Kerouac House - I am Alternate!

I am pleased to say I am the alternate choice to live in Jack Kerouac's old house for 3 months! The Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida, is the house Kerouac lived in with his mother when On The Road was published, made him famous, and where he subsequently wrote The Dharma Bums!

If Brian Turner, the soldier-poet known for his 2005 poetry volume Here, Bullet decides not to live in the house (from June-August 2009), I am first alternate choice!

Voila the house!

The Kerouac House is now run by the Kerouac Project of Orlando at http://www.kerouacproject.org/ Plus you can tour the Kerouac House here.

I recommend the Jack Kerouac biography called Memory Babe (his childhood nickname)- the most readable and detailed biography in my view. More about Jack can be found here.

Matt wins Unpublished Novel Competition!

Bookhabit.com is pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Bookhabit Unpublished Competition is Matt Fullerty's The Pride and the Sorrow. Matt receives a US$5000 prize and is "thrilled" about winning the first Bookhabit competition. We will be posting an interview with Matt on Bookhabit.com shortly. Congratulations from Bookhabit! You can see full details with an endorsement of the novel at http://www.bookhabit.com/newsdetail.php?nid=48

The Pride and the Sorrow is the story of Paul Morphy (1837-1884), born in New Orleans as a chess prodigy, his famous journey through Europe and his ultimate downfall on and off the chessboard. He is celebrated in fashionable European society, honored by Napoleon III of France and Queen Victoria of England and returns to New Orleans a local celebrity, only to find Civil War looming, a storm brewing in his family and his own mind coming apart ...

The novel itself is available at http://bookhabit.com/book_details.php?book_id=459

Novel's first interview - thanks Clare!

A 23-minute interview with Matt is now available through http://www.reviewyak.com/ with Clare Tanner of the Bookhabit Show. "Every month over 20,000 listeners download our podcasts for The Bookhabit Show where we tell the author's story behind the story."

American Wedding Trip!

Chess nut?

Click on the chessboard to discover my chess novel set in New Orleans, about lost American chess world champion, Paul Morphy!

You can also check out Paul's family and chess competitors at my website.

Thanks!

I love your accent, England

This one's for you, Ashley.

"D-V-D"!

Faith Will Be Rewarded!

The Boss, back in the early days!

Looks like he strayed out of Asbury Park into the Big Apple. Hope he finds his way home!

Austin, Texas Wedding! (American Wedding 2008)

Last weekend I did my job as Best Man at my buddy's (US) / mate's (UK) John (Boy) Shaw's wedding, which he had in Austin, Texas baby!

It was a beautiful, lavish and memorable weekend. The boy Shaw, the dreamer-schemer romanic-believer, stepped up and characterisitically lacking in nerves, hitched his wagon to the girl from Richmond, Texas. I made sure the ring was there.

Good luck to Malcolm and Alana who got married the very next day in a helicopter flying over the Las Vegas Strip. We wish we could have kept the party going in Vegas (baby)!

Austin, though, proved to be a fun town - if you're not in the bars on 6th street, the mad ones, you're in the cool open-air ranch bars of 4th street with the slightly older crowd. It was the first day of class and suddenly there were 8-9000 students on these streets. We naturally wore our Road Trip (American Wedding 2008) T-shirts and cowboy hats. Is there such a thing as a British Urban cowboy?

Congrats to the Nunans-Shaws and the Duncansons!

Picture (for no reason at all) #3

The future!

Name the writers!

He wrote about a Don, and I'm not talking about the University Novel!
Don't be fooled by the costume - some say he was a legend, others that he had a clubbed foot. Everyone seems to agree that he awoke one day and "found myself famous."
Looks a bit Russian? That's because he is.

And finally, a tricky one. The clue is in the picture!

Your local needs you!

Dear England, I am just about getting used to the grand ol' American tradition of...beer pong! Why did it take so long? I think it's because beer pong is only really available in a few DC bars, the ones scattered to the edge of town. But when you find them, boy, do they go all out!

For those uninitiated into the delights of beer pong, you arrange 10 cups in a triangle (as in the picture) then each team take turns to throw a ping pong ball - not leaning too far over the table! - into your opponent's cup. Like all drinking games, the harder you play, the harder you fall.

A similar game is called flip cup, where you stand in a line on opposite sides of the table, and have to flip your cup upright using the edge of the table, after you've drunk it of course! Take too long to drink (the flipping is usually the problem) and you'll slow the team down.

This one kind of reminds me of college "Rowing Eights" where we'd stand our 8-man crew, pints in hand, to take on another 8. One pint each round. If you're losing, you could sacrifice the drink by pouring it over your head to win some speed!

Tipping up your beer? A cardinal sin on both sides of the Atlantic!

Facebook overkill!

England, In recent weeks I've gone overboard on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Technorati, and all the rest of Web 2.0's collection of widgets, add-ons, and blogospheric companions to supposedly enhance readership, traffic and anything else that gets a mug to visit my blog. Did I fall for the marketing? Do these things really work?

I can now at least say have several friends in the Lebanese Chess Club through Facebook! Once I got one friend, they all started inviting me. It's my latest ambition to one day play a game there, and get all my Lenanese Facebook friends together - no joke.

Technocrati that!

Phew!

Quote of the Day #2

"Life is an overrated way of passing the time."

Julian Barnes, Nothing To Be Afraid Of (2008)

Marine Corps Marathon

Not long to go now!

With just over two months before I attempt my 3rd marathon, I have begun my training in earnest! I even went running at 6:30 this morning, which was lovely and cool. I trotted along the trails and streams of Rock Creek Park and it was 72 degrees when I got back at 7.20 - already getting hot!

Anyway, I've now reading Haruki Murakami's great little memoir about running and writing: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It's a little gem! The Japanese writer most famous for his novels of love, loss and pop music takes us back over his 20-plus years of running, starting with his first marathon distance - when he ran from Athens to the town of Marathon (the orifinal race run by Pheidippides after the ancient Greeks beat the invading Perisans at the Battle of Marathon).


Murakami only discovered afterwards that the distance from Athens to Marathon is technically 25 miles, a mile or so short of today's marathon distance! Oops!

"The Writing Life"

So I read this amusing article in the Washington Post book reviews, penned by novelist Chris Bohjalian. It's a great article about how writers are equally obsessed and fearful of their reviews, the twist here being the critics are the comments posted on amazon.com. As Chris points out, even the smallest criticism - and 1* rating - is enough not only to damage the writer's ego (and possible future writing), but it can put of other readers, affect sales, and generally dampen the excitment of having a book out there!

The ideal reader, of course, is not always the same person who picks up the book! And the reader who 'endures' a novel gets some compensation, no doubt, in wielding power over future readers - vindication!

Recently, I had a comment on my Bookhabit page and as Chris described in his article, for better or worse I felt compelled to respond!

The Hutchings!

Voila my beautiful nieces, the gruesome twosome. Say cheese, Grace & Beatrice!

At Beatrice's christening, 2006. Beatrice is the surprised-looking one!

My sister, Kate Hutchings, in Yorkshire with G & B!

The house near Wetherby, Yorkshire - Grace has recently figured out how cameras work!