So exciting …!

All the best

Colin

First off, I’m deeply honored to be asked to do a review for you and secondly: Hells yes off course I’ll do it! I had a great laugh about the white mice; the fact that your letter writing is so engaging is a good sign that I’ll enjoy your writing style, so I’m finding myself rather excited to start reading it.

Sometimes things start out funny all natural-like when I write… then the inevitable side effect where I notice it takes place and my humor becomes forced. It’s a challenge to try and remain consistent, hence the “wannabe-writer” status *chuckle*

Thanks,

Amanda

I love this list! Very funny. I hope it was intended to be …

I noticed that you recently reviewed a book called Coffee at Little Angels by a friend of mine, Nadine Rose Larter and I thought I’d take the chance and see if you’d be willing to review my own book, The Baggage Handler which is currently available for Kindle (I’m working on other formats too).

It’s a male take on the romantic comedy as hapless Martin tries to win the heart of his sudden and unexpected love interest, Kasia. He’s like most guys; he’s fine talking to women generally, but cannot pull himself together around her because he’s putting too much weight on it. She on the other hand, doesn’t see that he’s hopeless only around her, because she has nothing to compare it to.

It isn’t autobiographical as such, though I have either done, or witnessed most of the embarrassing, flailing attempts at romance that take place in this book. It is romantic and it is sweet in parts, but for the most part, it is a tale of a man willingly abandoning every aspect of his carefully crafted, deliberately shallow existence for a woman who hasn’t asked for, nor invited his attentions. It’s about sexual politics and the increasing requirement to be a man in the fullest sense, in a world of independent, liberated women.

Ultimately though, the things we’ll do for love are pretty funny, and I hope that comes across in the book.

Summary of the book (from Amazon):
Martin White, editor of The Shallow Review of Books, likes his life as he likes his work: shallow. Living in purposeful near-isolation in the middle of a crowded city, he keeps his relationships superficial and his life uncomplicated. His deliberate avoidance of social potholes prompts his colleagues to turn to him for assistance handling their own life and relationship baggage, which only strengthens his resolve never to allow any of it into his life. He’s pretty happy, albeit hollow and empty.

But then Kasia turns up. Young, Polish, focused on minding her own business, she neither invites, nor encourages Martin’s flailing attempts at romance, but he can’t help himself. For reasons that defy logic for an isolationist such as he, he falls for her, hard. Years of handling baggage have done nothing to equip him to handle his own however as he realizes with excruciating displays of ineptitude, again and again. He’s way out of his depth …

Faced with a challenge by Rich, his more socially adept colleague, to ask Kasia out within a week or Rich will, Martin has no option but to open the doors to all the complexity of modern life and relationships as he re-emerges from the shadows.

The Baggage Handler is an acknowledgement that if you’re going to be serious about it, this love stuff is hard.

About Me:
I don’t know where I’m from, but my best guess is that I’m South African though that’s really a twist-of-fate rather than a birthright. Born in England, I moved to Belgium when I was two, South Africa when I was 12, Dubai when I was 25 and back to South Africa when I was 31. Nowadays, I call London home.

I’ve done some fun stuff. I helped start a successful business in South Africa which I still part-own and I spent a lot of years before that writing articles for magazines around the world.

My first attempt at a novel happened in 1995. It was laughable. My second happened once I’d got over myself, in 1999. Not a lot better. But since then I’ve made writing a big part of my life and The Baggage Handler is the first one I’ve had the guts to put out into the world as grown up enough to take its own reviews. I really like it. I hope you will too.

I’m still writing so there are more books on the way.

Other authors talk about their awards and their accolades, so I suppose I ought to do that too. I won two white mice at a school tombola once. That’s kind of it. My mum made me donate them to the school which is just as well because the cat would probably have eaten them anyway. He was a monster, that cat …

Other than that, I’m just a guy who loves telling stories, loves language and respects both enough to know that if I’m going to ask readers to trust me with their time, I ought to do my best to make it worth their while.

Thank you very much.

All the best

Colin