My Book Has A Cover

You can file this one under 'shameless plug.' PANTHER, my debut novel, now has a cover. Here it is!

The cover is designed by Jon Gray, who is a veteran of designing amazing covers for many venerable books. My book is almost certainly the least venerable of them. But I don't care, because look at the cover! It's lovely! And beautifully evocative of what the book is about.

While I'm in plugging mode, I might as well say that the book might be of interest to some of you who read this blog - it deals with depression and the stigmas that surround it in a way that I hope is genuine and poignant, as well as funny. It's sad but not sentimental, and I've packed in as many jokes as I reasonably can. Here is a shameless blurb:

Panther tells the story of Derrick, whose family is being torn apart by his sister’s depression and her recent suicide attempt. When rumours start to circulate that a panther is roaming wild in his south London suburb, Derrick decides to try and capture it. Surely if he can just find a way to tame the panther, he’ll be able to put his life back together too?

Panther is a funny, touching, and occasionally unsettling coming-of-age story, which deals candidly with the stigmas and misunderstandings surrounding depression.

It's not out for a little while: May 21st, 2015. I may start banging on about it quite a bit before then. I may also start screaming 'BUY IT' at people in the street. I'll let you know as this develops.

Job Hunting Demotivators

I have been unemployed now for what science refers to as 'quite some time.' During this extended period of mid-afternoon nudity and naps I have applied for many hundreds of jobs (I stopped keeping track when the official tally became too lengthy to manage). This mostly involves sending email. In the process of sending applications, enquiries, etc. I often require something from my old computer. The easiest way to get them is to email myself with an attachment.

It began as a few words to simply occupy the body of the email. But anyone who has ever been engaged in a prolonged job hunt knows it is rarely a happy process.

One of the worst parts of job hunting is having to spend a great deal of time on an application that you know will come to nothing. You have to try - there are only so many days you can wile away singing the Game of Thrones theme to the cat - but the certainty of failure looms large.

Soon I was writing emails to myself that didn't even contain attachments. They served only to break up the inexorable tedium of bullshitting cover letters, and made the dearth of replies seem slightly less absolute. For a while, they were even vaguely positive.

It wasn't long before this soupcon of optimism became a trickle of bile, a leaky catheter staining the trousers of hope and decency.

Job hunting cuts the Achilles tendon of your self-esteem, writes your every regret large across your mind, and forces you to panic about every penny you spend, despite your propensity to hypocritically spunk everything you own on ice cream because you're miserable and at least diabetes will give you something to do. 

People will tell you to keep trying. I don't disagree with that advice. But in the festering abyss of the job market, nothing is more exasperating than the false cheer and vacuous enthusiasm of the gainfully employed. 

So I give you unemployment demotivators instead. Give up! Eat ice cream! Watch pornography in the morning! After all, it's a lot more fun than applying for jobs.