I broke my neck in high school and spent the next ten weeks on my back, tethered to a hospital bed.
I wrote about this incident in a post called ‘Lying Still’ and recently, IrishCentral, the leading Irish digital media company in North America, ran the article: How I broke my neck and learnt the surprising truth about life.
IrishCentral caters to Irish Americans and the Irish diaspora and is definitely worth checking out for those interested in Irish politics and topics.
“The `80s were the last identifiable period. If you see a picture from that era, you know it instantly. The art, the clothes, the hair; they were unique. After that, everything started to look and feel the same.”
That’s what the author Jay McInerney said (or something close to it) when I saw him at a book reading here in La Jolla. He seemed wistful. And why he wouldn’t he be, having hurdled like a latter day F. Scott Fitzgerald into the New York literary scene with his 1984 bestseller, Bright Lights, Big City? As he spoke, I too waxed nostalgic for the time, the scene, and recalled a woman who once leaned against the bar of the Surf Club on the Upper East Side. It was 1988, and I thought it was her birthday.
The Surf Club’s preppy, Wall Street trader vibe wasn’t for me – I preferred the scruffier downtown scene – but there she was: button nose, sneakers, shoulder-length blonde hair and looking like she knew something the rest of us didn’t. Continue reading
I write because I am a prisoner.
I write because there exists, beyond the walls of my preconceptions and just outside the barriers of my inventiveness, another story.
It’s not wholly personal or cultural or factual. It’s not religious or utopian. Nor is it political. It’s all of these things, or some, or none of them. It’s unknown, untold; it’s novel.
I write to discover that new story – the one that will set me free.
My novel is available here: The Last Island
When I was 17 years old, I dove into a swimming pool and broke my neck.
Until that moment, I’d been relentlessly active, my days taxed with dread of missing something somewhere. I was on the student council and participated in a wide variety of school clubs. I always secured a part in the school play and rode a unicycle in talent shows. I ran cross-country in the fall, track in the spring and was co-captain of the basketball team in between. I was an honor student who worked full-time in the summer and caddied most weekends in the spring and early fall, except on certain Sundays when I served as an altar boy. I’d never had a drink or a smoke, and I rarely swore. Yet that pleasant summer day, for reasons still unclear to me, I plunged into a six-foot deep above-ground pool and slammed the top of my head on the sloped concrete bottom. Continue reading
‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O’Brien.
Not one of my three sisters is a loud, dirty, boozy girl. That’s probably a good thing for them — as well as me. But if one or two or all of them were, I would give them this book if only because Dylan Thomas, that loud, dirty, boozy poet, said I should.
Even without that recommendation, how can anyone resist a novel that reflects on the humanity of kangaroos, including “the kangaroolity of women and your wife beside you?”
Or one that offers an occasional “summary of what has gone before, for the benefit of new readers?”
Or one where an author sleeps with one of his own characters and conceives a child, who then goes on to write a book about what a terrible writer his father is?
Joyce loved it, so did Beckett and Graham Greene and Jorge Luis Borges, and Brendan Gleeson is trying to turn it into a movie. It’s Flann O’Brien’s ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ and one of my favorite novels. Go on, find yourself a loud, dirty, boozy girl and give it to her.
Of course, if that doesn’t suit you, you can try my novel, which is available here: The Last Island
‘The Last Island’ was the Number 1 bestseller at Amazon Australia this week, holding the No. 1 position in both ‘Literary Fiction’ and ‘Contemporary Fiction’ simultaneously.
In addition, as many of you know, the novel recently hit bestseller status in the United Kingdom as well.
Many thanks to my publisher, Betimes Books, for their ongoing support and to everyone who has helped spread the word.
In addition, in September, for those of you in Southern California, my short play, ‘Offline Daters,’ will be presented with some other short plays in an evening called ‘Legends,’ produced by the New Play Cafe.
I’ll provide more details as the opening date approaches.
Thanks again to all.
And for those who haven’t read it yet, the novel is available worldwide here: The Last Island.
‘The Last Island’ is one of three Finalists in the Contemporary Fiction category of the 2014 San Diego Book Awards.
In addition, the novel was recently an Amazon Literary Bestseller in the U.K.
Thanks so much to everyone for their support.
All the recommendations, shares, retweets, purchases and reviews are sincerely appreciated.
And if you haven’t read it yet, the novel is available worldwide here: The Last Island.
