Sneak Peek At My New Book!

Maybe you’ve heard, but I’m writing a book for the lucrative Christmas market. It’s a book about me, and something that happened to me, and it’s funny and true.

The publisher has suggested that I stick the first chapter up on the website, so you guys will be the first people to see it before the book lands on shop shelves in time for the lucrative Christmas market.

As a book written for the lucrative Christmas market, I think you’ll find it a pleasant read. And it’s all true. An amazing story that happened to me. “Life-affirming” is what I imagine they’ll call it.

Enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE: HOW IT ALL STARTED

I’ll never forget it. It’s etched in my memory. It all started in February or March of 2009.

I was sitting on the couch, watching one of my axed comedy shows on the TV, when a dizzying thought dashed into my head like a drunk gazelle.

“What if you became one of those guys who manufactures a sudden comedic change in life philosophy in order to write a book about it for the lucrative Christmas market?”

I cast the thought aside. I put a finger on one nostril and literally blew the thought out of my nose, like a footballer. But as I tried to get back to watching my failed comedy show on TV, my eye kept getting drawn back to that strange thought that lay on my Playboy rug. It looked so sad sitting there, like a deviled egg, with snot instead of devils.

Could I really do it? Could I change my life to that extent? How would my friends react, if they knew that I was to start living my life in some annoying new way, in order to secure a publishing deal and possibly a film adaptation down the line?

I had to find out. And also find out if I would make a fortune from the lucrative Christmas market by writing down what I found out.

I reared up to my full height and raised my fists in the air. “I will be that man,” I said. “I will fabricate a tale of how I lived my life from this day forth as a man who has adopted some new way of living his life that is awkward and difficult but ultimately leads to some life-affirming and happy ending.” And then I said “I will also fill it full of long sentences like that one.”

My life began anew from that moment on. I started to make a list of things I would have to do:

1. Start to pretend I’m incredibly naive, so that I might realistically seem like the kind of guy who would suddenly adopt a new life philosophy based around adopting a new life philosophy just to fill a bloated number of pages in a book for the lucrative Christmas market.

2. Put myself into situations where I can involve people with the consequences of my new philosophy, so that I can write about how they reacted in the pages of my book for the lucrative Christmas market.

3. Write the blurb for my book in advance(I know that the lucrative Christmas market game is all about the book’s blurb, so this was HIGH PRIORITY and would inform the rest of the book I’d be writing):

“Robert Florence’s life was going well. A good career. A woman he loved. A beautiful daughter. But one day, something strange happened. Robert wondered what would happen if he became one of those guys who manufactures a sudden comedic change in life philosophy in order to write a book about it for the lucrative Christmas market. This is his hilarious, life-affirming, lucrative story.”

As I was putting my list together, the doorbell rang. I quickly flung on my sarong and answered it. It was Danny Wallace, the esteemed author of Danny Wallace’s Yes Man, a book about a man who wonders what his life would be like if he suddenly started saying Yes to everyone and then ended up writing a book about it and got films made and ended up meeting Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel and everything.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” he said. I was staggered. Here was Danny Wallace, the author of Yes Man, standing at my door. His breath was stinking of the cheapest possible booze. He had a massive beard, which was covered in shit. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve wiped my arse with my own beard. So what?”

He lumbered into the room, all seven foot of him. He hawked up a massive ball of phlegm and spat it into the Calor gas fire.

“Is there a problem, Danny Wallace?” I asked.

“I’ll say there’s a problem,” he mumbled. And then, proving himself a man of his word: “There’s a problem.”

I sat down. My entire body was quivering like a recovering alcoholic jellyfish impaled on a Sybian.

“This book you’re planning. It ends now. I want you to write it and then burn it. You’re not fit to write a book of this nature.”

“If you can do it, why can’t I?”

Danny Wallace roared, and sent his Nike Air Yeezys through my 16-inch SD telly. He turned to me, his face strewn with tears.

“These things happened!” he trumpeted. “All of these things are true! Gorman’s adventures! My cult! Nothing was exaggerated! ALL IS REAL! ALL IS TRUTH!”

I fell to my knees. Surely this could not be? All my life I had believed these books to be fabrications. Gimmick books. Fluff and nonsense created to entertain those with no critical faculties. But looking at Danny Wallace, and seeing his enormous honest eyes staring at me from beneath leathery bat-like eyelids, I knew I had been wrong.

Why had I assumed that these books were lies?

“My son,” Danny Wallace said, his beard dripping with compassion and his own shit, “You believed me to be a charlatan because you envied me. You do not even have enough friends who would be able to react to any new philosophy of yours, you jealous cunt.”

I am not ashamed to say that I wept when he said these words.

“You understand that I call you a cunt out of love?” he added, his warm hands caressing my chins.

“I understand, Danny.”

“Join me,” he said. “I do not say this in reference to my bestselling book of the same name. I say this in a real and meaningful sense. You need no longer be the bitter man who hates charismatic and intelligent entertainers for having better ideas than you. You have your own TV show now. You are part of the inner circle.”

And at that, he lifted me into his arms. Somehow, I became the size of a tiny baby, lost in the steroid-enhanced limbs of my beloved Danny Wallace. He carried me out of the room and into a warm light.

Inside that light, they were all there to see me. Dave Gorman. Jimmy Carr. Paul O’Grady. Sean Lock. Harry Hill. Lily Allen. Graham Norton. Russell Brand…

Davina McCall approached me: “You are in the care of the genius now,” she smiled.

Ant & Dec chuckled as they stroked my brow. “Why aye pet. Welcome to the world behind the mirror.”

Jonathan Ross was astride a huge white stallion. He fixed me with that unmistakable Rossian stare. “I’m genuinely a huge fan of your work,” he grinned.

Danny Wallace laid me down on a bed of hay. Or perhaps it was a cloud. The great and the good started to sing. The sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. 4 Poofs and a Piano were leading the celestial chorus.

“Understand that I did not speak ill of you, Danny Wallace,” I cried, my life his.

“I know you did not, friend. You spoke ill of those who do not appreciate the majesty of Ideas.”

With that, Danny Wallace climbed to the crest of a hill. His form was a silhouette against the golden sky.

“Now…wouldn’t this make a good book?” he smiled, and my heart melted.

And it was then that I saw that Danny Wallace was not a man. He was a lion.

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Tags: Beard of Shit, Danny Wallace, Davina McCall, Humorous Writing, Jonathan Ross, Lions, Robert Florence