Cover blurb for Eats and Treats
I was recently pleasantly surprised to get a lovely blurb for the print version of Eats and Treats from my friend and author Dora Bona . Being my best friend has nothing to do with the fact that she wrote the blurb. One thing she is not, is dishonest.
It has sometimes been a bit of a bug in our relationship going back now over 23 years, that we have spent so much time and effort trying to make each other better writers. Does anyone else have a living, breathing muse? When I write these days, she is always foremost in my mind. What would she say about this? What would she like/dislike about that? Why does she have such a necessity to rage about the apostrophe. Whatever, it make me a better writer and over the years I sincerely hope that I have extended her willingness to explore the dark that is inside all of us.
HERE IT IS: THE BOOK BLURB FOR EATS AND TREATS: CATERING FOR COUCH POTATOES.
There’s an old saying about truth being stranger than fiction and it often applies when there’s a really REALLY good story to be told. This one is true.
This is a story of endurance: a man stripped of all his considerable worldly possessions and driven to live on a remote mountain where he builds a home from logs and scrap metal. Sort of like Moses, only he’s not Jewish.
It’s a story of joy: he creates a simple, serene life, devoid of gadgets like a toilet, running water, electricity, human companionship or any form of communication with the outside world. He does however have two dogs. One is blue, and the other is very black. Both are his constant companions.
It’s a story of heartache: a man who epitomises the mantra of the 70’s, ‘make love not war’, yet whose life on the mountain becomes enmeshed in bitter battles for supremacy. Dominated by greed-driven conflicts with uninvited neighbours. And eventually culminating in a psychotic drug-fuelled attack on his life until his ultimate final reckoning.
It’s a story of pain: a man wracked with deep physical, emotional and mental pain. Not the transient sort – the lifelong, grinding, burrowing, relentless sort that has teeth sharper than Stephen King’s evil clown, Pennywise.
But more than anything, it’s a story of survival: a man clawing his way back into civilization, inch by inch, constantly shedding old burdens and taking on new ones, negotiating forks, bends and ditches in the road until finding trust again, and coming to rest in his own personal utopia.
