page-turner,  geddit. And what's the point? Let me remind you of an old government campaign during wartime England: "Is your journey really necessary?" I.E. In this case, is your book really necessary? Yes. I'd like to think so. It's the whole point of writing a novel, to try and tell a cracking story, right? 

Or perhaps wrong. Perhaps it's too self indulgent. Or even dated. Hey, I-don't-think-so, Mr and/or Mrs Smartypants. And, I need to get to task on the next project: another non fiction book, based on articles written (by myself) for Vice. Got a catchy title, n'all. Will tell you later (I.E. when it's out). The funny thing about the "process" and the "journey" is coming out of it feeling and thinking like an author proper (I.E. a cranky, anti-social, so-and-so). Oh dear, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it's too self indulgent. Oh dear, too late to change course; so it's full steam ahead to failure and ignominy. 

My old Polytechnic turned University in Kentish Town

But then something came up. A spot of private enterprise. That I need, coz I've been deferring the student loan since 1998, and need to get to task with paying it off. The student loan folks know exactly where I am. Unlike a great many of my contemporaries from the former Polytechnic of North London, I have not done a bunk. Maybe I should have dashed. I got the latest figure only the other week. Eight thousand, four hundred pounds and fifty-one pence. So, my price is ten thousand pounds... where in hell does the Male Trailing Spouse earn that?

One of my influences: BBC Series Gangsters from 1977-8. 

Simple: repeat: private enterprise. But what am I referring to, drug dealing, smuggling, prostitution and/or pimping? Nope. How about a spot of espionage and intrigue? No way. I'm referring to the film biz. Promised myself I would have nothing more to do with that back in June 2015... BUT I bumped into my old pal, Paul Angunawela, in Soho, London. AND another industry chap is keen to adapt a pilot + accompanying series, a six-part cliffhanger serial set in the USA and the fictional "Democratic People's Republic of Yangistan". Got the first two episodes bashed up. Halfway through the third.

And I have YET ANOTHER spot of enterprise in the works. Don't worry, dear reader, it's all thoroughly legal and above board. Trouble is it involves the drafting of a business plan, and, I have no idea whatsoever about drafting one, let alone running a business. But, just like Chuck Norris in Good Guys Wear Black, I'm a fast learner.