Crack out the 1978 Dom would you, darling?
Fuck you, Frank. You’ve been sleeping with that French cow again, haven’t you?
Well not exactly. I’ve been sending her pictures of my kaka again though. The French love that kind of crap.
Look, I ain’t gonna do that, alright?
I fucking hate making a big deal about the books I publish. Cos book launches are usually a bunch of pretentious shoe-lickers sipping sour cherry prosecco and wanking each other off while eating elk sausage rolls and vintage pickled onions on sticks and tiny sow stall ham sandwiches.
Actually, the snacks are the best part of any book launch, but since my loathing for the literary industry grows stronger every day, it is important I continue to ignore all of their rules, like making sure you have a proper book launch and inviting all the local literary fucks and enticing them by putting on the Chippendales at half time.
Or, crap like this:
Rose Gold Rule #1: Pay a professional editor to go through the six stages of editing on your book. Each stage will only cost you about two grand, and you’ll easily make back the total twelve grand by spending another twelve grand on Amazon ads
My latest book is not professionally edited. I haven’t paid a single dollar to any stuck-up cunts with literary degrees who might like to trim all of the fat off my book and make it taste sterile like Hemmingway’s cheddar gonads.
And look, there could be some mistakes. I prefer to publish it, then do a few more re-reads and ask my readers to keep an eye out. If you publish through KDP, uploading a new manuscript is fairly easy. And if there are a few copies with some typos, fuck it. It’s not like I sell fifty thousand copies up front.
This is an important point because I assume that most of us self-published fucks who don’t work 9-5 and own their own mansion, can’t pay thousands for professional editing. So, if ya spot something ya don’t like, don’t fucking judge, just DM me quietly, would ya?
And remember, English is just a made-up language. It’s fucking imaginary, like truffles and politics and Christmas and marriage. So, even when you think you’re right, you’re also wrong.
Rose Gold Rule #2: Pay a professional cover designer and a typesetter to make a cover that looks just like all the other fucking covers in the bookshop
Again these services cost a fucking small Albanian child, and I honestly find most modern book covers as interesting as watching a snail have a wank. So, from the start, I designed all of my covers myself. I originally wanted to publish a book to prove that it’s not as hard as everyone says, so when putting together my first short story collection, Ballbag, I took a picture of the public toilet wall where I was doing a piss, and that became the cover. If you look really carefully, you can see the reflection of my pissing cock.
For my next book, The Therapist, I based the cover on an old Penguin book I found from 1953. Those old book covers are so beautiful compared to the shite we produce these days.
For my third book, I had a picture that my wife had taken at night and the light patterns were so interesting. So I flipped it and toyed with it to make the Midnight in Footscray cover.
Rose Gold Rule #3: Ask ChatGBH to come up with an interesting title for your book or use one of those horseshit title creator apps
If you do this, you are a true anus thief and should not even consider yourself a writer. I mean it. if you can’t come up with a title for your own book, you are an absolute cunt. Go flagellate yourself with a twelve-inch length of chocolate hosepipe.
My first book was called Ballbag as a middle finger to this particular rule.
Back in my Medium days I wrote an article called, Publishing a Book is Easy if You Fuck Off All the Rules. You should have a proper read if you want to do the same.
As it says in the article:
Here is my secret technique for coming up with a title:
Think about something
Use it as the title.
The point I want to make here is that if you are one of these fannies that isn’t publishing books cos it seems overwhelming, just go ahead and do it according to your own rules to piss off the literati.
Despite what they try and tell you, there are no actual rules. Break fucking free and do whatever you want. Don’t follow the norm, Norm. But also, do a good job. The internet doesn’t need another screaming turd.
The Edge of the Sun
So, to business. I’ve been doin’ all the final shite—reading and rereading and fucking re-rereading which is why I haven’t been publishing stories lately. But that’s what happens. I can’t do everything. I’m not Wonder Woman.
This is my fourth book, and unlike the others, you could probably show it to your granny without giving them a coronary embolism or whatever (mostly). I mean, there’s still a bit of swearing. But unlike Midnight in Footscray (Of which 1.5% of the book is swear words), there are considerably fewer swear words and wanking scenes.
Sorry if these spoilers are disappointing.
I guess I need to thank a few people like I’m at the fucking Oscars, so I’ll just thank the Academy of Literary Agent Cunts (ALAC) first. Thanks for not having the fucking juice to tell someone who has taken the time to write you a good submission that they are a fucking loser. And don’t give me that no time shite. Takes a few seconds, you goddamn pricks. And keep on publishing your books about trans werewolves falling in love with mixed-race non-binary centaurs with herpes, won’t ya, ya absolute sad, stuck-up ball-whisperers.
I’d also like to thank all you people who keep reading my stuff and those that pay me to do so even though you get fucking nothing more than everyone else (Did you realise that?) I fucking appreciate you so much. You know who you are.
And look, I was (for about five minutes) one of those pricks who put a paywall up in their stories to set a trap for ya like a fucking marmot who almost orgasms but can’t fully climax cos they have to pay to read the rest.
But about three stories deep, I felt like an absolute cunt for doing that. So now, everyone gets my stories for free. And my paid subscribers get the same dinner but with more invisible gratitude gravy.
Cos paying writers on Substack isn’t about getting value for money, you fucks. It’s about supporting human-made art in a world where shit writers will soon be able to produce good writing via their robot slaves.
It’s like putting money in that bowl they hand around at church to support priests in their habits of touching up altar boys and drinking brandy. You don’t personally expect a reacharound from the priest.
I’ll never use a fucking paywall on this app. If ya want to pay me, pay me. You’ll get nothing but love from me. But I ain’t never gonna be another cockslinger who refuses access to my art cos ya had to spend all ya money on rent. I promise you that.
Thanks to my wife and cats, though, none of them read my shit, so they won’t even see this but fuck it. As a wise friend once told me, it’s good to have peace at home. This is so fucking true.
Thanks to my book club friends,
and for always reading my shit before anyone else and pushing me along when I fucking wanted to burn the damn book—and just for being fucking good and very funny humans. To and the Guru Shanshek for spiritual inspiration in recent hardish times. And to my friend, who paid me generously to edit his book about football and thus helped fund some of my time working on the book. You can buy his book here if you like football and spirituality.I wrote the first draft of The Edge of the Sun in two weeks, and it’s almost eighty thousand words. It has taken me another eighteen months to rewrite the whole thing. So, let me say this. If you are struggling to get that first book, and I know that’s a few of you, just start writing and get the first draft done.
Yes, I’m talking to you, you fuck.
You can change it a thousand times later. Yeah, it’s a cliche, but re-writing is the real work.
And yeah I could write a long-winded synopsis like all of those damn literary agents ask you to do even though they can’t be fucked writing a single email line back to you to tell you they rejected your book.
But we aren’t spunking on cakes here, remember? So I’ll just show you the back of the book instead:
So yeah, that’s my book launch, you fucks. Hope you enjoy your spunk-soaked cake. Buy it here, would ya? The book, I mean, not the cake. And don’t forget to leave a fucking review, even though those cock-rocket fucks at Amazon probably won’t publish your review for whatever mysterious evil reason they think is appropriate. (Note: Please don’t forget to adjust Amazon to your local version to get the correct pricing since they are absolute fuckstains. Thanks)
Fuck it.
I appreciate all you bastards.
FTB
Congratulations.
Congrats FTB! Just purchased the book and can't wait to read it. You'll soon be rivaling the Bukowski section of my little library.